Fiddler’s Beat

A drawing in the New Yorker magazine several years ago depicted a tawdry back alley with a few empty cans and bottles strewn about. The caption above read: Life without Mozart. Its message apparently affected many of us. I saw the drawing on peoples’ desks, walls, and refrigerator doors for years afterward. As a member of the Guarneri String Quartet, I’m tempted to add a couple of words of my own to the caption: Life without Mozart string quartets. But why stop there? Given the immense richness and variety of the string quartet repertoire, I might also have included the names of other composers whose quartets have added meaning to our lives: Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms, and Dvorak. And Debussy, Ravel, and Fauré. And Bartok, Smetana, Grieg, Stravinsky, Shostokovich, Sibelius, Ligetti, Kurtag, and Ives. Oh, and Tchaikovsky.

This first day of January, 2008 is a poignant one. It is the beginning of the year in which the Guarneri String Quartet finally closes shop. When next year comes around we will never play those beloved strings quartets again. I will miss the magic in this music and the heady atmosphere of the concert stage, but I will also sorely miss our listeners. The composer’s notes make no sound on the printed music page and the performer’s rendition moves no one in an empty hall. We musicians want an audience. We need an audience. And after having given so much of ourselves in preparation and in performance, the applause, the bravos, and a few backstage congratulations at concert’s end mean a great deal. At heart, it’s all about that New Yorker drawing. We yearn to fill the desolate back alley lurking in all our lives with something meaningful.

Accolades, no matter how effusive or sincere, tend to vanish into thin air just as music does with that last bow stroke across the strings. Moments after leaving the concert hall there is little left of them save a vague, lingering memory. But listeners occasionally reveal their feelings by writing letters that have a certain staying power. I can read a letter, squirrel it away in my desk, come across it months or even years later, and reread for a second or third time about a work or a performance long forgotten that gave someone pleasure. Here are two such letters that I cherish:

(Written by Sandy Noyes, a friend of mine, after a Bartok String Quartet performance of ours in 1998)

(Written by Josephine Alvarado and delivered by her backstage after a concert in Carmel, California earlier this season)

In these beautifully expressed letters, I sense that if Sandy and Josephine have any back alleys at all, they are filled with music rather than empty bottles and cans. For our many listeners over the years, I can only hope that your alleys (and minds and hearts) are also filled with music’s treasures. And if the Guarneri String Quartet has had even a small part in bringing Mozart and his friends into your lives, we are greatly honored.

Happy New Year!

When I was eleven years old, my violin teacher assigned me The Swan by Camille Saint-Saëns. I had no idea that The Swan was a famous cello solo or that it was part of a much larger work, The Carnival of the Animals. I had never even heard of its composer, Saint-Saëns, or seen his name in print before. I wondered why there was a funny line between his two-word last name and what could be the purpose of those strange dots perched on top. And was Saint-Saëns actually a saint?

I thought that The Swan was very pretty and probably associated the music’s title with its general mood in some vague way. As a child, I often saw swans gliding regally through the water on the lake near where I lived. Accompanied by the piano’s gently rippling arpeggios, Saint-Saëns alluring melody seemed to convey the swan’s very essence.

I must have heard dozens of student cellists play The Swan in my teenage years but I gave it little thought. I was a violinist after all, not a cellist. Later on, however, a chance set of circumstances brought me face to face with the work. While I was assistant concertmaster of the Cleveland Orchestra, I shared a house for a period of time with Jules Eskin, its principal cellist. Over coffee one morning, Jules told me that The Carnival of the Animals had been scheduled for a future concert and that he would be playing the cello solo. From that point on, Jules practiced The Swan daily. The snippets of phrases I occasionally heard as I passed in and out of our house sounded beautiful, but Jules, apparently unsatisfied, continued to work on The Swan. I was amused at first. Granted, it was a lovely melody but how much time can one devote to something so simple, so naïve.

