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:
April 28, 2011
Tout un monde lointain...
“Tout un monde lointain, absent, presque defunct, vit dans tes profondeurs, forêt aromatique,” (“A whole distant world, absent, barely alive, dwells in your depths, oh scented forest.”)
Mstislav Rostropovich commissioned this cello concerto. The poetry of Charles Baudelaire inspired it, albeit loosely. Pierre Boulez disdained its composer, Henri Dutilleux, and his work, which might be why Henri Dutilleux isn’t as famous as Pierre Boulez, who played such a big part in the contemporary classical music scene in postwar France.
The concerto’s full title is “Tout un monde lointain… (‘A Whole Distant World…’) for Cello and Orchestra.” I heard it for the first time recently, performed by the San Francisco Symphony with cellist Gautier Capuçon. It begins with an ever-so-soft, shimmery sound, a stiff metal brush against a drum head that commences the first movement. Dutilleux claimed that at the night of the concerto’s premiere in Aix-en-Provence, right as the concert began, in that instant, “a new breeze began gently to rustle the leaves of the plane tree, like the sound of waves and very similar to what I had been searching for when I wrote the score.” Which is a pretty cool thing to have happen. And thus, under that magic spell, the cello begins, offering its contemplative reply.
March 31, 2011
Sight and Sound
There are those who only attend the ballet and can’t imagine enjoying themselves at the symphony, because there are no dancers to watch, no costumes and pretty scenery.
I am not one of them. I am a former ballet dancer and must confess that watching ballet dancers rouses something raw in me. Call it a yearning, call it envy or simply a revival of that old competitive nature. But I’m trying to be an enlightened adult and face my shadow self. Besides, right across the street from the San Francisco Symphony is the War Memorial Opera House, venue of the world class San Francisco Ballet. I’ve seen it there every time I’ve gone to the symphony in the past five years, and something in me always whispers, “coward.”
So I went to the ballet. To quell my insecurity I chose a program that featured all Tchaikovsky. And in the end, I enjoyed myself. There was Balanchine’s “Themes and Variations,” Kenneth MacMillan’s “Winter Dreams,” but far and away my favorite was Helgi Tomasson’s “Trio,” set to Tchaikovsky’s “Souvenir de Florence” (string sextet in D-minor, op 70). From the instant the violin struck that urgent first chord I was in love. It was the most perfect marriage of music and dance and my only regret was that I didn’t get to see the musicians, particularly the first violinists who performed that irresistible top melody voice.
February 28, 2011
I’d rather just think about it
I’m gathering ideas and words for a new project. It’s amusing to note the way the best ideas will show up only when I’m not here, at the keyboard, to catch them. Driving is the number one culprit. Showering, too, but in general, the greater the distance from the computer, my office, the more fabulous the ideas seem. They capture my imagination, hold my thoughts ransom. I can hardly wait to get home, to my favorite work environment. Racing from the car into the house, trembling, letting my coat fall to the floor in my haste to get to the computer, get those pearls right out.
Too late. Gone, having flitted away like phantom butterflies. Even the notes I’d hastily scrawled can’t conjure up the muse’s return. The idea was so good, so right. Where did it go? How is it possible to sit there for the next hour (or day or week), writing shamefully pedestrian prose, feeling nothing inside?
The violin is in cahoots with my writing muse. They whisper and laugh together and fall silent when I glance their way. The violin seems to have gotten heavier, or at least the task of practicing has. Once again, what is a pleasure, a delight, to ponder through the course of the day, becomes incrementally less appealing the closer practice time approaches. As I dutifully make my way through scales and those tedious vibrato exercises, I try to recall the excitement, the fire and curiosity that drove me to the instrument in the first place.
January 27, 2011
Recipe for Success
Making beef stock is not for those who are looking for the short cut in life. You have to really want to produce a superior product to the canned stuff. It requires, first of all, the purchase of quality ingredients a few days prior. Beef bones, like shank and oxtail and those white knobby hunks you really don’t want to analyze too carefully. In addition, you’ll need some fresh thyme. Marjoram. Don’t forget onions, carrots and celery. The next morning, get up and turn on the oven. Use a big pan—a cookie sheet or an oversized cake tin does the job in a pinch—and arrange the bones and intersperse with the aforementioned herbs and vegetables, chopped into big hunks. Brown in the oven at 425 degrees for roughly an hour. This will soon smell good, beyond good, but it’s a tease, because you won’t be eating it for a long while. When the bones are golden, transfer all this hot, clunky stuff into a very big pot, the biggest one you’ve got in the house. Add enough water to cover the bones, bring to boil, then simmer. For a long time. Say, six to eight hours. Stir from time to time so all parts get their share of time in liquid, releasing their marrow, their gelatin, producing that ineffable something that turns “just beef broth” into “omigod, what is this exquisite stuff?”Read more...
December 22, 2010
Labyrinth
Part of my annual December tradition is to seek out a few days’ solitude at a nearby retreat center tucked deep in the redwoods. Not only does it give me a breather from the too-loud, too-bright, too-frenzied aspect of the month, but it allows me to observe this otherwise sacred season in its most organic state. Here, it’s impossible not to note the darkness that descends so early, the bare deciduous trees with their leaves lying fallow, the invisible bulbs and seedlings sleeping beneath the damp, chilly ground cover. There is a stillness in the air, yet a sense of expectancy. I catch up on sleep, meditate, take walks through the center’s eighteen acres of forest. One redwood grove I pass has an open center and is framed on three sides by tiers of redwoods rising up like amphitheater seating. Standing in the center (lying on the ground is even better), looking up at the circle of trees above me, is one of the year’s peak spiritual experiences.
Spiritual, too, is the center’s nearby labyrinth, an enormous circular maze of sorts, outlined by smooth, flat grey stones. From the distance, it looks modest, unassuming. The goal of a labyrinth experience is equally unassuming: you walk in, pause at the center, you walk out.
Labyrinths have been around for 4000 years, used as a place for contemplation, prayer, ritual, spiritual guidance. They’ve been made out of stone, shrubbery, sand, earth or even edible substances like cornmeal or flour. You can walk one merely to admire its geometric precision. You can pose yourself a question at the onset and meditate over it as you walk, in the hope of receiving some sort of insight once you’re in the center. Or you can clear your mind of all thoughts or goals and simply receive what the experience brings you.
November 17, 2010
Fever
A fever burns inside me and it’s a curious and disorienting thing.
It’s been a decade since I’ve had a fever. It’s been two decades since it has lasted more than forty-eight hours. It’s been, well, never, that one has continued on, waxing and waning with ibuprofen doses, for ten days.
Welcome to a new, hellish world.
This is an antagonist I can’t fight. Being strong-willed or tenacious means nothing here. Nothing. I can’t work through a fever. Instead it sends me right to bed. And now, every day it continues I lose something. A missed violin lesson. Writing time. Practice time. Errand time. As the fever burns through me it burns my stockpile as well, my precious reserves of motivation, stick-to-it-ive-ness, this desire to enrich my already crowded life with artistic pursuits, interests that stimulate my mind, my spirit.
Whoosh. Up in flames.
