02/18/2008
Musical Musings
Last weekend we had a concert with the orchestra I play with, and I think it went pretty well, all things considered. Some of the music was appropriate for the skill level of this orchestra, but at least one of the pieces, the Pines of Rome (by Respighi), shouldn't really have been selected in the first place. The Pines of Rome is one of those pieces that is quite beautiful if it's in tune. However, intonation is not the forte of this orchestra. Especially not in the cello section. To make things worse, for the third movement of this piece, the many of the string sections are split into 4 groups (within each group of Violin I, Violin II, Viola, Cello, and Bass) that each play different things. Ideally, this requires everyone to be able to hold their own in the section, but this is not really the case for the cellos. In my section, the people are great, but many of them just don't have much orchestra experience, and also, the piece is just too difficult for their level. All this to say, I was worried about the Pines of Rome.
It actually turned out OK from my perspective: no major disasters, no having to stop and start over, the conductor didn't have to yell out rehearsal numbers, and nobody in the audience fell of their chairs in fits of horror. However, I got comments at the end that the concert was a bit... um... well one person said boring... the other said something about how it was an "intellectual" or "thinking" kind of concert, rather than a sit-back-and-relax kind of concert. Oh well. We tried. It wasn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, and a lot of the places that were supposed to sound kinda spooky, sounded kinda spooky for an entirely different reason from the one the composer had intended. But I was just happy that it actually sounded better than it had in rehearsal!
My favourite part of Pines of Rome is that the last movement involves 4 trumpets and 2 trombones who are offstage (in this case, standing at the back of the church behind the people), and towards the end, when the piece is picking up volume and going for the big blaring brass ending, the backstage players start to play as well. When they first started, it was quite funny to see the startled reaction of the crowd and everyone turning around to see where that came from. That reaction was worth it all by itself!
I also got to do a bit of a solo in another piece we did, the first suite of Respighi's Ancient Airs and Dances. The third movement of that is a Villanella (I've never met a villanella I didn't like), which involves, for once, a nice lyrical cello solo. It's the sort of thing I'm actually good at. I did my best, and it wasn't perfect (my bow hit my stand at one point), but it was reasonably good. After the concert one guy, who plays in the orchestra I played in last year, said, wow, I didn't realize you were that good! It was in tune and warm-sounding and everything! I'll take it as a compliment, but it makes me wonder what he thought of me before this concert, if he thought I was principal cellist of an orchestra without actually being able to sound good...!
So overall I think it went well. Now I'm already starting the practicing on the new repertoire for the next concert. It's mainly dance music, which I like, and a lot of it has Spanish influences, which I also like.
The downside to all this orchestra stuff is that my brain won't leave me alone. I'm now constantly in the state where I'll have some tune or other stuck in my head, and the only way to get it out of my head is to get something else stuck in there instead. I'm beginning to wonder if I have some sort of obsessive or addictive personality. It's probably good that I don't have a taste for alcohol, or I'd be in trouble!
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02/11/2007
The Mystery of Mr. Ricochet
So like I mentioned in my previous blog entry, we just had a couple of concerts this weekend, and one of the pieces we played was the Rodrigo guitar concerto, with soloist Daniel Bolshoy. I really like that music, but the only problem is that getting that trademark "dum du-du-dum dum du-du-dum" rhythm is usually done with ricochet bowing. In other words, that last "du-du-dum" is not three separate bows, but rather three bounces of the bow, all in the same direction. This requires, ahem, being able to control a bouncing bow, and not only that, but making sure it's actually bouncing at the same rate that the "du-du-dum" should be going at. Some people found it easy somehow, but for me, it's easier said than done!
So, I practiced it for a while, and I managed to get a reasonable facsimile of a ricochet bowing going. That was, until I got to the rehearsal and it was supposed to go about three times faster than what I was doing. Doh! So, as always when I get into nice tight spots like this, I do what any sensible person would: fake it.
Then, at the dress rehearsal for the concert, I was so busy faking it that I barely noticed when I actually discovered that when I wasn't paying attention to getting it right, it started coming to me. Yay! Not that I would base my career right now on a faultless ricochet bowstroke, but hey, I'm not as hopeless as I thought!
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11/27/2006
Bagpipes, here I come!
