William Fitzpatrick: Carl Flesch: Scales Are Unavoidable - From the Violin Expert

Scales, in one way or another, are in everything we play.

From Brahms to Wieniawski to Izayi, scales are unavoidable.

So, and yes, I have to say it, thank you, Mr.

Flesh.

But was Flesh the first to create a scale book? No, and he never claimed he was.

There were already plenty of scale books out there.

There was Remali's Scale Studies, which had ten sections running through each major key with its relative minor, then Shraddick's Scale Studies, and not to forget, Sefcik's Opus 8.

But what's so different about Flesch's system? Well, he organized it differently.

You see, Sevchik, Hrmaly, and Shradiak organized theirs by technique.

Flesh turned that on its side and organized by key, with each one becoming a complete technical cross-section.

A one-string scale, the three-octave scale, arpeggios, broken thirds, the chromatic scale, then thirds, sixths, octaves, fingered octaves, tenths, ending with harmonics.

So a day's work is one key in every technique, instead of one technique in every key.

You see, Flesch wanted the student to cover in a single daily session what the other books took much longer to accomplish.

So is that it then? I mean, is that what his lessons were actually like? Scales, scales, and nothing more? Well, he did teach scales daily, but also some Sevchik in strictly limited doses.

You see, he believed too much of it did more harm than good.