In Chapters 3 and 4 my aim is to show that ‘vocality’ is one of the preeminent ideological precepts for violinists in the nineteenth century. I have brought the idea forward here because it can be said to underpin a range of superficially different topics. It helps us understand not only what comprised expressivity in this context, but also why such traits of style were considered important. In Chapter 3 it was argued that vocality in a specifically ‘sung’ context underwrote much fundamental expressive left-hand technique. My focus was upon the two most conspicuous determinants of such tone – vibrato and portamento. These are not the only aspects of technique and style which can be said to be ‘vocal’ in a specifically sung sense. In this chapter we look at vocality not only as sung but also as spoken. This, too, gives way to more general, perhaps foundational, aspects of musicianship – phrase declamation and rhythmic realisation. In some respects, then, attention now moves from the left hand to the right arm.

Numerous writers attempted to convey music in terms of its quasi-literary and linguistic content. This tends towards an association of notes with syllables, and small note formulations (maybe within specific beats) with words. In the previous chapter the manner of shaping such notes was considered with particular focus upon tone and colour, as well as how to transgress the seemingly disjunct intervals indicated crudely by conventional staff notation. Here the issue is of more essential ‘meanings’ of the notes in a language analogy. Since the invention of HIP it is customary indeed to see ‘music as speech’ as a descriptor of pre-romantic performance styles. The phrase is used in fact as the subheading of Nikolaus Harnoncourt's 1988 book on Baroque performing practices. Judging by Bruce Haynes’ depiction of romantic performance in The End of Early Music, one might feel that this idea did not apply to nineteenth-century performance.