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What Does It Mean if Someone Is “Second Chair Violin”?
Question by fastanole: What does it mean if someone is “second chair violin”?
Best answer:
Answer by Heyyy There
“first chair” is like the best musician, and then the seats are numbered down from there. so second chair is second best.
What do you think? Answer below!
Tags: Mean, What, Violin, Does, someone, second
In orchestras and bands, musicians are placed by how good they are. Second chair is the second best violin in the orchestra.
Second chair is not the main part in a music piece, but one of the main parts. First chair usually the main part or best musician.
In professional orchestras, this term is usually referred to as “Assistant Concertmaster” or “Sub-Leader,” the former being an official title, usually. It means you’re pretty good, basically.
In a professional orchestra, every section leader has a deputy who, by virtue of the fact of shared desks, occupies the ‘second chair’ at the first desk of each section. In the case of the leader/concert master who occupies the first desk of the first violins — representing the entire orchestra both to the conductor and any visiting soloists — the second chair to the first violins deputises for the leader when necessary, and thus, for that representative function, for the entire orchestra as well.
To make the association ‘best musician’ in this context would be as offensive to the occupiers of those chairs as to the entire orchestra as a whole. That’s not what it’s about.
All the best,
There are several possible outcomes to this question.
As it is worded, “Second chair”, implies assistant concert master, “second chair, first violin”
There are two other “second chairs” … second chair, second violin and second chair third violin.
The violins are most often broken up into three individual voices to afford the composer the ability to create rich harmonic texture and rhythmic nuances that could not be achieved if there were 16 people all “sawing away” at the same thing.
… it is not a case of who is better than whom, but rather the position in the orchestra. The principal of each section is going to be a first-rate musician, and everyone else up on that stage did not get there without a serious audition and careful scrutiny.
I think you have already gotten your answer, but this is one of my favorite quotes. It’s by Leonard Bernstein when asked which was the hardest instrument to play…
“The second fiddle. I can get plenty of first violinists, but to find someone who can play the second fiddle with enthusiasm—that’s a problem. And if we have no second fiddle, we have no harmony.”