ABSTRACT
The knowledge of technical and musical advances described in the prototype treatises suggest the subtlety of hitherto unknown technical and expressive possibilities on violin. Shortly after Corrette and Tessarini published their treatises, Italian violinist, composer, and author Francesco Geminiani published The Art of Playing on the Violin in which he recounted the playing practices of the Italian violin school virtuosos, including those of his teacher Arcangelo Corelli, and of Pietro Locatelli and Francesco Veracini. The French violinist, composer, and author L’Abbé le fils published what might be considered as the most consequential violin treatise of the second half of the eighteenth century, Principes du violon. One of the earliest known professional women violinists was Maddalena Lombardini Sirmen. A common eighteenth-century practice was to select fingerings that allow for playing an entire phrase in one position, largely due to the instability of the chin-braced violin hold, which afforded the hand less freedom to change positions.
