TRIUMPH AND TRAGEDY

British violin virtuoso Samuel Grimson had his playing career cut short by a wartime accident in 1918, but he went on to co-author a groundbreaking book that paved the way for modern violin teaching. Clifford Hall explores his life

Deep in the summer of 1918 in the Italian Alps, the budding concert violinist and pride of Joseph Joachim’s teaching studio Samuel Bonarios Grimson (1879–1955) had just taken off his Royal Army Service Corps-issued Brodie helmet to wipe the sweat from his brow. Now part of the Allied advance known as the Hundred Days Offensive, he had been compelled to enlist just a few months earlier after his brother Harold, a violinist with the London Symphony Orchestra (as was Samuel), had lost his life in the Great War.

Having already survived a mustard gas attack in the trenches, Grimson planned to take advantage of 24 hours’ leave to make a pilgrimage to Cremona, scene of the golden age of violin making. But then disaster struck – and it happened so fast. An explosion from a German bomb hit his truck and blasted the steel helmet – which he’d been holding in his hand as he stood by the vehicle – into his side, nearly rupturing his abdomen. The force flipped him down a mountainside, and as he fell, he sprained the tendons of his wrists. The plunge knocked him unconscious, and when the cold water of a stream revived him, he realised that his scalp had been half torn off. Luckily he managed to crawl his way back up the hill and was found by his unit before blacking out.

When he woke up in a hospital in Ventimiglia, doctors revealed that he also had broken ribs and a fractured skull. In these times before antibiotics, his wounds became infected, tetanus set in and his body began to spasm uncontrollably. He survived, spending several months recovering in hospital; but it became evident that although his other injuries were healing (though they would leave visible scars for the rest of his life), the tetanus cramps had left his hands rigid and his career as a soloist was over. He was also left with lingering post-traumatic stress disorder.

Despite all this, within two years, his tragically changed circumstances had compelled him to create Modern Violin-Playing (1920), the most precise technical guide to playing the violin yet written, about which the New Music Review and Church Music Review wrote: ‘This startling little book in a way marks an epoch in the science and art of violin-study. For it is the first genuine attempt to remove that subject from the realms of guesswork, and to place it where it should be – in the safe area of scientific truth.’

Samuel Bonarios Grimson c.1905, by Gertrude Käsebier

DIGITAL IMAGE, THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK/SCALA, FLORENCE

So what led this violin virtuoso with broken hands and the mind of a scientific researcher to write such an original volume?

Grimson was born in late 19th-century London into a highly musical family. Starting lessons at age four with his violinist father Samuel Dean Grimson, he became a child virtuoso, by the age of ten playing for Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle – according to the 1965 memoir Yesterday Is Tomorrow: A Personal History by the prominent sculptor Malvina Hoffman, who would later become his wife. Hoffman also wrote about Grimson senior being a ‘strict disciplinarian’ who trained his seven children ‘like a little orchestra’.

With their frequent family performances throughout London, the Grimsons attracted both audiences and the press. A journalist for the London newspaper The Standard wrote in February 1898: ‘It rarely occurs that all the members of a numerous family are equally gifted in respect of musical talent, but an exception occurs in the case of the Grimson family […] their ensemble was delightful […] There was a numerous and appreciative audience.’

In 1895, at the age of 16, Grimson won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music (RCM) in London, along with his cellist brother Robert, composer Gustav Holst and others. He studied there with the Spanish violinist Enrique Fernández Arbós. Two years later, in November 1897, The Standard reported he had been awarded the school’s highest honour: the Musicians’ Company Silver Medal. His recital caused quite a sensation; the Musical Times reported in November that, ‘Samuel Grimson made light of the terrible technical difficulties of Bach’s “Chaconne”. He has wonderful fingers has this lad, and we doubt whether the literature of violin music contains anything that he could not master.’

The violin dealer Arthur Hill was also well acquainted with the family, as the elder Samuel Grimson was his childhood violin teacher. He noted the young Samuel’s ascension in his journal on 4 December 1897:

We have sold Mr Grimson for the use of his son, Sam, who is from all accounts, particularly from what Dr Parry and Mr Gompertz say, already a great player, the Maggini violin. We have sold him the violin for £120 as we should like to help him as much as we can. We have known Mr Grimson all his life, and father had more to do with laying the foundation of his success than anybody.

