Life Lessons from my Viola

There are often blessings hidden in crises, if we look.  Last fall, my daughter broke her leg badly and had to have surgery to repair it.  She was off of it for a while and has essentially mostly been off work for four months.  The up side is that since she was housebound, she had more time to practice violin and I had more time to spend with her.  Recently I volunteered us to play in a talent show at church—she the violin and I the viola.  I’m sure she will have her own list of what she learned through all this, but I’d like to share a few gems I picked up. 

In my fifty-plus years of life, I have had much opportunity to perform in front of people—from speeches at school and church to piano recitals and even viola recitals, playing with the Eugene Community Orchestra for a few years, things like that.  I’m very aware of how your mind can just go blank when you get up in front of people to do something, even something well practiced.  My first piano recital, which was only for the other students in my piano class, I played a piece called Fairy Tale by Dmitri Kabalevsky. (You can hear it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOj7Y_DzeCY ).  While my eyes were following the sheet music out of habit, during this performance I was not really seeing the music at all, but playing from memory.  I actually did amazingly well, at least until I got to the final chord, at which time my mind went absolutely completely blank and I had no idea where to put my hands, nor could I find my place in the music, even though I knew it was the last chord.  So I just winged it. What came out was some chord that wasn’t even in the same key as the song.  I remember someone saying once, if you play the last part well, the audience will forget the missed notes you played earlier.  Well, it happens that the converse is true as well.  If you play the ending wrong, that’s what the audience is left with, and they forget that the rest of the song was played perfectly. 

Also, fresh in my mind was our performance for Laura’s husband’s family on bake day, before Christmas, when we had played fairly well warming up in the living room, but I could not hit a string to save my life when we went into the family room to play.  I was horrified and I froze, and not a bit of it sounded good. 

As an older person, learning viola, I got past the habit of learning to play by rote and forgetting to read the music. However, as I have lost my vision, reading music has become nearly impossible for me.  My best attempts have included putting on the glasses that allow me to read (but only very close up) and then essentially hugging the music stand in order to have it close enough to read, and trying to play my viola behind it.  That didn’t work very well.  My other attempt, which is a little easier, though probably no less entertaining to watch, has been to use and overhead projector to put the music on the wall and then stand very close to the wall and dance around my shadow and play up high and down low as I try to read.  Neither of these methods would work for me for performing—although, it might have made for a good laugh….

I have had to learn all my parts by memory, from Laura reading them, playing them for me, and then learning through muscle memory and the pictures I make in my head of what my fingers are supposed to do. Laura memorizes much more difficult music that I had to learn.  And last September we watched and listened as Itzhaak Perlman pulled 45 minutes of music out of his head in front of a silent, awed, 2000 listeners. So, it can be done. 

With all this in mind, we opted to play our easiest pieces last.  And I was resigned to making mistakes.  This is in front of a bunch of people who have never heard me play, so I wasn’t really worried about making mistakes.  I was worried about playing THROUGH the mistakes.  The only thing more terrifying than getting up in front of a hundred or so people and making mistakes, is getting up there and freezing up.  During practice Laura learned where I was more likely to make mistakes, and she would often call out “F-sharp” or “D” or whatever I was supposed to be doing.  In one of the songs, I was to play a simple little progression, B-C-D-E, but that seemed to be a place I often got stuck. Once, when we were playing that, Laura could see me forgetting and looked at me, raising her eyebrows in little increments to remind me what I was supposed to play. 

During our more difficult piece, when it was my turn to play the melody, I had to shift to hit the high notes. When I played the harmony, I played the same arpeggio, only lower, but my hand kept wanting to shift. In an inspiration of genius, Laura showed me that I was really still playing the same notes only an octave higher, and if I made the mistake during the performance, it was okay, just go with it, and then shift back down for the last measure. 

When performance time came, exactly what I feared would happen did happen.  Just like on bake day, I could not hit a string to save my life. I was playing the melody and I was consistently hitting two strings, and sounding awful. But I had seen that coming and knew that I had to focus on my bow arm, moving my shoulder to change strings and my forearm to play.  I got past that obstacle.  When it came time to shift, I also missed it, but I had practiced the “what if” of that and worked through it.  When we got to the end of that song, I forgot NOT to shift, but because we had talked about what to do if that happened, I was able to play the last measure correctly, and end on the right notes! 

The rest went fairly easily.  We missed little things here and there, but it was not major. We had made it through the hard stuff, and now all I had to do was remember the notes and play out and look at Laura for some timing cues here and there. 

So, as I think about that performance, and how it applies to life, I see two major themes.  First, accept that you are going to make mistakes and make peace with that.  I heard a saying recently that the difference between a master and beginner is that the master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried. Second, know yourself.  Know where you are likely to fail.  Don’t stop at failure.  Learn ways to play through the failure.  Learn how to go on from the wrong place, whether it is asking for direction from a friend, “F-sharp!” or practicing getting to the right place from the wrong place.  But play!  Play through, and play with conviction!