One day, Jules called me into the living room where he practiced and asked my advice on how to shape a particular phrase. He played the phrase and looked up questioningly. To the best of my recollection, it sounded utterly convincing in Jules’ hands and for the moment, I could think of nothing to say. He played the same phrase once more with a small but discernable difference. I remember voicing an opinion and then offering a suggestion or two. Jules played the phrase again and again—softly and intimately in one version, more intensely in another—pausing each time so that we could talk about the phrasing inflections he had just crafted. Finally Jules thanked me for my input while ruefully concluding that he was still not sure what was best. Our discussion about a section of music lasting no more than fifteen seconds had taken easily five minutes.

The Swan’s shapely contours and enticing harmonies refused to leave me as I left the house. The melody, a full three minutes in length, gave the illusion of being disarmingly simple and yet, was it really so simple? Jules and I, behaving like scientists looking at a specimen under a microscope, couldn’t even agree on a single phrase.

The next morning at breakfast, Jules and I pushed other subjects to the side and began discussing The Swan in more detail. Since our last conversation we had independently come up with new ideas. Jules quickly became impatient. “Let me just play the whole thing for you. Then we can talk.” He took out the cello and bow and played Saint-Saëns’ melody from beginning to end. Jules’ playing was ravishingly beautiful but he shook his head as the last note faded away and suggested several possible phrasing alterations both small and large. Unfortunately, everything in music is connected. Change one note or one phrase even slightly and everything around it has to be re-evaluated. Our discussions became lengthier and more detailed. The Swan’s possibilities seemed endless. In the coming days, Jules continued to practice and I stepped into the living room more and more. An eavesdropper might have thought we were probing the depths of a late-Beethoven string quartet.

Jules performed The Swan beautifully, but I also came away from the concert with a new found respect for what Saint-Saëns had fashioned. A great melody—anything from Taps to Beethoven’s Ode to Joy—has a palpable structural integrity, a sense of proportion, an unerring rightness to it. As Jules spun out The Swan’s extended aria accompanied by the gently rocking arpeggios scored for two pianos, I had the sense that every note and every phrase was in its rightful and inevitable place. Saint-Saëns must have thought so, too. This is the only movement from the Carnival of the Animals that he found worthy enough to be played in public during his lifetime.

Long after the event, David Cerone, the then president of the Cleveland Institute of Music, asked me to give a violin master-class at the school. He requested that I choose the repertoire. I hadn’t thought of The Swan in years, but somehow it popped into my head. Remembering the labor Jules had put into the piece and thinking that these young fiddlers might be challenged, I suggested it to David. He smiled, clearly taken aback, thought about it for a minute, and then agreed.

At the appointed hour, approximately fifteen violinists and one piano accompanist filed into the conservatory auditorium. I can only imagine what the students thought of their assignment. Master-classes usually deal with serious repertoire—a Beethoven violin and piano sonata or a Bach work for solo violin, for example—but The Swan? The Cleveland Institute of Music, one of the country’s premier music schools, has always had first-rate violin students and this group was no exception. Fifteen times, the accompanist played those gently rocking opening notes, and one by one, fifteen violinists played The Swan. Some performed with mechanical precision, some displayed a solid musicality, yet none managed to play in a way that I could honestly call affecting. For the moment, The Swan had defeated them all. One of our tasks as musicians is to examine the elusive structure of a melody, the most basic building block of music, and to take it apart note for note, phrase by phrase, in order to understand it as best we can. Then we must put it back together cohesively and affectingly. The students and I worked for the next two hours to uncover the music’s essence, to turn groups of notes into the regal bearing of a swan—precisely what Jules had done as he practiced those many years ago.

I would not be entirely accurate or fair without mentioning one specific student who participated in the class that day. Mary Hess, a double major in both violin and voice, had played The Swan reasonably well, but it occurred to me that she might sing it quite differently. Mary obliged by placing her violin and bow in its case and repositioning herself on stage without instrument. The pianist played the opening harmonies once again and Mary sang the entire melody for us with simple yet affecting beauty. Teachers are forever coaxing students to rise above their chosen instrument and sing. Mary did so literally and for those unforgettable moments, she became the swan itself.