After graduating from the RCM in 1897, Grimson wished to go to Germany to study. His father forbade it, but this didn’t stop him, as Hoffman explained in her memoir: ‘His sisters, however, were on his side and wanted him to go. He ran away. He left without even an overcoat.’

As a student of Joachim at Berlin’s Königliche Akademische Hochschule für Musik (probably 1898–1902), Grimson continued his rise, as evidenced by a letter to Brahms in which Joachim referred to ‘Young Grimson’ as ‘one of my most talented pupils’. Backing up his words with actions, Joachim recruited Grimson to play second violin in his own quartet. In December 1901, he made his solo debut in Germany, playing with the Berlin Philharmonic. The following January, the American magazine Musical Courier noted, ‘Sam Grimson […] made a splendid showing at his concert at the Singakademie last Friday. […] In the Brahms Concerto Mr Grimson was at his best. […] The young violinist was repeatedly recalled and encored.’ Later that year, the same magazine reported that, ‘Sam Grimson […] will soon travel to the United States.’

A 1914 portrait of Samuel Dean Grimson (1842–1922) by Frank Brooks (1854–1937)

An advert for Grimson and Forsyth’s Modern Violin-Playing in The Strad

Certificate for Grimson’s 1721 Pietro Guarneri of Venice from W.E. Hill & Sons dated 22 December 1919

GRIMSON BEGAN TO WORK ON AN OCCUPATION THAT ENGAGED HIS ANALYTICAL SIDE: AS AN INVENTOR

Grimson featured on the cover of the Musical Courier in 1912

Grimson indeed arrived in New York in August 1902, but initially struggled to find success in America. Although he was diligently preparing for an American debut, he also began to work on another occupation that engaged his analytical side: as an engineer and inventor. He set up the Grimson & Battalia company with Olondo F. Battalia, and in 1908 was granted a patent for a novel electric-lighted sign that was only the first of many inventions for which he would be credited. Impressively, by his life’s end, his autodidactic nature would result in his company working on a patent for a wide-screen television, half a century before the rest of the world could catch up with his brilliant mind.

In 1905 he started appearing in salons with Richard Hoffman, an influential English-born pianist and composer who frequently played with the New York Philharmonic. While rehearsing at Hoffman’s house, Grimson first caught the eye of his daughter, Malvina (1885–1966). The two bonded and a relationship slowly evolved.

Grimson’s big break came in 1912 when he was picked up by the New York management agency Foster and David, which booked him for an appearance with the Philharmonic Society of New York. Its marketing campaign included rebranding him as Bonarios Grimson, using his middle name (which derived from his Greek mother Maria’s maiden name, Bonarius) as first name. These moves attracted substantial press, including a September 1912 cover story in the Musical Courier in which he further leaned into the romantic archetype as he refused to reveal his biographical data. ‘I do not think that audiences care much about when or where an artist was born, but are intensely interested in the question as to how he plays,’ he said. Responding to the interviewer’s claim that European critics have left no doubt as to how he plays, he said: ‘They have been very kind, but I believe that American audiences prefer good performances to good foreign press notices.’

His Philharmonic Society of New York engagement took place in February 1913, and he played the Bruch Violin Concerto. His relationship with Malvina had continued to grow as his star rose, and in her memoir she recalled: ‘When the time came, we were at Carnegie Hall to hear him. At the close of the composition, he was recalled five times. I was so proud of him and excited by the whole experience […] Sam had studied much on his own, he had an encyclopedic mind and a phenomenal knowledge of classical music and musical instruments.’

Grimson switched to Gertrude Cowen as his manager, which resulted in his Philadelphia Orchestra debut (with his childhood friend and conductor Leopold Stokowski) in November 1913. Although the public and press called him a master, in the concert programme Grimson said, ‘I am only a student. […] What little success I have is due to work, and a love of the instrument. I work harder now than I ever did.

Grimson’s patent for an ergonomic fingerboard design

Detail from the patent for the Rhythmikon

I must keep it up. Work means progress; rest means rust.’