It's amazing what you find out about people when you get talking to them. For example, yesterday I was playing with my orchestra at a church service, and afterwards, as we were packing up, I started talking to one of the violinists, whom I'd never talked to before. As it turns out, he used to play the bagpipes. I said, "wow, that's awesome - I'd love to learn to play the bagpipes!" So he said, "Really?", just to check if I was serious, and I said, "Yeah, that really would be awesome!"
He offered to teach me some stuff about piping during the breaks of our regular orchestra rehearsals. So now all I need to do is find myself a practice chanter and a tutor book, and I'll be set to go! Woohoo!
Of course, I told this to my parents when I got back home, and I'm telling you, the look on my mother's face... Priceless!
This will be so neat. I love Scottish music (and celtic music in general), and the bonus is, if I get any good at it, I can join a pipes and drums band, and attend things like highland games, and we all know what that means. Men in kilts!! What could be better?
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10/11/2006
Cello: An Expensive Hobby
Like cars and houses, it looks like musical instruments have their expensive moments that you just can't predict. Tonight was one of those nights...! The tip of my cello bow broke right off! Luckily someone else had a spare bow, because this is the type of break that will make your bow instantly unusable. I do have a spare bow, but it's broken also! It's been broken for several years though, and I just never got around to getting it fixed. Looks like tomorrow is going to be the day!
I have quite a number of minor repairs that need to be done, so I guess I'll just bite the bullet and get the two bows fixed and rehaired, as well as getting a new bridge cut for my cello. My current bridge is warped in two directions, which probably isn't that healthy for the sound.
I sure hope the bow I just broke won't be an expensive fix, but I have a bad feeling about it. It's likely a high-stress spot on the bow, so who knows, it could just break again later. Not to mention the resale value of my bow just plummeted to bargain basement levels... Luckily it's not that expensive a bow (cost me $300 originally), but it's still my baby and I can't believe this has happened! *sniffle*
Goodbye, meagre savings, I'll miss you! Hello, more intense job search...
00:32 Posted in Music | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
09/02/2006
Glutton for Punishment
OK, I officially need to learn to say no even when people are giving me Bambi eyes. This summer, I played a concert with Sinfonia Ottawa, which actually went quite well. We played things like Mozart, W.F. Bach, Graupner... normal, sane stuff. No Bartok this time, thank goodness.
However, a number of the people from Sinfonia are from another community orchestra, who apparently lost their principal cellist this summer, so they're looking for a new one. In general, principal cellists even of community orchestras tend to be professional musicians, so imagine my surprise when they asked me if I wanted to do it. Part of me thought, no way, are you kidding? The other part of me though, was thinking, hey this would be an interesting challenge. Eventually, I told them that if they were really, terribly, utterly desperate, I would do it.
Now, I'm wishing I'd just said no! Yesterday, they got back to me and said, great! And by the way, the conductor wants to hear you play so can you have a piece ready to play for the conductor at the next rehearsal? (= in 4 days from now.) Ack!! This is a reasonable request, but I wish I'd known about it just a little earlier so I could have either started preparing earlier, or had a better reason to say No. :-)
The good news I guess is that in a strange way it's a win-win situation. Either the audition goes well, or if it doesn't I'm off the hook as if I'd said no in the first place! The bad news is that the nerves have already set in, which isn't fun.
Oh, I've got to stop getting myself into these situations...
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07/30/2006
Mischa Maisky plays Bach
I've just spent the last little while glued to my computer screen watching videos of Mischa Maisky playing the Bach Cello suites. (I've just discovered YouTube.com, so it's all still a novelty!) These are the famous/infamous Bach Cello suites I was talking about a while ago in a post, where I related the story of me getting sick of these cello suites and telling my cello teacher I just didn't feel like learning anymore Bach (blasphemy to a cello teacher's ears!). The particular piece which caused the meltdown in the first place is the Courante of the 2nd cello suite, and you can see a video of Maisky playing it here. (Let's hope this link works!) It's actually really cool to listen to, when played right. Let's just say, when I played it for the Kiwanis Music Festival, it lacked, I don't know, a certain je-ne-sais-quoi, such as, for example, correct notes, correct intonation, correct tempo...! It wasn't a pretty sight (or sound), let's just put it that way. This piece is definitely, definitely not as easy as Maisky makes it look!!
Actually, the one that had me the most entranced so far (I haven't watched them all yet), is the Prelude to the first cello suite, available here. The cello almost looks like it's playing itself! I love it anyway. I can play this piece too, but not as elegantly so this is why I've been glued to my computer screen. ("What's he doing that I can learn from?!")