Jules Eskin has now been the principal cellist of the Boston Symphony for many years and I live in New York City, yet we still manage to see one another occasionally. I brought up our Swan encounter recently. To my surprise, Jules had no recollection of the fierce battle he once waged with a swan in his living room some fifty years ago. The event must have made some subliminal impression on him, however. Jules told me he asks cellists auditioning for the Boston Symphony to play The Swan. He looks for musicality, tone production, intonation, bow control, and artistry in a prospective cellist. Jules said, “Once I hear a cellist play The Swan, I know absolutely everything I need to know.”

Try your hand at playing The Swan with the Berliner Philharmonik’s You vs. Camille Saint-Saëns game!

I enrolled in a music appreciation class when I was a high school student. Near the beginning of the semester, the teacher of the class took ill and a substitute, Mr. Oliver, replaced him. Mr. Oliver knew his subject well. He played us everything on the school record player from Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony to Peruvian folk songs to Duke Ellington and he spoke articulately and with great enthusiasm about each piece of music. This led to interesting and sometimes provocative class discussions. But Mr. Oliver had several things working against him as he sought to implant the magic of music in our young minds. As a substitute teacher, the length of Mr. Oliver’s stay was unpredictable. It was quite possible that he might not even be responsible for our grades at semester’s end—an open invitation to misbehave. Mr. Oliver needed to put his foot down and demand proper comportment, but this was not in his nature. We often spoke out of turn and passed notes back and forth directly under his nose. Another thing that worked against Mr. Oliver’s inability to control the class was that he lisped and spoke in a high, effeminate voice. We poked fun at Mr. Oliver’s voice, his gestures, and the way he pranced around the classroom, trying valiantly to illuminate the history of music for us. Our behavior was insensitive, even cruel, but teenagers are works very much in progress.

As the weeks passed and our unruliness continued, word got back to the principal about Mr. Oliver’s Music 101 class. We soon learned that he was to be fired. The news was shock therapy. In an emergency meeting convened by the entire class, which numbered approximately fifteen students, there was little disagreement: Mr. Oliver was an excellent teacher and our behavior had been unconscionable. Something had to be done to stop his dismissal. We decided to write a letter of support for Mr. Oliver. I cannot remember the exact wording but undoubtedly the letter enthusiastically endorsed Mr. Oliver as a teacher and asked that he be kept on. Each and every student signed his or her name under the statement that was then promptly delivered to our principal.

Saul Steinberg, Untitled (The Declaration of Independence), 1959, Pen and ink on paper, 14″ x 22 1/2″

Afterwards, I thought little of the letter or its possible impact on the decision by the administration to keep Mr. Oliver on for the duration of Music 101. I had so many more important things on my mind: girls, getting my driver’s license, hanging out with friends. Years later, when my thoughts drifted back to school days, I would occasionally remember Mr. Oliver and feel guilty about my poor behavior. But then I would comfort myself with the thought that “Kids will be kids,” and banish Mr. Oliver from my mind.

After a Guarneri String Quartet concert in Los Angeles some ten or twelve years ago, a man came backstage to greet me. “You won’t remember who I am,” he said in a high-pitched, rather effeminate voice. But I did.

“Mr. Oliver?” I gasped.

The man’s jaw dropped. “Good lord, you do remember me!”

“Yes, of course I remember you,” I said.

“Then you will also remember this.” Mr. Oliver reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and produced a yellowed, folded piece of paper. He opened it carefully and handed it to me. Before my eyes was the letter our class had written forty years earlier with fifteen signatures underneath. I recognized several of the names, others had slipped from my memory long ago. I spied my schoolboy signature and below it the signature of Carl P., a highly gifted boy who had committed suicide some years later. Suddenly, the past rushed at me rudely, painfully. Mr. Oliver and Carl had had many lively conversations about… what? Mozart? Sibelius? The past wrapped itself around me more tightly. I smelled the wood and lead of the school pencils, felt the hard, unyielding writing desks, and heard Mr. Oliver’s voice as he tried to extol music’s virtues over the din caused of overactive and underdisciplined teenagers.