Grimson continued to tour throughout 1914, starting that year with a performance at the White House for President Woodrow Wilson and an assemblage of Washington’s elite.

All the while, he continued to submit patents, including one later that year for the Rhythmikon, a musical time- and rhythm-indicating device that worked like a proto-computer to help students hear the rhythms of tricky passages before playing them. Grimson filed another patent in 1916 for a fingerboard design (which could be adapted to any stringed instrument) that was thicker on the ‘thumb side’ so that the strings could be depressed with greater ease and less strain upon the wrist. It is no wonder that in the 1920 census he listed ‘engineer’ as his profession.

Grimson also continued to perform until 1918 when his brother Harold was killed in the Great War and, just months into his enlistment, he received the injuries that ended his playing career.

It was through these converging energies of violin soloist and engineer that Grimson, alongside his co-author the composer, violist and musicologist Cecil Forsyth, penned the trail-blazing 1920 New York publication Modern Violin-Playing.

In reaction to the atrocities of the Great War, there had been a significant rejection of classical norms in various domains including art, literature, theatre, music and physics. The state of things was later recalled in The Memoirs of Carl Flesch (posthumously published in 1957): ‘While the post-war years were not a favourable period for the development of ideal values, it was perhaps my unconscious reaction to the anti-artistic state of affairs that prompted me to write my book The Art of Violin Playing.’ Flesch himself had indeed broken into the American market not long after Grimson with the first volume of his own highly acclaimed violin treatise (orig. German, 1923; English trans. 1924). Later in his memoirs, Flesch wrote, ‘Technical foundations were a secondary consideration in German violin playing during the latter half of the 19th century: the spirit was left to dominate over the fragile matter, the artistic intention was regarded as the main thing, and the result in sound as unimportant.’ He sharply criticised Grimson’s teacher: ‘Josef Joachim, the interpreter of genius and mediocre teacher, was chiefly to blame for this state of affairs. […] The term “technician” was regarded as dishonourable, the artistic intentions as the only thing that mattered, even when they found outward expression in scraping noises. Hence the search for the philosopher’s stone as ersatz for the absent solid craftsmanship.’

A 1924 sculpture of Samuel Grimson by Malvina Hoffmann

It was in this context that Grimson and Forsyth had crafted their manual, which was Grimson’s one and only foray into violin pedagogy and the first book of its kind. What set it apart from other books at the time was Grimson’s uniquely scientific and mechanical approach to the subject, which was in a sense echoed by Flesch in his reflections surrounding Joachim and the German school. The first page of Grimson and Forsyth states:

‘TILL THE VIOLINIST HAS LEARNED TO REGARD THE VIOLIN AS A MACHINE, HE SHOULD KEEP ALL HIS IDEAS ON THE EXPRESSIVE SIDE OF MUSIC UNDER LOCK AND KEY’

The process of learning to play the violin has no direct connection with the art of music. It depends for its success solely on the proper understanding and application of the laws of anatomical action. And these, again, are merely specialized examples of the more general laws of mechanics. Till the violinist has mastered these laws and has learned to regard the violin as a machine, he should keep all his ideas on the expressive side of music under lock and key.

Contemporaneous reviews of the book were positive, with the English journal The Musician going so far as to say, ‘Comparing the book with others available, we are willing to go on the record as considering it the most important work of the present period.’ Although the book has been analysed since the 1950s, as recently as 2020 (in Romantic Violin Performing Practices: A Handbook) David Milsom wrote:

Grimson & Forsyth begin in a way that conspicuously differentiates them from a mystical past. In drawing an analogy, they relate the tale not of a genius ‘virtuoso’, or even a skilled artisan, but rather a scientist – an engineer. As they discuss, engineers may find a solution by trial and error, but this would be too hit-and-miss to qualify them as experts. Conversely, they suggest, a violin teacher who has formulated solutions by happenstance is equally deficient, but ‘so long as he remains in the genius business, there is not one word to be said against him’.

Although Grimson and Forsyth’s book never gained the prominence of Flesch’s, nor indeed D.C. Dounis’s 1921 The Artist’s Technique of Violin Playing, its influence is in no doubt. Indeed, there are passages in Flesch’s book that closely follow Grimson and Forsyth’s in both subject and argument.

