Klarinet Archive - Posting 000966.txt from 2003/06

From: "Joseph H. Fasel" <jhf@-----.gov>
Subj: Re: [kl] Left, Right or mixed handed?/Stephanie
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2003 11:26:56 -0400

There was a high-school violinist here in Los Alamos who played left-handed.
It seems that an accident had damaged the fingers of his left hand, so that
he was capable of bowing with that hand, but not fingering. In his case,
at least, the solution was indeed to reverse the strings and the bridge.
I was told that the biggest problem the elementary and middle-school
orchestra teachers had with him as he was learning was their own confusion
when trying to tune his instrument for him. When I saw him playing, he
was the assistant concertmaster in the high-school orchestra, and while
it looked strange, he and the first-chair player seemed to have no
trouble playing next to one another.

Cheers,
--Joe

On 2003.06.25 17:52 Karl Krelove wrote:
> > From: Tony Pay [mailto:Tony@-----.uk]
> >
> > A famous British string quartet, the Allegri, had for a time a
> > left-handed second violin -- who incidentally used to sit opposite the
> > first violin, so that both instruments were 'favoured' equally from the
> > audience's point of view.
> >
> Did he reverse his bridge and string his violin in reverse of a conventional
> one? I can imagine all kinds of bowing technique involving string crossings
> being very different if the G string is at the top and the E at the bottom -
> or maybe it would just look different. I've never seen anyone do this.
>
> Karl

Joseph H. Fasel, Ph.D. email: jhf@-----.gov
Stockpile-Complex Modeling and Analysis phone: +1 505 667 7158
University of California fax: +1 505 667 2960
Los Alamos National Laboratory post: D-2 MS F609; Los Alamos, NM 87545

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