Vibrato used to be an ornament · From Zero to Mozart

Modern violinists vibrate almost all the time — it's the default sound, and turning it off is the deliberate choice. For most of the violin's history it was the other way round: vibrato was an ornament, chosen note by note, like a trill. Knowing that is what lets you play Mozart in Mozart's style instead of Tchaikovsky's.

The short history

1751 — Geminiani tells students to use vibrato "as often as possible." He's the outlier, and even he cut that advice from later editions of his treatise.
1756 — Leopold Mozart (Mozart's father, and his teacher) calls it "the tremolo" and treats it as an ornament that "arises from Nature herself" — the wave you hear when a bell is struck. Use it "on a long note," and "only... where nature herself would produce it." And the famous warning: "Performers there are who tremble consistently on each note as if they had the palsy."
1832 — Spohr teaches a restrained, intentional vibrato for passionate passages and swelled long notes — and actually writes little signs in his music marking where to do it.
Mendelssohn did the same in his violin concerto — specific notes marked for vibrato, the rest plain.
c. 1900 — Ysaÿe, then Kreisler. Kreisler vibrated constantly, even through fast running passages — something no famous player had done. Carl Flesch called his vibrato "extraordinarily intensive." It caught on, and within a generation it was the norm.
1921 — Auer is still fighting it: "This curious habit of vibrating on each and every tone amounts to a physical defect."

The New Grove Dictionary sums it up: vibrato "seems always to have been accepted as an ornament until the first quarter of the 20th century, when its continuous use gradually became the norm."

The honest version

It was not "nobody used vibrato before Kreisler." Early recordings show it was there — but selective and varied, applied to chosen notes for chosen effects, not poured over everything. The change was from vibrato as a spice to vibrato as the broth.

What it means for you

66 bpm

A calm four-bar phrase. An 18th-century player would shimmer maybe two notes — the held C at the top, the final G — and leave the rest clean and plain. A late-Romantic player would vibrate every note that isn't open, the whole way through. Same notes; two different worlds.

Hear the contrast: put on one of Fritz Kreisler's own recordings (his 1920s Liebesleid or Schön Rosmarin) — the vibrato never stops. Then put on a period-instrument Mozart recording (Rachel Podger, or the Academy of Ancient Music) — the vibrato comes and goes, an ornament on chosen notes. Neither is wrong; they're different styles, and Mozart belongs to the second one.

The usual mistake

Assuming "more vibrato = more expressive = better," and pouring it over a Classical phrase. For Mozart, less and narrower and chosen is the expressive choice. This is the same rule Stage 3 gave you for every symbol: the mark tells you what, the era tells you how. Movement F comes back to this in full.