JAVS Spring 2023

Figure 1. Table of contents from Variego 18+3.

page number. It is crucial for both teacher and student to know what the etude is being assigned and used for. Much of the time, especially in collections of beginning and intermediate studies, the purpose of the etude is clear and often obvious––one look at Kreutzer no. 2 is enough to know that it is a bowing etude. There are instances however where the purpose of an etude is less clear. What are we to make of Kreutzer no. 1, for example? It is predominantly a bowing etude but doesn’t look like it, which is why so many people skip it––the bowing studied being the son file which Simon Fischer describes as a

“long, slow bow stroke lasting sixty seconds or more.” 2 Whatever the case may be, with an etude’s purpose being obvious or not, it is important to define what that purpose is and Variego has done that work for us. In the first etude “On a tine” Variego has described the challenges as “Lyricism, Tip/frog use, chords, which he follows with a short excerpt. Each of the eighteen etudes, including the three “plus” ones, is described and excerpted similarly. What does this allow the teacher to do, and the student also? It allows them to easily use this

Journal of the American Viola Society / Vol. 39, No. 1, Spring 2023

55