BECKER – Technique and Aesthetics of the Cello (Treatise, 1929)

Other Identification:
TECHNIQUE AND AESTHETICS OF THE CELLO (Treatise, 1929)
Hugo Becker expounded all his views in the book ‘Technique and Esthetics of Violoncello Playing’, which was written in collaboration with the physiologist Dr. Dago Rynar. Fascinated by the achievements of physiology at the beginning of the century, many music teachers began searching for the physiologically justified playing movements and the most natural performing devices. Thus, Becker’s attention was directed to the scientifically objective reasons for a musician’s movements as he is playing. The planned work was in collaboration with Dr. Dago Rynar (who played the cello and was familiar with Becker’s school), and who was a follower of the thinking of Steinhausen – up to a point Becker and Rynar worked together on the grand treatise, but the principal author of the entire book was surely Hugo Becker, and this would especially be true of the second part dedicated to the aesthetics of the art of the violoncello.
What makes it so valuable is the search to conceive of the technical and aesthetic problems as a united whole. As a concert musician and professor, he based his book on the artistic and methodological analyses of the greatest cello works in music, from the classical 18th century composers (Bach, Haydn) to his contemporaries (Richard Strauss, Reger, Hindemith). It is this part of the book which is of topical interest today. He preferred the classical masters at an earlier stage, because he believed that until the classics were absorbed one could not solve the problems in contemporary music. He gave performing analyses of the concertos by Haydn (D Major), Saint-Saens, Dvorak and the violoncello part in Don Quixote by Strauss. In the analysis of the Dvorak concerto, Becker referred to his own interpretation, which came with many written examples.