The Caretaker Role

Here's another sign of the season:

Photo by TR, 27 November 2012

I like taking care of my violin--wiping the rosin dust off after practicing, keeping it at an appropriate temperature, avoiding bumps against door frames, checking the angle of the bridge periodically, all of that. So being sure that it's appropriately "hydrated" in the winter heating season is another part of that routine. 

One reason I am glad to be playing again is that during the 15-18 years when I wasn't playing regularly, I would periodically be guilt-stricken by the thought that my violin was going unused. My overly vivid imagination practically personified the thing, but I was also remembering how the teacher I took private lessons from in high school, Dr. E., had advised my parents that I should upgrade to a reasonably good instrument that I could grow into as a player over the long term. It was a big deal to discuss with my parents how much we could pay as a family, and what share I would be responsible for. I got five or six years of ample use out of my violin in high school and college, but five or six years doesn't really seem like "the long term" after you hit 40 and haven't played regularly since college. 

My violin sat in its case at the end of my bed in three different residences during grad school. I tried initially to maintain the habit of playing scales once per week, as my college violin teacher, Dr. O., had encouraged me to do at a very bare minimum. However, life in an apartment and/or with roommates cramped my style. I tried a nasty metal practice mute and hated it--it made the violin so heavy that I felt like it was throwing off my whole technique. (Come to think of it, that might explain a few things...) 

I took the violin with me on a year overseas, where I had a living situation with more privacy than I'd had in grad school. However, I already felt out of shape and was getting discouraged about my deteriorating skills, so I didn't even try to find a local amateur orchestra to play with even though I had a lot of free time. 

By the time I finished all my post-college moving around and settled--fourteen years ago--in the town where I am now, I seldom even opened the case. At some point, the hair on my bows disintegrated, so playing the occasional creaky scale was not even an option. For years and years I kept a slip of paper tucked away in my desk where an acquaintance had given me the phone number of someone who would re-hair bows.

After all of that, it feels great to have my violin in my life again and give it the attention it deserves!

Blessing and Honor and Glory and Power

It started two or three weeks ago. I was driving somewhere and felt the urge to dial the MP3 player to Messiah. Because by mid-November, you should be rehearsing Messiah and hearing it in your head all the time, right? I only played in Messiah in college, but those years apparently carved this work so deeply into my brain that November weather and the general November atmosphere stimulate the Messiah response, and I can't do without it.

On one weekend each December for the past hundred years or so, my undergraduate school's choir and orchestra has given three performances of Messiah. Although I loved playing in my college's orchestra, I didn't really embrace the tradition or the oratorio. I enjoyed a few incredibly powerful parts of it, but other parts, frankly, dragged. Then there was the physical aspect. I was used to playing 10-12 hours per week (including practicing, orchestra rehearsals, and my lesson), so playing in three three-hour performances within 48 hours was quite tiring. Plus, the college generally (and the music department specifically) took the Messiah tradition so, so seriously that you couldn't resist making fun of it. 

One year--maybe senior year, when we were rather emboldened--some friends and I wrote a parody of "The Night Before Christmas" with verses pertaining to our Messiah experiences. ("Then what our wandering minds never would guess / All four soloists in tasteful dress!"... "From the back of the stage to the back of the hall / Now rush away, rush away, rush away, all!" ... that sort of thing.) We posted the parody, with festive hand-drawn illustrations, on a bulletin board in the music building in the dark of night. 

At my next lesson, my college violin teacher, Dr. O, asked in a somewhat icy tone, "Do you have any idea who is responsible for that 'Night Before Christmas' thing?" I answered, "Um...I am, among others." "Who else?" she wanted to know. I named four or five names that included other "good kids" like myself from the orchestra and choir, and she changed the subject. In retrospect, I think she probably did not like the idea of orchestra kids making trouble in the eyes of the aging and revered choir conductor, who was the main embodiment and guardian of the Messiah tradition. Our idea of good, clean fun might have been rather unhelpful in relation to some intra-departmental dynamics that we students were blissfully clueless about.

But really, I think we kid(ded) because on some level, we love(d). One of my favorite parts of Messiah was and is the "Worthy is the Lamb/Amen" finale. The video below uses the exact recording I would have worn to shreds by now if such a thing were possible with digital music. Listening to it brings back how my whole being zoomed into focus as the section at 4:09 approached, where the violins get their very exposed turn with the "Amen" riff. I think the Extreme Focus switch still flips at least part of the way in my brain when I hear this. Hear this.

