Da Capo

Her exact words hide in the bowels of an old computer that now sleeps in our garage. We replaced it while temporarily living on a dilapidated vineyard home in Napa. But I clearly remember the encouraging spirit in which they were offered.

Yes, you can take violin lessons again, even at age 49. Nowadays for adults they call it coaching. As a violin teacher and as your friend, I abhor the teacher of your teenaged years who encouraged you to major in something other than music so that you might “make a contribution to society,” but that was, well, more than 30 years ago. Time to substitute that unfortunate experience with a better one!

I had just moved from Southern to Central California and was taking a sabbatical from corporate life. A fortuitous time for a reunion with that most elusive of lost loves, my violin, last studied when I was indeed a music major in college (I always did have a stubborn streak).

Several outstanding violin teachers resided in my new hometown, but the tree-shaded campus of the university that was its centerpiece beckoned. I cautiously sent an email to the Professor of Violin.

I have shed my romantic illusions about what I can do with the violin but really wish to study again, perhaps to reclaim some lost technique, perhaps to learn some I never had. I’ve kept every etude book and repertory studied since I was 12 (I thought the latter statement might emphasize my serious intent).

A phone call followed, and I discovered my soon-to-be teacher was cautious too.

“It all depends on you—you could study for 5 years with me and not get any better if you don’t put forth the required effort.”

I assured him I understood and would make a commitment to practice at least three hours daily.

For our first meeting I play the opening movement of a Vivaldi A Major Concerto that I hadn’t previously studied, explaining that I want him to hear me at my rawest and rustiest.

Somewhat apologetically, he hands me the Beethoven Minuet in G. “Please play the trio so that I can see how you play off the string.”

Thus began a period of mentorship and dialogue, somewhat over two years, when, as in my adolescence, the violin was central to my life. Yet the quality of my adult experience as a violin student surpassed that of my youth, because this time the relationship with my teacher was not anxiety-based.

As a youth I was frozen by my teacher’s disapproval. As an adult I could respond to thorny technical dilemmas by saying I believe I understand (or as the case may be, don’t understand) the concept but cannot feel the action. Could we go over this again, or could we try a different approach?

One of our early discussions concerned vibrato production. Believing only the wrist was a factor, I hand my teacher a tattered copy of Violin Vibrato, Its Mastery and Artistic Uses. I’d acquired it in high school hoping to diagnose and cure a rather nervous, angular vibrato.

My teacher peruses it intently and then informs me that I have been misinformed. Or that at least my vibrato bible has not revealed all facets of beautiful left-hand tone production. It was an illuminating moment to discover that I could question what was previously gospel.

I vouched to gladly put in those three hours of daily practice and kept a yearly diary of my studies. Each new day presented its own table: Time, Material, Observations, and Questions to ask at lesson time.

The diaries chronicle my focus as well as my lack of focus:

4:00 - 5:00 - C. Flesch D and d scales, D thirds
5:00 - 6:00 - Unstructured practice of cabaret violin gems (not assigned)

Just as recording dreams might form part of one’s inner journey, so recording my practice mapped my musical journey. Even if between the Sitt Etude in 4th Position and the (frequently assigned) Mozart A Major Concerto might appear some Irish jigs not on the itinerary.

Tuesdays were lesson days, when the Questions column of my diary became the Lesson Suggestions column. I did not write suggestions down during the lesson but instead visited my computer immediately following each lesson. Music in hand, I would reflect on what I had just learned and then listed it the Suggestions column. As with dreams, where we may not transcribe what we dreamt exactly but our interpretations are still significant, so I believed it was with the lesson suggestions, the fruit of my musical endeavors as I understood them that Tuesday.
 
For each major work studied, at year’s end I created a summary of all lesson suggestions:

June 5, 2001 - Mozart A Major Concerto. No bubbles on the opening Adagio! Decrescendo the final A trill more gradually!

September 11, 2001 - It doesn’t feel right to fiddle now. I am watching TV and frantically cleaning, something I do in times of crisis… Gaylene brought by the string quartet music for Sunday’s wedding faire. I practiced about 45 minutes, with hesitation and with the TV on.

September 13, 2001 - Amidst continuous CNN coverage of the attack, I am practicing again. It is…my work.

A December 20, 2001 lesson suggestion still mentions the opening Mozart Adagio: Treat as a vibrato exercise, gradually widening the vibrato. Don’t start it too rapidly! We took that concerto very seriously; my Suggestions synopsis extends to July 9, 2002 and traverses two volumes of the diaries.

The diaries’ front pages list my repertory by quarter. Currently Working (Scales, Etudes, and Repertory), On Hold, and Would Like to Study. A Brahms Sonata was soon put on hold; I lacked the rhythmic stability and maturity. The Mozart B Flat Major Sonata was left unfinished, since that Minuet in G had identified a tightness in my spiccato not agreeable with fast passages of the Mozart. But The Lark Ascending, which enraptured me after I first heard it on my car radio, became part of my early 2001 repertory list, along with La Folia.

Steadily, music in my Would Like to Study Column migrated to the Current Repertory column: Vivaldi’s Seasons; the Beethoven Concerto; and the Bach Chaconne, which we planned to study at a rate of eight measures per week.

As did numerous wonderful Kreisler pieces, not on my list because they had never been in my life thus far. I managed to survey many but not all selections my teacher had marked for me to study in order of difficulty.

"DON’T slide into that note,” he admonishes as I play a Kreisler arrangement of the Tchaikovsky Adantino.

