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(1 votes) 
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Or is it a standard one yoinked way over to the left?
Note that there's no protection for the tailpiece. Also in the film L'Art du Violon somewhere (9:00 or thereabouts?) there's footage of Menuhin pressing his chin onto the tailpiece.
It's odd because the tailpiece needs protection - if you press it with your chin, you tighten/sharpen the strings. Or is that an over-estimated problem?
Andrew
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@Gordon Shumway Now, this is from someone with little knowledge of this sort of thing, but I remembered reading that earlier violinists did not use chinrests.
I am also not one for posting a lot of links to answer questions, but I did find this. There was text highlighted in yellow that caught my eye.
https://www.premiopaganini.it/.....instrument.
Maybe others will chime in.
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Baroque violins had neither chin rests nor shoulder rests, so fiddlers had to figure out how to hold the instrument so that it could make good music.
Here’s a funny comment from the violinist.com website:
After God created the violin, he saw that it was awkward to play by creatures who evolved to walk erect and who had necks. So He put the violin to sleep, took a bit of wood from a rib, and fashioned a chin rest to be a companion to the violin. Not long afterward, the shoulder rest appeared. He said to the chin rest, attach me to your violin and you will unlock the secret of playability. The chin rest acquiesced. Then the violin saw that it had a shoulder rest, and it was ashamed. The Lord banished the violin to live its days in a velour lined box eating the dust of pine rosin and producing beautiful sound only with great difficulty.
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There's a difference between putting your chin on the instrument's body and on its tailpiece.
Andrew
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The 'Art of The Violin' video is really nice!
I don't think these guys are putting the kind of pressure (you might think) on either the chin rest OR tailpiece.
I took off my chin rest on my 5-string Viola. My jaw touches the tailpiece, but I'm not going to 'squeeze' the instrument between my jaw & shoulder. It actually acts as a good reminder NOT to squeeze/cause tension.
Our neck area is quite a wide, stable contact point - doesn't take much to use it, the weight of the instrument & a little help from our left thumb/hand.
Really enjoyed watching Joseph Szigeti in the video! You can clearly see, like starting at approx 16:30 - how his neck makes contact, but he isn't pressing with his jaw (or chin) at all!
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ELCBK said
I don't think these guys are putting the kind of pressure (you might think) on either the chin rest OR tailpiece.
No, a lot of them have huge jowls, lol!
Andrew
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