Have a listen and/or watch these videos, anyway. He's pretty good! It inspires me to actually practice (or quit in shame, depending on my mood...)! That, and make lots of money to buy a cello that sounds as nice as his. :-)
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07/08/2006
There's a rebel in me...
Somehow, and I'm not sure why this is, whenever I am playing the role of musician (or more specifically, cellist), something happens. I become the rebel-type character - the kind who bucks trends, laughs at the stuffy people who take themselves too seriously, and who comes up with the wacky, inventive, highly unconventional way of doing things that sends music teachers' eyes rolling heavenwards and wondering, "what did I do to deserve this?" I don't mean to say that all this results in genius playing because usually it doesn't, but at least I have fun along the way. What would life be if all I did was spend my life pretending to be classical automaton?
The funny part is, though, that in general I'm a goody-two-shoes. People usually think of me as quiet, strange maybe, reserved, but I don't think "rebel" crosses their minds. In music, on the other hand, somehow, a different sort of behaviour comes out and all of a sudden I may as well be a gum-chewing teenager wearing a backwards baseball cap and tattoos and piercings! I'm not confrontational. I just do my own thing, which is why I would never survive as a professional classical musician. :-) Orchestra musician is a bit of a stretch, too. I instinctively take it freestyle (particularly with bowing), which usually gets me into trouble, or constantly fumbling to match what I'm doing with what everyone else is doing. I wonder if there's sight-reading classes for bowing?
12:41 Posted in Music | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
06/30/2006
Concert #2 went well, thanks!
The second concert, which was this past Sunday, went quite well. In particular, the Saint-Saëns violin concerto went a whole lot better the second time around! This time, we didn't rush things like crazy, so the soloist actually had time to turn on the charming musicality rather than race through the motions at breakneck speeds. I think it was possibly because as an orchestra, we were getting tired - too tired to rush, and not nervous enough to accidentally rush things. In an ideal world, it's the orchestra that follows the soloist and not the other way around, but in our case, as with many (or most) amateur orchestras, once we're going, that's it! It's like a speeding train with broken brakes. :-)
Overall though, we did pretty good the second time around, and it was really cool to be sitting in the front where I can actually see what's going on with the conductor and soloist!
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06/24/2006
One concert down, one to go
I've just come back from one of two performances of the OCO's latest concert, which features von Suppé's Poet and Peasant Overture, Wagner's Siegfred Idyll, a modern piece called Akasha by Glenn Buhr, and the Saint-Saëns violin concerto #3. For this last one our soloist is Donnie Deacon, a very talented violinist with the NAC (National Arts Centre) orchestra.
The Poet and Peasant Overture went extremely well, as did the Buhr piece. Actually, most of the Siegfried Idyll was about as good as we've every played it, right up until we hit that one passage that's skull-and-crossbones for the cello section and boy, did we screw up. It kind of sounded like you were listening to a recording, and then all of a sudden, the signal got scrambled for about 4 bars, and then it was fine again. It's a very exposed passage (i.e., nobody's doing much of anything except the cellos, so if we screw up, it's obvious), it's very fast, it's all over the fingerboard, and to top it all off, we have 16 bars rest right before that so we end up in this nervous state where we're trying to make sure we count out 16 bars (and not 15 or 17), and trying to visualize how we're going to hit the ground running and preferably, play the right notes at the right speed while we're at it. I always get the impression it's like standing next to train tracks, seeing a speeding train coming, and trying to somehow get on that train without getting flattened in the process. If you stand there and don't see it coming, you'll get killed. If you're at a standstill and try to just jump on it, you'll still probably get killed. We have to figure out how to catch this "train" in the Wagner piece, and we have til tomorrow to figure it out.
The other eyebrow-raiser was the Saint-Saëns concerto. Until today, our problem as an orchestra has been that we've been dragging our feet. In other words, we're somehow always going slightly slower than what the conductor wants. The other day in dress rehearsal, the conductor asked Donnie what he thought about the orchestra dragging a bit, and Donnie said he didn't mind it, because he could play the piece slower [than the speed the conductor was trying to go], but he couldn't play it faster. We all had a good laugh at the time. (Backgrounder about this concerto: there are some slow, lyrical passages, but there are some downright scary-fast crazy things in there too.) Anyway, today, we had a few problems, but dragging our feet was, apparently, not one of them. I'm not sure if nerves got to people or whatever, but all of a sudden the orchestra was going significantly faster than I've ever heard before, and I felt bad for poor Donnie busting his butt to keep up! (However, his playing was beautiful anyway. As I said before, he's an amazing violinist.) Hopefully tomorrow we won't have the same problem.
