Practicing emotions
A lesson 20 years in the making
I started playing the viola when I was 10 years old. We were in Palo Alto at the time, and the public school I attended had a program where kids could choose whatever instrument they wanted, after hearing some musicians play samples at an assembly. Most kids ended up with the recorder, in preparation for woodwinds and brass. Others chose choir. A handful of friends and I chose the viola. The woman had played an excerpt from “A Whole New World” with the viola, and it casually left the best impression on us. After a few weeks, my friends gave it up, and I was left alone with an obscure instrument that I would end up playing for decades. Most violists start with the violin, and the viola is considered a kind of back-up. The idea is: if you can’t beat the auditions with the violin, you’d have better chances getting into the viola section since there’s less competition. They didn’t even make violas for kids, so I practiced on a rental violin with viola strings forced onto it.
A few years later, my father’s post-doc visa expired and we went back to Tokyo, where my mother miraculously found me a viola teacher who lived just blocks away from us. This was around the year 2000, and she actually put up a flyer on the local grocery store bulletin that read, in black marker: “Wanted: Viola Teacher,” followed by our landline number. I still can’t believe this worked.
This teacher, who I’ll call N-Sensei, was equally surprised that someone had been looking for her. Most of her students were violinists, or violinists-turned-violists. She had graduated from Japan’s most prestigious music school, and performed as a soloist in many venues with her uniquely-shaped viola. We guessed that her age was somewhere between my age and my mother’s. It was hard to tell (to this day). She was kind, but when it came to our lessons, she was extremely strict. Not in the sense that she’d scold me for not practicing or getting the notes wrong. She was a different kind of strict.
N-Sensei would pause after I played a piece, choosing her words wisely. She made a point never to say “Good job,” which was a shock after my years of being coddled by smiley Californians. She didn’t care for my stilted Japanese, didn’t find it endearing like other Japanese adults in my life.
Her lessons, which I took for seven years, rarely had to do with technique. They were often about emotions.
“You’ve never experienced grief, have you?” she said once, after I played her the opening to Glazunov’s viola elegy. I shook my head. “You’re not ready for this one.”
“Restraint takes more skill than passion,” she said, on how to end phrases in anything written by Mozart.
With each piece, she’d talk to me about the composer’s life, and what was happening in Europe at the time. If a phrase was reminiscent of trains, she’d ask me to imagine the awe and horror of a new locomotive passing by a once-idyllic countryside where horses used to be the fastest way to get somewhere. She’d make passionate speeches about the choices musicians can make when it comes to playing these pieces in the 21st century. “Some people think Andante means slow, but it means at the pace at which you walk. How do you think people were walking 250 years ago, in these villages? How do you walk now, here in Tokyo?”
After the Glinka viola sonata: “Wait to play this until your heart’s been broken.” This may or may not have inspired my sudden confession to a crush, who I knew had feelings for another girl. I gave him a peck on a train platform before running off without waiting for his response. The next day, he rejected me gently and I sobbed in the restroom like it was the end of the world. I poured out my newly broken heart onto the viola, half triumphant that maybe I’d become a better musician. N-Sensei was still unimpressed.
There was a point in my life, around junior and senior years of high school, when I obsessed over the viola to the point where I was playing the instrument for up to 8 hours a day. But I had started too late to be a serious candidate to music schools (most professionals start playing at the age of 3). My passion had caught up to the instrument’s capabilities, but my technique had not. N-Sensei said she never saw me as someone who would pursue music professionally. I rebelled. Maybe I could just practice harder, I said. Maybe I could be a violist.
That’s when she told me that there’s value in playing just for yourself. Do other things, but keep working on this art. Keep it for when you need it.
Before I left for college in New York, her gift to me was the book of Bach’s cello suites transcribed for the viola—but not just any book. (Warning: I’m about to nerd out a bit.) Most violists studying the Bach suites will use the version by International Music Company, a UK publisher. The bowings (another way of saying how many notes you play in one stroke, either upwards or downwards) are based on what’s considered standard, but really, are bowings invented by a cellist named Edmund Kurtz in 1983. The version that N-Sensei gave to me was published by Casa Ricordi, an Italian publisher that suggests wildly different bowings and dynamics.
You might be wondering why this matters, or why different publishers would suggest different bowings for the same piece of music written by the same guy, Johann Sebastian Bach. But here’s the catch: the “original” manuscript from when the pieces were composed in the early 1700s doesn’t exist. What we know of the six suites are based on secondary sources, including a hand-written copy by Bach’s second wife, Anna Magdalena—and her version doesn’t include bowings or dynamics.
Researchers have obsessed over how Bach meant these pieces to be played. Apparently, they weren’t even meant for the cello, but for the violoncello, an antiquated instrument that was played on the shoulder—more like the viola. (Boom.)
Regardless, the contemporary classical world still prefers the International Music Company’s edition, for whatever reason. So much so, that when I was in the waiting room to audition for the University Orchestra with my Ricordi bowings, another freshman boy openly scoffed at me and said, “You think you can get in with those bowings?” (If only I could have scoffed back. I got second chair; he didn’t even make the cut.)
I told this anecdote to N-Sensei, who responded that the British and Americans didn’t like Ricordi because the Italians were too passionate. “Americans are particularly conservative,” she said. “Especially when it comes to their emotions.”
She also told me that I should continue to play the Bach suites year after year, as a way of keeping track of my emotions. The way I play the suites will sound different when I’m 18, 20, 25, 30. Andante will be faster or slower depending on how fast I’m walking at that age. “When you’re younger,” she said, “you’ll also associate major chords with happiness and minor chords with sadness. That will begin to change, too.” I didn’t understand then, but I think I’m beginning to now.
After kids, it’s been hard to find time to practice. The 2-year-old will beg to put his fingers on every part and unwind the strings, and the 6-month-old isn’t exactly the most patient listener. But I find time, here and there, even if it’s just to play one or two of the Bach suites. (My go-to’s are No. 1, 2, 3, and 5. Four and 6 are still works-in-progress.) Most of it’s muscle memory, but I occasionally glance at the battered sheet music to remind myself of what I was thinking in the years I put in the margin notes. “Gentle here.” “Save energy.” “Magical.”
Come “see” me this Friday, October 30 (6:30pm CT / 7:30pm ET) at a virtual launch party for The Pinch! I’ll be reading some excerpts from a short story that appears in Vol. 40.2, which was a runner-up for a contest judged by Bryan Washington. Zoom details below, and click here to get a reminder link.
https://memphis.zoom.us/j/81291925864?pwd=S1JZeFZrWkN4VjdrbGxKY1UvS2MyQT09
Meeting ID: 812 9192 5864
Passcode: pinchme
I've been enjoying Nicholas Cords' new solo viola album this week, which includes a transcription of the 1st Bach suite (not sure which bowings he is using!), plus one of Britten's cello concertos: https://nicholascords.bandcamp.com/album/touch-harmonious-icr018