Mr. Oliver broke my reverie. “Do you realize what this letter means to me?” he asked. “Your words and signatures not only saved my job but also restored my confidence. I was going through some tough times when I taught that music appreciation class. This letter was a real turning point in my life.” I stood overwhelmed before Mr. Oliver, unable to speak. Mr. Oliver took back the letter, returned it carefully to his pocket, congratulated me on my concert, and after a few pleasantries, was gone.

I was having my teeth cleaned by the dental hygienist the other day when she offhandedly asked whether my children were also in the music industry. Fortunately, with my mouth wide open and filled with dental gear, I was only capable of answering with a few rather inarticulate and muffled noises. Otherwise, I might have given her a mouthful of my own. Music industry? How dare she equate what I do with such a mundane term! Am I not an artist? And do I not rub shoulders with the likes of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert, some of the giants of our civilization? Music industry, indeed!

But by the time I walked out of the dentist’s office, my teeth gleaming brilliantly in the morning sunlight, I had changed my mind. Of course I work in the music industry! You could call what I do by other names—profession, career, calling, work, job—but the incontrovertible fact is that I play the violin to feed myself and my family, pay the rent, and occasionally go to the movies. Granted, being a musician is an exalted profession, some might even think of it as a service profession akin to being a doctor or priest, but if I hadn’t been good enough to earn my daily bread from music, I might have only bumped into Mozart and his friends on weekends playing chamber music for fun.

Why did I get so hot under the collar over the hygienist’s innocent question? For one, because music’s noble qualities initially drew me into its world rather than the money I might earn from it. As a child, I eagerly told people that I was going to be a concert violinist when I grew up. “And how would that happen?” the grownups wanted to know. Easy. I would practice hard, develop my God-given talents, and when that glorious day of violin mastery finally arrived, all doors to concerts and acclaim would open enthusiastically and gratefully to me. It hardly crossed my mind to think about the nuts and bolts of the profession—how to practice efficiently, avoid injuries, look for a useful yet affordable instrument, and, not least, to know who the power brokers of the music business were and how to seek them out. Even when I entered the Curtis Institute of Music as an advanced violin student, my naive and romanticized view of the music world lingered on and the school itself did little to dispel these notions. Curtis stuck to doing what a school traditionally does well. It provided me with some of the best teachers in the world who did their job superbly. With each passing year, I improved as a violinist and gradually learned the musician’s craft, but Curtis offered hardly a word about how I might prepare for the outside world after graduation. Only as that date approached did I began to realize that the many fine young fiddlers in my position were all about to set foot in the same highly competitive environment. Ironically, fellow students who showed an innate flare for self-promotion or an awareness of the right people to know met with not-so-subtle criticism. “He’s a real operator,” we would say, or “She knows just exactly who to call and who to kiss up to,” as if making connections to the people in positions of importance was some kind of criminal offence. This prejudice ran contrary to a bald reality: Doors to a successful career might open reluctantly or perhaps not at all to any of us. I tossed and turned many a night in that last year of school thinking of my all-too-uncertain future.

Through talent, a certain amount of luck, and yes, hard work, I have managed to make my way in the music world, but I wish I had been better equipped when my music school diploma was handed to me. Now that I myself teach at the Curtis Institute of Music, I felt comfortable asking Robert Fitzpatrick, the school’s dean, if anything is being done to train young musicians for everything in the profession besides music itself. He referred me to Dan McDougall who gives a course entitled “The Twenty-First-Century Musician” at Curtis. Founded by Phyllis B. Susen, the course strives to build a working knowledge of demands made on musicians, resources available to them, and problem solving. With surprise and just a touch of envy, I learned that last Fall’s course offered fifteen sessions, each given by experts in a chosen subject. These included Basics of Personal Finance; Freelancing: It’s Not So Bad; Life of an Orchestral Musician: As a Player; Audition Taking Tips; The Media, Critics, and You; The Healthy Musician: A Work in Progress; Getting Work—And Making the Most of the Work You Get; and Grant Writing—Show Me The Money. If only this course had been offered to me as a student, my future would have been just as unsure and unpredictable but a tad less scary, armed as I would have been with solid information about the road ahead. I thought of two more course sessions for Professor McDougall to consider for his next syllabus: Performance Jitters–Friend or Foe? and Stage Comportment–Let Us See As Well As Hear the Real You.