“But Kreisler played it that way,” I counter cheerfully. I’d just borrowed my teacher’s Kreisler biography and had studied Kreisler’s recorded performances of that Andantino, marking his shifts and portamentos on my own music.

My teacher looks amused but benevolent—“OK—but if ever you play that theme in the context of the Tchaikovsky D Major String Quartet, you won’t interpret it that way, will you?”

I’d been schooled on the ubiquitous yellow Schirmer editions of the 1960s, but my teacher introduced me to the beauty of Bahrenreiter editions and invited me to ponder larger questions about what the composer intended. Always keen on asking what edition I would be using, he often encouraged me to compare several.

While telling him how much I had enjoyed studying the Mazas Etudes Spéciales, I also admitted how relieved I was that, except for the Bowing Variations, I did not have to unearth too many of my old Sevčik books.

“But you must appreciate those Sevčik books for what they accomplish,” my teacher suggested. “They identify a technical problem and hold a microscope to it, magnifying it hundredfold.”

My observation that I might just as well focus on the scales embedded in repertory rather than practice them outright met with more resistance. At least a half hour of daily scales it was, from one to eight to a bow. Five to a bow always threw me, and I often had to start over. I approached this scale work in a meditative rather than gymnastic way. On retrospect, I may have been too easy on myself, avoiding scales in thirds, fingered octaves, and diminished fifth arpeggios that sometimes appeared on the menu.

The diaries reveal a small secret I’d kept from my teacher. Though I’d shed the unrealistic dreams of my youth, I’d replaced them with more modest performance aspirations: that occasional gig, whether for a benefit or for a wedding. Only much later did I tell my teacher about the fanciful website I’d created and nurtured and about my ever-growing library of performance binders for all occasions containing lovely but much less demanding music than what I was now studying. When he found out one holiday season, he encouraged me to include some unaccompanied Bach in my venues and introduced me to some great transcriptions of the Cello Suites.

Those years studying violin as an adult went by too fast, and never once did they contain echoes of that earlier experience which had haunted me for decades. Whether Corelli or Kreisler, invariably my teacher acknowledged that I had a good idea about the music, even while exhorting me not to pause while playing whenever it suits me—the orchestra is not going to wait for you!

I am also grateful that he didn’t remind me of what I already knew too well—that I would never stand in front of any orchestra to play these masterpieces (though later I would play in some orchestras that accompanied such star players). Nor did he compare me with his other students, most more than three decades younger, and some, as I discovered while attending one of his impressive student recitals, approaching virtuosity.

I had to discontinue my lessons while revisiting the Bruch Concerto in the early spring of 2003. Central California had given me my violin back, but the Central Valley air was playing havoc with my lungs, so my husband took a transfer to Northern California.

We managed to get through the Chaconne by accelerating the eight measures per week to sixteen measures.

In Northern California my wedding music engagements also accelerated. And the treasures shared with me about how to make the violin sing are still accessible. I hear my teacher’s advice when I play, reminding me to relax that left thumb, advising me that rhythmic stability and slow practice are key to relaxation. My open diaries whisper hundreds more detailed revelations.

Placing a false diminuendo while slowing the bow near the tip seems to be a recurring problem in your playing. Do not put accents in the middle of the bow where they don’t make musical sense. Secrets given me during my last lesson.

On parting, my teacher gave me three volumes of orchestral excerpts and various bowed and fingered copies of Bach Sonatas and Partitas to add to the wealth of annotated music I’d already acquired during my study.

My last diary entry reads:

Thus ends over 2 years of violin study in Fresno. Some young students came right after me, and lengthy farewells....were avoided…I promised to keep in touch about musical happenings. Nothing was said about what kind of a student I [had been]; I guess it is too late to determine whether or not I have talent. I said I’d be sure to notify him of my Carnegie Hall Debut. I have the notes, some weeks more elaborate than others. I wonder if there is a story in it.

On the floor next to me sits a Laurel Burch canvas bag adorned with birds of rare and bright plumage. My home holds many places to store music: Three tall bookcases containing binders and magazine racks filled with music by genre and instrumentation animate the guest bedroom. A huge pirate’s chest covered with suns and moons holds violin music gathered through the years.

But the Laurel Burch bag was my music study bag, and in the time passed since that last lesson, I’ve felt disinclined to examine its contents. It represents a sanctuary for the discoveries of my musical explorations, which for the past three years have been without a guide.

I open it now and there emerge those Bach Partitas given to me during the last lesson; an annotated Corelli Sonata along with a book of Twelve Corelli Sonatas (we’d barely begun to explore those); the Kreutzer 42 Studies; a Kabalevsky Concerto we thought we’d get to but didn’t; the Barber Concerto which I wasn’t ready for (but nevertheless sneaked into the bag so that I could sometimes play the opening theme); the Mendelssohn Concerto that I adored as a teenager (I finally got to study the second movement); a Glière duo decorated with green cover bearing my teacher’s 2002 holiday greeting; and several annotated copies of the Beethoven Concerto along with the G. Henle Verlag edition of same concerto. The Bruch Concerto was removed when I used it to audition for a community orchestra several years ago. The bag must have sustained water damage during our three moves after leaving Central California, and the Beethoven G. Henle Verlag edition took the brunt.

A sign, perhaps, that it is time for this wealth of music to emerge from the bright bag that accompanied me those memorable years when I rediscovered and made peace with my violin.