Video via csheff1014 and YouTube

Familiarity...Contempt...

A friend stopped by to see my new house, and during the nickel tour, we paused at my practice area. She is a lapsed violist; when she glanced at the rack of music, she spotted a familiar volume. In the tone of voice Seinfeld used in saying, “Hello, Newman,” she said, “Oh. Kreutzer.”

Video via YouTube and klavye1234

Coffee and Sweets

Having wrapped things up with the Bach A minor violin concerto, I am working on the Haydn G major violin concerto. So far, I am finding it much easier than the Bach. Here is my grand metaphor: the Bach is coffee, and the Haydn is something sweet.

Coffee can be incredibly delicious, but you have to start with first-rate raw materials and really know what you’re doing in order to make it that way. Drinking it in the right atmosphere, with the right company (if only yourself when you want to be by yourself), adds a lot too. (I had the best coffee of my life at the coffeehouse described and pictured here, and will forever aim to recapture that experience.) Yet coffee can easily go wrong. I felt as though the Bach was like that. If I knew anything about music theory, I might be able to explain why I felt like the Bach is uncomplicated on some level, but still has all kinds of expressive potential. On the other hand—in hands like mine—it can sound a bit etude-like on occasion. Luckily, the raw material of good coffee can stand up to a certain amount of workaday sloppiness in its preparation. I could at least perceive great things in the Bach even if I couldn’t bring them out.*

Sweets are harder to mess up. Sweet is sweet. How can you go wrong? At best, sweets have the potential to be gimme-a-cigarette good. At worst, they can taste more chemical than anything—fake sweet. But basically, with a naturally sweet melody and gingerbread rhythms like the first movement of the Haydn, you have a turnkey, plug-and-play operation. Just play it and ride it. That won’t accomplish all that a real musician could accomplish with the Haydn. But it’s harder to mess up than the Bach. It’s less likely to be boring in the hands of an amateur.

Bach and Haydn complement each other like coffee and sweets. You’ve got to have both.  

* And Bach clearly appreciated coffee, too.

Best of both worlds? Video via YouTube and witchcraftlord

Milestone

As of Friday, the Bach A minor violin concerto--the first and third movements, anyway--is in the books. Ms. L had me play the third movement all the way through, and it went pretty well. I maintained a pretty consistent tempo (84 or so), and, she said, played with a nice tone. 

Both of those were mild successes in the big scheme of things, but represented significant improvement over where the piece has been at various times. And no one says that it was an earth-shattering musical interpretation, but learning it to the level that I did has given me a deep sense of accomplishment.

It's quite humbling to realize that I've been working on the Bach since February--nine months for two movements! That's not too impressive, but I have to remind myself that:

• These two movements of this concerto were the first piece(s) that I have learned from scratch since college (i.e., since 1993, for those keeping score at home). 
• In the process of working on this concerto, I (and Ms. L) remade my bow hold and developed some new approaches in other areas of technique (e.g., shifting) that will serve me well for a long time.* 
• Double stops! When I started working on the Bach, I could barely play double stops at all anymore. I just was not in shape for it. I had to be careful not to hurt myself in practicing them. By this past Friday, if I do say myself, I was owning me some double stops.
• In those nine months I also bought a house, moved, hung in there through the annual crazy-making time at work, and navigated a big (unbloggable) transition at work.

It was weird to do my practicing this weekend and not play that third movement. So: one last listen, with a few comments:

• If I could turn back the clock, I would spend more time woodshedding the part from 1:05-1:22 earlier in the process of learning the movement. It didn't intimidate me like some of the rest of the movement did, and I kept thinking it would take care of itself over time. It didn't. It was an area where I always had to slow down. I had to go back and hash it out over these last couple of weeks.
• The part from 1:57-2:17 is still my favorite. I had to do my share of work on it to get it in tune and to make the shifts reasonably smooth, but it was always the part of the third movement that I played the best.
• The part from 2:18-2:26 kicked my butt for months. I had no idea when I listened to the recording how many notes were actually hiding in that part. When reality set in, I doubted I would ever learn it. But: I did. 
• Ditto the part from 2:55-3:12. (And I love what's happening in the orchestra through there. At one low point in my work on this, I comforted myself with the thought that no one should be listening to the soloist there, anyway.)

  Video posted to YouTube by Cleopatra11

* In fact, I have invested enough time and effort into the bow hold, shifting, etc. that I sure as hell will not quit this violin thing again any time soon!