On picking up my viola again after nearly 20 years, part 1. Guest post by Black Bear
When I was ten years old, my school started a new instrumental music program. They hired a young, enthusiastic guy named Mr. S to mastermind it; he was put in charge of the middle and high school band/orchestra classes, and he also was charged with implementing a beginning strings group in grades 5-6. At the time, I had a burning desire to play the string bass. It’s BIG, it’s tall (I was too, at the time—I topped out a year or two later and most folks caught up with me, to my great dismay) and it’s unspeakably cool to play something that large when you’re ten. My mother’s take on this was slightly different, however. With nightmarish visions of trying to fit a string bass into the back seat of her ’65 Mustang coupe* for the next 8 years, she had a quiet word with the orchestra director, and he sadly informed me that the school only had one bass available and someone else had dibs’ed it. I was crushed. So crushed, in fact, that when Mr. S suggested that I try the viola instead I said “Okayyy” in a dispirited sort of way. I figured I could always quit later when my mom stopped paying attention… So naturally, I ended up playing viola in various orchestras for the next 13 years.
Mr. S was, from the beginning, a change of pace from our normal grade school existence. He had longish shaggy black hair and a matching mustache, huge expressive black eyebrows, and a wry sense of humor that was lost on probably 2/3 of the class. His classroom was plastered with posters of Dr. Who, comic book superheroes, and Star Trek. He cracked Monty Python jokes while conducting. His basic philosophy of teaching kids music was that the important thing—more important than anything else—was to love the music. No matter what instrument you were playing, no matter how bad you were at playing it (and some of us were pretty bad) the whole point was to be a part of the orchestra and have the experience of playing—or trying to play—some really great stuff. As a result, there were no tryouts for orchestra. There were no competitions for chair seating—first chair was whoever had been playing longest, which often was the person who was “best,” but not always. I don’t remember Mr. S ever getting angry or shouting at even the most awful, tuneless sounds coming from the 2nd violin section—which made a sharp contrast with our high school’s choir director, who was always shouting and driving the singing group kids to tears.** I didn’t really think too much about Mr. S’s overall philosophy of music teaching until early high school, when I briefly took private lessons with one of the better violists in the city. She came to one of my school concerts after I’d been with her for a few months, and my next lesson began with a 10 minute rant on the appalling posture and mediocre tonal quality of our orchestra, plus a screed against Mr. S for “allowing” kids who were obviously not fully devoted to their instruments to nonetheless play concerts. I quit my lessons soon after. Because, by this point in my musical career, I’d realized that I was in full agreement with Mr. S—for me, it wasn’t about giving fantastic performances, or even about being the best violist I could possibly be. It was about me and the other kids having a great time with music in our lives, even for just a few years, even if we put those instruments down when we went off to college and never picked them up again.
By late high school, I was also playing in a volunteer community orchestra at the local Turner’s club [ Turners = turnverein, ]—also conducted by Mr. S. That orchestra was primarily made up of adults who had come back to their instruments later in life, after retirement, etc. Some of them were great musicians. Some of them… were not. I’ve told the story on the forum, I think, of our two other violists: Barbara, who was a music teacher and had Mr. S transcribe all the 2nd violin parts for our Strauss waltz booklet into alto clef for her because she couldn’t bear the tedium of playing the viola parts, and Jim, who was about 98 years old and couldn’t hear worth a darn, and if he got off beat he would doggedly keep playing the right notes at the wrong time through the whole rest of the song. We played at church festivals and nursing homes, year-round, and I got to play some of the most amazing variety of orchestral music you could imagine. I still was a mediocre violist at best, but this was fine with me. The point was the playing, and the fact that the people we played for were thrilled to have us there. I loved it.
But a couple years after I’d graduated college, Mr. S got a new job and left the Turners, and I decided that the new guy wasn’t my cup of tea—he changed the practice night, he had a completely different approach, he demanded a lot from his volunteers, and I suspect I was just the first of many who just stopped coming. And so my viola sat atop the piano at my parents’ house for…. er… a long time. I moved out to an apartment, then another apartment, then bought a house. They periodically asked if they could Get Rid of That Viola, and I kept saying “no!” After all, Jim was playing the viola when he was 98, who’s to say I might not want mine again? But I couldn’t really imagine under what circumstances I might use it. I did finally move it from my parents’ place to my house so they’d stop asking about it, so it started collecting dust here instead of there…
*** to be continued…***
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* A friend of mine later in high school managed to travel back and forth to orchestra practice with his double-bass in the back of an ’83 Jetta. I still don’t know how that worked… But I digress.
** I might add that despite our occasional failings, we sent instrumental groups to the State Contest and came back with medals each year. So it’s not like we were all talentless hacks—it’s just that the talentless among us were not penalized for coming out and trying anyway.
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