Malvina Hoffman and Samuel Grimson around 1919

SCULPTURE PHOTO COURTESY OF NEW-YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY/ESTATE OF MALVINA HOFFMANN. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ESTATE OF MALVINA HOFFMANN

News item from The Tacoma Daily Ledger, July 1924

‘SAM HAD MANY ATTACKS OF DEPRESSION. HIS MOST DESPERATE SADNESS STILL WAS BEING UNABLE TO PLAY THE VIOLIN’

‘It now only remains for us to say that the old maxim “Let the fingers descend like little hammers” is mere thoughtless nonsense. The people who formulated that maxim left the anvils out of account. They also ignored the physical results of contact between hammers and anvils.

But, one may ask, why in the name of common-sense should the fingers descend like little hammers? Why should they violently assault the strings in this way? Their function is to hold the strings down to the finger-board, not to give a xylophone performance. That method of attack leads to an excessive over-thickening of the skin on the fingertips – an over-thickening that Nature herself sets up to protect the violinist against his constant bugbear, exposure of the nerve. Indeed, if one had to describe the proper approach of the finger-tip to fiddle-string, it would not be as one of “hammering,” but rather as one of “sensitiveness,” even of “inquisitiveness.”’

Modern Violin Playing Grimson and Forsyth

‘Every finger should drop elastically on the string with its own naturally inherent motive power. I regard exaggerated raising of the fingers as well as “flinging” them on the strings as needless, as a waste of strength, and consequently injurious. The knocking which results from this practice is a decidedly disturbing accompaniment, and, together with the involuntary pizzicati resulting from the sidewise raising of the fingers, belongs to a group of disturbing noises.

Then, too, excessive finger pressure is injurious, giving the tone a somewhat brittle quality, and carrying with it the danger of overirritating the nerves at the point of pressure. Sarasate, the father of modern “conscientious” violin technique, dropped his fingers so lightly on the strings that no indentation on his finger-tips was noticeable.

The finger-nails should be kept trimmed so short that they do not touch the strings. The violinist must take the greatest care of his finger-tips. Callouses, in consequence of the lack of a soft fat-cushion, impair the tone quality in the highest degree, and too deep indentations are often followed by nervous irritation.’

Art of the Violin vol.1, Carl Flesch

By the early 1920s, Hoffman had become an internationally famous sculptor, and she and Grimson were married in 1924. Their roles then reversed, with him accompanying her on her research trips as manager and photographer, including to Asia in the early 1930s to prepare for her groundbreaking exhibition ‘Races of Mankind’ at Chicago’s Field Museum. Although this made her a household name, the strain of travelling placed stress on their relationship. She later wrote:

Sam had many attacks of depression, and his doctors had insisted that he should live alone and try to find new fields of interest. His most desperate sadness still was being unable to play the violin. Such readjustment to life was a constant psychological battle. He seemed forced to withdraw into himself and for some time had felt unable to see any of our friends or live a normal life. He had plunged into study of science and optics, worked in a laboratory, and produced new and complex techniques in unexpected fields. For two years he stayed in a tiny apartment uptown. Finally he and his doctors decided our married life must end.

They divorced in 1936, and six years later, in a twist as if straight out of a melodrama, Grimson married Bettina Warburg (1900–90), a psychiatrist whom he and Hoffman had known since 1912, when she was still a child. Although not on his medical team per se, Warburg advised him on his issues and, as Ron Chernow noted in his 1993 book The Warburgs: The 20th-Century Odyssey of a Remarkable Jewish Family, ‘When Bettina snatched Sam away from Malvina after an extended romance and married him in 1942, there was a noisy ruckus among the Warburgs, many of whom took Malvina’s side.’

Despite his lingering PTSD and the dreams of playing the violin that haunted him to the end of his days, Grimson remained committed to collecting 18th-century Cremonese instruments and his professional life flourished: his company Grimson Color Inc. was notably very successful at incorporating colour in feature films. But his legacy as a musician should be remembered and celebrated – that of a fine soloist cut off in his prime whose ideas nonetheless pioneered modern violin pedagogy.