On top of it, our principal cellist won't be around for the Saint-Saëns part of tomorrow's concert, so I'm going to move from the back to the front and be the temporary assistant principal cellist for the half hour or so when we do this concerto. I'm pumped! Hopefully all that practicing the B-major stuff and listening to the recording over and over will pay off, and the temporary principal cellist and I can get the cello section through this concerto in one piece. Wish me luck! :-)
Hopefully the concert will be as good tomorrow, if not better, though I tend to find that it's harder to get in the concert "mood" in the middle of the afternoon (as tomorrow's concert will be) than in the evening (like tonight). We'll see how it goes though, and do our best!
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05/08/2006
Popcorn, foghorns, and 250-year-old cellos
OK, I've had a night to recover from yesterday's concert. Too bad my brain was too busy to shut down and use the night to rest... Ever had the problem where your body's exhausted but your brain's still frolicking, producing all sorts of hairbrained ideas or worse, stuck in repeat mode on a tune? Or two? Well, that was my night last night. I had Beethoven stuck in my head (see last night's post). I tried thinking of Phantom of the Opera songs to get that out of my head, which has worked in the past, but this time around it resulted in BOTH Beethoven AND the Phantom music stuck in my head. A few notes of one, then a few notes of the other, back and forth ad nauseum. It actually got so bad that at about 1:30 am (2 hours after I'd gone to bed), I turned on the radio to get my brain to at least focus on something non-repetitive. So all in all, I didn't sleep well.
Anyway, today I've decided to add some musical commentary that I wasn't in the mood to type out last night.
Yesterday before the concert I asked my stand partner about his cello - as it turns out, it's a French cello made around 1760. He told me the story about how it got passed to him through the family, which is pretty amazing. Then he asked if I wanted to try it out. (Does the sun shine? Is the Pope a Catholic?) It was awesome - I LOVE that cello!! What a difference it makes to have a well-seasoned, good-sounding, resonant cello. I felt like I suddenly became twice as good a player. The only downside to it all is that eventually I had to give him his cello back and go back to mine, which suddenly sounded like a kid's toy! Unfortunately I'm fairly sure I don't have any old family members with stray 250-year old cellos kicking around. I'll have to do it the hard way and save up enough money to buy a really good cello!
For some reason I seem to be magnetically drawn to older French cellos. I'm not sure what it is about them, since usually the Italian instruments are the ones people swoon over. You do have to be selective though. I once tried out a 100-year-old French cello selling for about $8000 which sounded worse than my 5-year-old $5000 cello. Also, older instruments, which have been around long enough to have been in existence through the world wars, sometimes look like they were right there at the front. You want to avoid those. :-)
That's it for my pontification about cellos for the day. On to.... popcorn and foghorn! These are orchestra terms. Popcorn is when everyone is supposed to play a note (usually pizzicato, or plucking the string) at the same time, but if different people pizz at slightly different times, instead of one unified "poing!" you get "pop-pop-pop-poppity-pop!" Hence the term popcorn. This is usually caused either by musicians not looking at the conductor, or the conductor not being clear about the beat. Popcorn best avoided in orchestra settings, though we had a couple of instances of it last night.
Then there's the foghorn, which is what happens when two or more people are supposed to be playing the same note, but they're not quite in tune with each other. Foghorns also have two main reasons for occurring - either one (or more) musician is having intonation problems, or someone's messed up on accidentals (e.g., sharps, flats, or lack thereof). Intonation problems happen to everyone, but I suspect they're harder to fix for wind instruments and consequently the most obvious foghorns last night seemed to come from the winds. The two oboes, for example, if the conductor calls them on intonation problems, will usually stop what they're doing, take the reed out of their mouth, readjust the reed with their hand, then compare again, until they match (IF they ever match). Trouble is, they can't just stop in the middle of a piece and do this, and I'm not sure how much you can control just with your mouth on an oboe, but... anyway, it's interesting. I always thought winds were lucky because they could just press the right keys and voilà, a ready-made note, but from experience, looks like that's not true. I think foghorns are also more obvious in the winds because they're just so LOUD compared to the rest of the orchestra. Even when the music is marked piano (= soft), they can (and often do) still completely obliterate the strings. I do have to say it's irritating that winds seem to only have two modes (loud, and off), but I think possibly it's just more difficult to play a wind instrument softly. String instruments are pretty adaptable that way.
