Beethoven makes an effective use of this in the _Scherzo_ of his _Fifth Symphony_ and so does Tschaikowsky in the _Scherzo_ of his _F-minor Symphony_. In the Orchestra violins are classified into First and Second, as we have seen, the First Violins sitting on the Conductor’s left and the Second Violins on his right hand. They sit two and two, each couple sharing a desk. The First Violins sing the high Soprano and the Second Violins the mezzo-soprano. The First Violin in the whole Orchestra is called the Concert-meister, or Concert-master, or simply the First Violin. Very often he plays an elaborate solo passage. Before the days of modern Conductors the First Violin used to be the Conductor of the orchestra, or, we might say, the Conductor played the violin and led the Orchestra at the same time. But although the First Violin has no longer this double duty, his importance in the Orchestra is very great. On him depends the _attack_ and phrasing of the first violin and to a certain extent of the entire string Orchestra. With regard to the position of the violin in the Orchestra let us hear Lavignac: “The violin,” he says, “is preëminently a _melodic_ instrument,—the splendid _sparkling soprano_ of the stringed tribe, the richest in varied effects, the most agile and the most impassioned of orchestral elements.” And now having understood its value as an individual, let us turn to Berlioz to get an idea of its team-work. “Violins are capable of a host of apparently inconsistent shades of expression. They possess (as a whole) force, lightness, grace, accents both gloomy and gay, thought and passion. _The only point is to know how to make them speak._ Slow and tender melodies are never better rendered than by a mass of violins. Nothing can equal the touching sweetness of a score of first strings made to sing by twenty well-skilled bows. The violin is, in fact, the true female voice of the Orchestra,—a voice at once passionate and chaste, heart-rending yet soft, which can weep, sigh and lament, chant, pray and muse, or burst forth into joyous accents as none other can do. An imperceptible movement of the arm, an almost unconscious sentiment on the part of him who experiences it, producing scarcely any apparent effect when executed by a single violin will, when multiplied by a number of them in unison, give forth enchanting gradation, irresistible impulse and accents which penetrate to the very heart’s core.” * * * * * Until the bow was perfected there was no brilliant violin-playing as we understand it to-day. It took a long time for the bow to develop. There was a “Stradivari of the bow”; and the name of this person so valuable to the art of violin-playing is François Tourte (see portrait facing page 44). All bows are made on Tourte’s model. A real Tourte bow commands a high price.