I’m due for another teeth cleaning soon. Last time around, I told the hygienist in answer to her question that my daughter Natasha is a singer and my son Alexander is a web designer with many musician clients. But I can’t wait to see the hygienist again: I have so much more to tell her about the music industry.

[Originally written and published in September 2002].

I lost no loved ones on 11 September 2001, nor was my home destroyed or my work affected in any palpable way by the tragic attack on our nation; and yet, the events of that morning have prodded me to look inward and take personal inventory. As a professional violinist, I ask myself: What good is the music I play? Does my work make a difference to anyone?

Ironically, that particular September 11th was a day I had looked forward to for a long time. Over 30 years earlier, my brother Victor, my friend Michael Riesman and I—three musicians on vacation—climbed Mt. Sill, one of the many fourteen thousand foot peaks in California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains. The climb had been long and strenuous but not really dangerous, and Mt. Sill itself quite unremarkable—basically a towering mound of rocks devoid of any vegetation save the occasional red, orange and green lichens that baked in the hard, high-altitude sun. The view was what we had come for, and when we arrived at the summit panting, it more than fulfilled our expectations: layer after layer of craggy mountains extending both north and south for almost a hundred miles. An unearthly silence hung in the air—the absence of sound itself a deeply moving music that played to the far-reaches before us.

Suddenly we noticed that the sun was moving toward the horizon. It was late and in a few hours the temperature on Mt. Sill would drop below freezing. Although the three of us had been on the top for barely twenty minutes, we reluctantly began our trek back to camp—my elation tinged with the disappointment of leaving so quickly. That night, snug in my sleeping bag, I gazed up at the star-filled sky and vowed to return someday. I have always treasured hiking in these mountains with their verdant valleys, rushing waterfalls and glaciers nestled in the upper reaches of massive rock formations. It has been a perfect antidote to my sedentary indoor life as a musician.

Last September, over three decades after my initial trip, my dream of climbing Mt. Sill again became a possibility. My wife Dorothea, our son Alexej and I climbed into the Sierra Nevada over Bishop Pass with two friends, Maru and Paulo, and set up camp in Dusy Basin, altitude 10,500 feet. In contrast to the strange, almost lunar terrain above us, our camp was situated just below the tree line alongside a lovely stream that meandered through long grasses and a few brave trees and bushes that dared to put roots down in this severe high-altitude environment. For several days, we made only small excursions to nearby lakes and the more lushly vegetated canyons down below while our bodies acclimatized to the thin air. Because of an impending recital, I occasionally practiced on a cheap violin that the mules had brought up along with tents and camping supplies.

Five days after our arrival in Dusy, we felt ready. September 11th would be the day for attempting to climb Mt. Sill. We were up at 5:30 a.m., Pacific Standard Time, and eating breakfast before 6:00. As we drank our coffee, unbeknownst to us, the first plane crashed into the World Trade Tower 3,000 miles away, and as we donned our day-packs, the second and third planes hit the other tower and the Pentagon. The weather had been crystal clear for the last week but on that day, long wings of clouds turned blood-red by the rising sun spread across the sky. At 6:30, Dorothea and Maru, who planned to stay put, waved goodbye to Alexej, Paulo and me. I could not help thinking to myself as the first rays of sun touched us that life was good and dreams sometimes come true. At that very moment, thousands of people had just lost their lives and the nation was in crisis.

As the day progressed, we crossed barren expanses littered with the rock debris from ancient retreating glaciers and climbed over pass after pass, each one higher than the last. By early afternoon the entire world seemed to spread out before us just as I remembered from long ago—layers of mountains pulled, twisted and tortured upwards by the earth’s inner workings, lakes big and small artfully placed in the folds of their ridges like so many jewels shimmering in the afternoon sun.

The trip had taken longer than expected, perhaps because I was 30 years older now, and suddenly rain and hail began to pelt us. Mt. Sill rose several hundred feet directly above us—so enticingly near—and yet with the weather closing in, there was no question of going on. With that familiar coupling of elation and regret, I headed back to camp with Alexej and Paolo. The top of Sill had eluded me this time but at least I had seen the miracle of the Sierra Nevada once again.