Then there are foghorns which happen when someone messes up on accidentals. I've had some pretty bad cases of this. Once, the very first time I was playing at church for Christmas, Mom and I were going to do a rendition of Silent Night (Mom plays organ). She was doing a few other songs with the choir before that. Then came my turn, and as I started to play, it sounded awful. And I mean reeeeeaaaaaally, excruciatingly bad. I couldn't figure out how my entire cello could have gotten so out of tune. It was a disaster, and I didn't have the expertise to correct the intonation on the fly. As it turns out, Mom was playing on one of those handy-dandy electronic organs with a "transpose" knob, to make the organ sound lower than what you're actually playing on the keyboard. Mom had used this to bring the previous song down a notch, so that it fit the choir's voices better, but forgot to turn it back to normal when she started Silent Night. It sounded SO bad. I was soooooo embarrassed....
Needless to say, foghorns are best avoided in musical performance!
Anyway, I'm off to go practice some cello, and improve that intonation. :-)
16:00 Posted in Music | Permalink | Comments (1) | Email this
05/07/2006
Ode to an Orchestra
Well, tonight we just had another concert with the Ottawa Chamber Orchestra. I think the concert went well, featuring (well, the orchestra, and) four amazingly gifted pianists, and a stuffed sheep. Not sure where the sheep came from, but it just sort of appeared on the conductor's music stand before the concert. :-)
The four pianists were the finalists in our piano concerto competition. They're between 16 and 18, and they are all insanely good at the piano. Wow. Anyway, we played the first movement of the Grieg piano concerto, the whole Prokofiev piano concerto, and the first movement of Beethoven's third piano concerto twice (two of the finalists picked the same piece). They were all amazing, but in my head I had figured out a ranking of first through fourth, which, when compared to what the judges agreed on, turned out to be pretty much backwards. I guess I mustn't be good at detecting what makes for good piano playing. :-)
We also played Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture. I *love* that piece, but I think it needed more rehearsal before performing - it was a tad on the shaky side, but we held together and didn't make any major boo-boos so I consider it a success! Towards the end in the cello part there's a really tough section which is very fast. It's the kind of passage you can easily spot by squinting and looking at the big dark patch on the bottom half of the last page. :-) I'm actually surprised at how much of this I managed to get. I guess after a 2 hour warm-up, my fingers were nice and loose, and I was too tired to enter panic mode!
Anyway, I am about to go to bed and will write again soon. I have a feeling I won't be able to sleep too well though. First of all, I've got Beethoven stuck in my head. From past experience, Beethoven music tends to stick like crazy glue in my head, repeating over and over til I'm at the brink of insanity. I've found that this can be removed with a good dose of Phantom of the Opera music, but then Phantom music gets stuck in my head and I'm not sure which one's worse!
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03/30/2006
Oh yeah, the Bartok concert...
For those curious about the Bartok concert, I think it went pretty well. There were a couple of places where the orchestra seemed to be on shaky ground, with the different sections barely holding it together into cohesive music, but we managed to recover. The first movement of the Finta went very very well, thank you very much (to Looney Tunes: HA-HA! *sticks tongue out*). The only obvious mistake in it came not from the cellos but from the section to which Looney Tunes belongs. (There is justice...!) The second movement was superb (it has always been my favourite), but the third movement was sketchy. I thought it was just me having difficulty concentrating, but apparently the whole orchestra was feeling that way so I'm not sure what happened. The Bartok has been better in practice, but then again, this concert is the first time we ever played the whole thing through without stopping! It was OK though, no major catastrophes.
You just wouldn't believe how happy I am that it's all over! :-) Practicing the Hebrides Overture with the Ottawa Chamber Orchestra was a wonderful breath of fresh air!
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03/25/2006
Coming from Behind: the Rant
Oh, I'm mad!!
It's definitely an overreaction - I've been simmering ever since some guy made a comment at the end of tonight's Sinfonia Ottawa rehearsal (tonight = Friday night, though this post will show up as "Saturday"). I'm not sure why I even care about what he said because I think he's a bit loopy in the head. He reminds me of someone but I can't quite figure out who. Kramer from Seinfeld (only older) comes to mind, but that's not quite it. Anyway, he basically came up to me and asked me if I would practice the first movement of the Finta Sinfonietta we're doing. At the time, I didn't know what exactly was going on. I was thinking, well, isn't EVERYbody going to be practicing the first movement of the Finta? The concert's tomorrow, after all... and then, why only the first movement? There are three movements in this thing and we're playing them all...
