Violin Essays
An adult beginner on the violin, Terez maintains a essay-style blog as Terez Mertes at http://www.violinist.com/blog/terez. She has spent the past several years researching and writing about the classical music world for her novels.
The following essays first appeared at Violinist.com:
October 28, 2009
'Lost Situational Awareness'
A conductor for the Really Big Orchestra, who delayed the final movement of Tuesday night’s performance of Schumann’s Symphony no. 1 has denied having a disagreement with the concertmaster or cracking jokes at the podium.
Maestro Holdyer Applaws refused to say what had distracted him to such a degree that he forgot to end the third movement of the symphony and proceed to the fourth movement, delaying intermission by thirty minutes. Audience members in the Louderpleez Symphony Hall were not aware of the problem, as orchestra members seemed to have the situation under control and had not pressed the call button to alert the conductor.
"The concertmaster and I were not having an argument; we were not telling viola jokes," Mr. Applaws said in regards to speculation over what caused the problem. For more than twenty minutes, backstage personnel and concert hall administrators attempted to contact Mr. Applaws and concertmaster Coudabin Asoloist, using Bluetooth earpiece communication, frantic hand gestures, and flashing of the stage lights. The audience, apparently, still had no idea anything was wrong.
September 29, 2009
The Circle is Complete
Adult beginners often have an eclectic learning trajectory, given time constraints and personal musical goals. Having chosen the humble, slower “it’s all about the journey” route for myself, it is only now, four years into my practice, that I find myself encountering the nether reaches of the key signatures. For a long time the keys of G major, D, C and F major defined my core scale practice. I’d tack on each new “sharps” key signature at the start of my scales, keeping the new “flats” keys for the end. Working in this small but ever-expanding perimeter, I didn’t even know the names of all the key signatures, much less their relation to each other.
Imagine my surprise, then, when I discovered just recently that F# major and Gb major used the same notes. It’s only the fingerings that are different, and of course the way they are mentally approached. This discovery floored me. It also made me realize something: I’d completed the circle. I’d crossed a finish line of sorts.
August 15, 2009
All That Wood on Fire
The wildfire, dubbed the Lockheed Fire, started Wednesday night. Feasting on junk pines, manzanita and overgrown, bone-dry foliage, egged on by Thursday’s hot, breezy weather, it grew quickly out of control. By Friday afternoon it had consumed 5000 acres of land and was only fifteen percent contained. Although the fire is only ten miles from us, fortunately it is burning away from us, down the ridges and canyons toward the Pacific coastline. But it is still close. Too close for comfort. We have a beautiful home nestled in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Large picture windows afford us a redwood-studded view of the valley and surrounding ridges. Often I’ll look out my bedroom window as I’m practicing my violin, enjoying the beauty, the serenity. Thursday afternoon was not serene.
July 31, 2009
Music Novels, Revisited
"Summer in full leaf and flower thickened sounds, complicated the wind, adding infinite sighings and slurrings. A beehive was like a tiny orchestra hall, the hidden musicians uniting in a humming, sizzling, endlessly varying chord that transferred swiftly to the music Rose was writing. New sounds woke up old sounds, her earliest melodies and rhythms, which told of her own journey. She had somehow gone back to her childhood, to the initial thrill of sound."
This is an excerpt from the novel, The Rose Variations, by poet and playwright Marisha Chamberlain, which I recently read and enjoyed. Before recommending this novel to a group of string musicians and classical music lovers, however, I suppose I should offer a caveat. This is not a music purist’s “music novel” in the vein of Vikram Seth’s An Equal Music, in spite of the fact that the protagonist is a cellist and the front cover shows a woman transporting a cello via bicycle. It’s more a story about Rose MacGregor, fresh out of graduate school, who tries to make her way as a single woman in the in the 1970’s, in the male-dominated world of composing and university politics.
June 13, 2009
Julia, Finally!
She looked different from her photos, older, more mature, her dark blue velvet gown with a pale knitted jacket revealing a full figure as she came onstage at Davies Hall last Sunday night. Although Julia Fischer had performed with the San Francisco Symphony a few times in recent years, this was my first time seeing her, an experience I’ve been looking forward to. Her evening’s performance would be good, commencing with Schubert’s Sonata in A-minor for Violin and Piano, with virtuoso Yefim Bronfman on the piano.
She played wonderfully, just as I’d hoped. What appealed to me was that she didn’t look or sound like a carbon copy of someone else. Her interpretation seemed polished, yet fresh. She had an openness about her, as if inviting the audience in the experience with her. Her face from time to time would tilt up, catch the lights, her surroundings, her expression thoughtful, even grave at times. How pretty she looked, her brown curls cascading down her back, both young girl and mature violinist at moments like that.
May 29, 2009
The Nomad Subscription Season
Having decided last month that renewing my season subscription with the San Francisco Symphony was a must (www.violinist.com/blog/Terez/20094/) I set about the more earthbound task of financing it. There’d have to be a compromise from last year’s price. Money was not going to spring up in my wallet simply because I’d made a noble decision to choose art over a good restaurant meal or two. With this cut budget in mind I took a leap and went for the cheapest subscription I could get: second tier.
April 30, 2009
Classical Music is not Entertainment
2009 is not proving to be the banner year I’d hoped it would be. There’s double-digit unemployment in California (count my husband in here still), the worst drought in years, a crushing state budget deficit that puts my part-time library job at risk, and we won’t even talk about the free-falling odds of a debut novelist breaking into the ever-shrinking fiction market. Our household will get by; we always do. Financially, it’s a matter of spending only what is absolutely necessary. No better time, then, to read Boston Conservatory’s music director Karl Paulnack’s speech to the parents of the 2004 incoming freshman class. Fellow v.commer David Wilson forwarded a copy to me and it’s one of those uplifting messages that you want to spread around to everyone you know. www.bostonconservatory.edu/s/940/Bio.aspx
March 31, 2009
Faith in Music
I had a Sunday afternoon symphony to attend earlier this month and decided to go up to San Francisco in the morning to taste-test a few Catholic Masses. The multi-Mass business is not something I make a habit of doing. I’m a lifelong Catholic, but not much of a practicing one anymore outside the major holidays. But I needed detail for my newest writing project, a novel about a spiritually bankrupt woman, a Catholic whose teenaged daughter’s charismatic religious experiences soon affect the family and church community, divided over how to interpret them.
In spite of years of waning belief in Catholic dogma, I have always felt welcome and comfortable inside a Catholic church. It’s kind of like Costco; once you join the club, you’re welcome at any location around the world. The first church I visited that day was Église Notre Dame des Victoires, located next to the French consulate, tucked between Union Square and Chinatown. The Mass was entirely in French, reminiscent of my Peace Corps days in French-speaking Africa, where I taught at a Catholic mission and attended weekly Mass. The San Francisco church was small but pretty, elegant, very European-feeling, making me feel far removed from my everyday world. I liked that; I liked the foreignness, even when I didn’t understand everything that was being said.