Several hours later, our tents came into view; there would be a lot to tell over dinner tonight. But inexplicably, Dorothea rushed towards us, threw herself at our son Alexej who was in the lead, and burst into tears. The story of the attack, gleaned from a transistor radio, came out in bits and starts as my wife struggled for composure: Passenger planes as deadly bombs, thousands dead, the World Trade Towers collapsed, the Pentagon in flames. We stood there dumbfounded, unable to get our minds around events that belonged in a bad movie plot. The sound of gently rushing water and the air redolent with pine made it especially incomprehensible. How could the same planet that housed the mountain paradise where we stood also be a crucible for today’s hate and violence? Questions collided with one another as I numbly trudged toward our tent. Was my daughter who lived in New York City safe? Would our country itself be attacked again? Would our very way of life survive intact? For the very first time in my secure and comfortable existence as an American, I was seized with dizzying uncertainty.

I pulled my boots off in the tent’s dim light and dropped them next to my violin case. Although I had spent almost my entire life devoted to the instrument that lay inside, what good was it really? Music was for pleasure, for fun, even for touching the soul at times, but it could not stop the terrorists from their evil doings or quell the fears of panicked people trapped in planes and burning buildings. For that matter, what good was music for anything? It did not provide a roof over your head, or warmth, or nourishment.

And yet, without knowing exactly why, I felt compelled to open the case, take out the violin with its bow, and make my way to the brook that had been our companion for the past week. In the waning late afternoon light, I played a Bach Allemande for the stream, the trees, the errant boulders scattered willy-nilly, the countless victims of the attack who now lay under smoldering cement, steel and airplane shards, and not least of all, for my very own sanity. The music—dark, mournful, even angry at times—told its own story, yet it also seemed to comment on the chaotic feelings that raced through me. Bach knew nothing of airplanes or skyscrapers but he did understand the human heart—its pain, its aching sadness. The Allemande touched and soothed me as the stream gurgled in accompaniment. I found solace in its phrases that stepped up and down, in their familiar cadences, and in the repeats of entire sections. The terrorists had unnerved me but Bach’s well-ordered and richly imaginative music began to ease my heart. I played on and on.

Photo by Dorothea von Haeften, September 11, 2002.

Music can make me laugh and cry and want to dance, but in that time of crisis up in the mountains, it was a desperate refuge where I could explore and give reign to my raw feelings in privacy and safety. Music became my personal grief counselor. The stories I have heard about concerts taking place during the London Blitz and the Siege of Leningrad in full face of danger, starvation and death make more sense to me now. I empathize with the lone violinist who played all night last September 11th for people at the New York City Armory looking for news of those they loved. And I understand more fully why once a nine-year-old friend, upon hearing that his father had suddenly died of a stroke, quietly went to his room, shut the door, and played the violin for himself.

Music defines me as a human being. We may have different tastes (I classical, you reggae) but I know of no one who simply doesn’t like music. We like it, we love it, we need it: for its own sake but also for romantic trysts, making love, weddings, funerals, paying bills, shopping and riding in elevators. And many of us must have needed it on 11 September 2001. What music did you turn to on that terrible day?

Our history tells us, regrettably, that to kill is also human; but I can’t help thinking that if I open my mouth in song, it can no longer curse my neighbor, if I play an instrument, it becomes harder for me to wield a knife or gun. I wonder then, could the young men who turned those planes into massive instruments of destruction have loved music? In the absence of any answer, I can only think about the camps where they were once indoctrinated to hate and destroy, and fantasize about another kind of brain-washing in which music plays for them day and night. Perhaps the sadness, joy and innate wisdom of, say, Billie Holiday or Johann Sebastian Bach might cure them of the disease called hate. After all, the Old Testament says in chapter one of Samuel: “And it came to pass, when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, that David took a harp, and played with his hand: so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him.” Music banished Saul’s evil spirits in the Bible, eased my heart by a mountain stream, and helped a young boy in his hour of desperate need. That is what music is good for.