Then, the more I thought about it, the more insulted I became. Does he mean that he thinks I'm such a bad player that he felt the need to go out of his way and ask me to practice more? Does he think he'd better remind me, otherwise I will continue to think I'm God's gift to cello and don't need to practice this mere mortal music? I've been busting my butt over this *^$# Sinfonia music (and the Bartok especially, which is music I don't even really like), trying to get back up to speed after a 7-year cello hiatus.
It occurred to me though, as I tried to defuse the situation for myself, that we cellos did make, among us, 3 fairly noticeable boo-boos along the way as we played the first movement of the Finta Sinfonietta tonight. However, these 3 noticeable boo-boos were made by 3 different cellists. Yes, one of the boo-boos was mine, but the other two weren't. We also made some smaller boo-boos which shouldn't be too noticeable. In particular, we all seem to have a bad case of backwards-bow-itis, which means that the section isn't uniform at all times in the direction the bow is going. However, this guy who commented to me, I guess he mustn't have much to play in his part if he was so busy checking to make sure the cellists were up to snuff. And hey, since I'm the newbie, why not pin all mistakes on me?
Don't get me wrong, I do make my fair share of mistakes, and I do recognize that I'm the least experienced of the cellists. However, I am not oblivious to this, nor am I just letting my music collect dust at home. To make matters worse, in orchestra, my stand partner decided she wants to use her copy of the music, so while I can help myself at home by putting in clever fingerings and markings in my part, I can't benefit from them when I'm playing with the orchestra (which is when it counts). So, not only do I have to figure out fingerings and practice them, but I also have to memorize them, and then figure out when to ignore my stand partner's fingerings, which are sometimes different! All this while trying to follow bowing patterns which change at basically every rehearsal. I'm not sure what to compare this to if you're not a string player, but maybe for a dancer it's like deciding that steps which used to be with the right foot are now with the left, and vice versa. If you're like me and you need to practice it a million times to get it "automatic", switching the bowing around all the time is not helpful because then I need to unlearn that automatic stuff and re-learn the new bowings. Bowings were still changing tonight, and it's the day before the concert!!
The only saving grace in this whole cellist-in-an-orchestra situation is that I am somehow, by nature, very good at coming from behind. I seem to end up in this situation relatively frequently. When I joined my first serious orchestra, the Philharmonie des Jeunes d'Ottawa-Carleton, the audition was such a flop that they told me, well, we'll let you in, but the music is probably a bit too advanced for you and you're going to have to work reeeeaaaally hard. So I did, and the next year we all re-auditioned and I became principal cellist.
While it's great to have that inside you, sometimes you're just not helped along by people who should be supportive. For example, luthiers (the people who make/repair stringed instruments). The people who are good at what they do also have an annoying tendancy to be snooty. I'm not blanketing every good luthier with this judgement, but so far that's been the pattern among the ones I've met, which is unfortunate. When I was in high school (same time as I was doing the Philharmonie gig), I had a basic student cello which cost $1200, which is on the low end for a cello. I took it to a luthier in Montreal that my teacher recommended, because it had developed a crack on the front, under the tailpiece (this is Bad News for a cello). The idea was, well, to get the crack fixed. The proper way to do this is to take the top off the cello and fix it from the inside with little stabilizer strips to prevent the crack from re-opening, then put the cello back together again. So we left it at the shop and came back for it a week later. The luthier said that the cello wasn't worth fixing properly, so he just slupped a bit of glue into the crack and gave me a new bridge, which was so wrong that it caused the strings to buzz against the fingerboard (also Bad News). Seeing that we weren't about to get good service from these people, we took it to a local guy, who promptly decided the fingerboard needed planing and did that right in front of us. But since the fingerboard on this cello isn't ebony, the black colour came from paint, a large section of which had just been planed off. Rather than redo it so that it looked like a proper fingerboard, he just applied some black ink, which not only didn't make it the same black as the rest of the fingerboard, but came off on my fingertips for months afterwards!
