Does It Matter How a Cello Is Held? It's a Centuries-Old Debate.
Musical instruments, like technologies and fashions, adapt to the changing times. These days, playing the cello with an endpin is considered the default, but it hasn't always been that way. Before endpins became standard, cellists often played by gripping the instrument between their calves, a position that requires strength and finesse.
Even today some cellists opt not to use an endpin. At Trinity Church's holiday performance of Handel's 'Messiah' in December, the cellists cradled their instruments between their legs for the three-hour performance — no small feat of endurance. Uptown on the same night, the New York Philharmonic was playing the same repertoire. Those cellists used endpins.
This divide between Baroque cellists (like Trinity's) and modern players (like the Philharmonic's) is often explained by a generalization: Cellists after 1850 or so used endpins, whereas before 1850 they didn't. And so, cellists playing earlier music in a historically minded way often forgo an endpin.
But the history of the endpin is far more complicated, having to do with issues of gender, disability and plain stubbornness. Valerie Walden, author of 'One Hundred Years of Violoncello,' writes that the endpin, throughout its history, has had 'decidedly amateur or womanish overtones and professional musicians probably regarded it as an affront to their male pride.'
Some of this may have to do with what musicologists call the 'interface' between cello and thighs, an area often sexualized, which seems to be a major source of cellists' anxiety both historically and today. But the endpin's story is also about cellists not wanting to change their ways, even when they would benefit from something to lean on.
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