About 4 years ago I went to yet another luthier looking for a cello bow, but was basically given a box of bows to try out and ignored. (Of course, Amanada Forsyth, our infamous NAC principal cellist, was in there for an "emergency" which is a whoooooole other story. Let's just say that my version of an emergency is a cello reduced to kindling; for pros like Amanda, far more minor things trigger apoplexies much more readily! :-)) ANYway, what this boils down to is, unless you're lucky, if you're not a pro, and not a butt-kisser, good luck on the luthier front. You'll need it.
All this to say, if I can make it from hot cross buns to principal cellist of a youth orchestra in a year, with a patched-up cello that nobody would take seriously, by golly this first movement of the Finta is going to sound good tomorrow. Mark my words. And it won't even take a $30,000 cello or Looney Tunes telling me to practice.
01:35 Posted in Music | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
03/18/2006
The cello is the tenor voice...
The other day I mentioned that I went shopping for cello music. Luckily I already had in mind what I wanted, and in general it was fairly easy to select the music. There was a bit of a trend going, though, in some of the other music. That trend seeming to be, of course, that a cello piece isn't worth playing if the cellist can't exhibit some virtuoso technique. 98% of the time, this means playing really really high. Sometimes I come across a piece of music written almost entirely in treble clef. First I flip to the cover to make sure it's not a violin piece, despite all appearances. Once the cover confirms it's a cello piece, then I wonder if the composer is aware of what exactly a cello is.
A cello has four strings: from high to low, they are A, D, G, and C, starting with the A just below middle C and going down in fifths. When we write out these open strings, they are invariably written in bass clef. That low C is two ledger lines below the staff in bass clef. So, a piece written almost entirely in treble clef will, therefore, be played almost entirely on the A string, sometimes going way the heck up the fingerboard to the point where you run out of fingerboard. Meanwhile, three other strings are just sitting there. It makes me wonder how many songs for tenors (people, that is) are written to make them sound like 6-year-old girls...
Then again, lots of male cellists seem to think of their cellos as being female. (Tenor voice = female?) I guess I shouldn't be slamming weird associations like that, because a few years ago I tried to imagine what my cello would be like as a human being and after a while, ka-blam! A vision! It was a man who turned into the main character of my novel-in-progress. A man who is... a violinist. Go figure.
Anyway!
Lately I've been on a scottish music binge, I guess as a natural extension of my irish music fixation. Actually I think I'm beginning to even prefer the scottish music, though often they're so similar as to be indistinguishable. I've put together a massive list of CDs I would love to get sometime, most of them by people nobody has ever heard of. I'd also like to learn to fiddle! However, since cello fiddle teachers are probably quite hard to come by, I think it would be cool to learn to fiddle on the violin and then transfer what I learn to the cello.
My other idea a while ago was to get my Royal Conservatory ARCT in cello performance by 2015. Mainly this would be something to get me to practice scales and etudes and all that stuff I usually don't bother with (and usually comes back to bite me at some point, such as in this Bartok stuff). In the Royal Conservatory there are 10 grades followed by the ARCT, which can be either in performance or in teaching. The idea is basically, if you have your ARCT, you can play pretty much anything that's written for cello. Last time I was studying with a cello teacher, back in high school, I was generally working on pieces at the grade 9 or 10 level, so to shoot for ARCT by 2015 seems reasonable. Now that I've got my senses back, though, I'm not sure I want to bother with all the exams, the theory, the history, etc.... so we'll see! :-) Playing celtic music just seems a whole lot more fun. We'll see what happens! For now, I have a lot of Bartok to practice. *groan* One more week...
12:45 Posted in Music | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
03/12/2006
Viola da Gamba revisited
Last night I came across a recording of a viola da gamba piece which is incredibly beautiful. You can find it online
here. It's played by Claas B. Harders, and it's amazing. It's a piece called Prélude en harpégement, by Marin Marais.
When I listened to this piece of music, it brought back a few memories. First off, is the recollection of a CD which I haven't listened to in a while - the soundtrack to the movie "Tous les matins du monde". I didn't really like the movie all that much, mainly because it features Gérard Dépardieu, an actor I don't really care for, and also because I hate it when an actor is playing a musical instrument and the fingers are doing something completely different from what you can hear in the music. Anyway, despite the movie, the soundtrack is full of incredible music, much of it by that same composer, Marin Marais. A few clips are available on this website. In particular I like the Sonnerie de Ste Geneviève (Track 16) and the Improvisations sur les folies d'Espagne (Track 2). Jordi Savall is the gamba player and he's simply amazing.
The other memories it brought back were my days of playing the viola da gamba in the Early Music ensemble at Carleton back in my undergrad days. I did this for a year and it was definitely interesting. The viola da gamba is roughly the same size as a cello, though it's different in quite a lot of ways. First, it has six strings instead of four, with entirely different tuning (there's only one note which is an open string on both the gamba and the cello - everything else required a mental shift). The gamba also has frets, whereas a cello doesn't. The first time I picked up the gamba and saw the frets, I thought, uh-oh, frets, I have no idea how to use frets!! Then there's the bow hold which is entirely different; cello bowing is done with an overhand grip on the bow (i.e., your palm faces down), while gamba bowing is done with an underhand grip (palm facing up). And if that wasn't enough to screw me over, all the gamba music is written in alto clef, which cellists never use. What cellists do sometimes use is tenor clef, which is exactly like alto clef, but one line up! All this to say, it really can mess with your mind to switch between cello and gamba. (Still it was fun anyway!)
The cello as we know it these days is modernized, with the neck set at an angle relative to the body, so that it won't break with the high tension strings we use nowadays. Typically we use synthetic cores wrapped with metals like steel or tungsten. The gamba, however, still uses gut strings, and a correspondingly lower tension. The sound of the two instruments is very different. The gamba is more nasal, and quieter, kind of like a cello with a head cold. (Actually, kind of similar to a cello with a heavy mute in place.) The good viola da gambas, like you hear in these recordings, do "ring" somewhat and have nice sounds, particularly on the bass side. The gamba I was using, however, was a basic beginner model, and sounded like a gamba with a head cold! (Maybe it's related to the fact that I didn't really know much about how to play it. That could have something to do with it too. :-)) Anyway, the nasal sound, I could get used to. What used to bug me was my inability to make lots of noise with it. Cellos are quite powerful instruments and you can really make the windowpanes rattle, which is especially good for playing through a foul mood. Viola da Gamba, not so much. :-) So after a few months of focusing on the gamba, I'd go after my cello feeling like Tim the Tool Man: More Power!!!! Har har har!!!!
Anyway, listening to great gamba music (and seeing the awesome workmanship of gambas at Violworks) suddenly makes me want to play some gamba again!
23:00 Posted in Music | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
03/09/2006
Everything is relative
Well, I just got back from a rehearsal with Sinfonia Ottawa. Someone kick me before I do silly things like this again! I've spent hours and hours and hours transcribing the cello part for Bartok's Divertimento for String Orchestra (the copy we were given was a photocopy of a photocopy of the score pieced together into a cello part). And as of 1 am (-ish) this morning, it's all finally done. Today was the first rehearsal where all four of us cellists are present, and my goodness, the others are such good players! I can be playing at home and it sounds pretty good (to me), but then when I get to orchestra, my playing sounds like a child sawing away on an instrument! (Our principal cellist, Anne Davison, is a-maz-ing. I don't think she ever gets any notes wrong.) And speaking of relativity and wrong notes, Bartok seems to be a fan of using every possible combination of flats and sharps to make things look as complicated as possible. So, instead of just writing a C, he'll usually write a B#. People like me aren't used to seeing B# (or E#), because they're just C and F (respectively), and normal people will just write C or F when they mean C or F. But nooooooooo, not Bartok. Then, there's things like double-flats and double-sharps, so Bartok will sometimes write a Cx (C double sharp) when he really just wants you to play a D. Sheesh. As a result, the sheet music for the Divertimento looks really nasty because it's crammed with as many flats and sharps as humanly possible. When played (and I should add the caveat, when played *correctly*), it's actually not so bad. Bartok's music can be a bit dissonant at times, but it's not as bad as it looks on paper.
Still, I think Bartok is not my cup of tea. Let's say I won't be rushing out to buy recordings of his stuff! Sunday night with the other orchestra (the OCO), we read through Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture. It's sooooo beautiful. One of the ones that gives you goosebumps when you play through certain passages! I just bought a recording of that music, and it's just great. I love it to pieces!
Tomorrow, I practice like crazy, because the next Sinfonia rehearsal is Friday. We'll be rehearsing something by a contemporary composer named Finta, and his music is based on Canadian folk songs. I'm always leery of modern composers because the music can be really really weird, but for now I'll give him the benefit of the doubt because I just received the music tonight and haven't actually sat down to look at it. I'll let you know how that goes!
00:27 Posted in Music | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this