Noteworthy, Not Worthy? by Dorothy Barth

Dorothy Barth, Freelance Writer Dorothy Barth, Solo Violin

Noteworthy, Not Worthy?

by Dorothy Barth
Copyright 2007

Author's Note: The following article was published in 2007 in California Music Teacher as well as Stringendo (the Washington DC/MD journal of the American String Teachers Association). This article's theme addresses the problem of affording a quality instrument. It it is a dilemma shared by many serious musicians, but perhaps particularly so by string players due to the scarcity of valued older instruments as well as the increasing expense of fine new instruments.

This article will appeal to a larger audience of musicians and non-musicians alike; magazine or newspaper editors who wish to purchase this story for reprint may contact the author.

My ultimate violin should cost between eight and twelve thousand dollars. A modest investment by professional standards, but for me my best and final instrument.

The exact number within this range varies according to my optimism. Until now, I’ve not divulged it to anyone except to the staff at the shop where I rent my current violin, a premium Chinese instrument. The conversation usually goes like this:

“I’ll likely return the rental in the next 4 to 6 months so that I can purchase something permanent. If I were to come up with (x) number of dollars, might you have something interesting in stock?”

Sometimes I add how I think my future funds will appear—perhaps through a particularly generous work assignment, perhaps through savings from gig money. Their reply is always cordial and encouraging, and if I share my imaginary range, they generally steer me toward the higher end.

Had I managed to purchase my life’s violin right after college, I would not now have this dilemma. Several friends acquired violins in the early seventies that were in the five thousand dollar range, a number then incomprehensible to me, representing more than double my student loans, already a terrifying sum. Other friends bought mansions in Southern California for the preposterous price of $25,000. Looking back, they shared a gift of foresight that was and may still be unfamiliar to me.

My process for deciding whether or not I am worthy of a fine instrument involves a complex formula, something akin to the point system presented to us by Canadian Immigration when my husband Bert suggested, just three months after we had met, that we relocate to his favorite vacation destination, Vancouver, B.C. We never quite got there, although we might have been able to gather the points in 1996.

My personal point system involves my entire life’s relationship to the violin, so it is even more intricate than the Canadian immigration model. My assessment covers the areas of childhood wonder and ambition, adolescent ardor, university misadventures, early adulthood (the lost years in matters of the violin), millennium renaissance, and my current life as a violin player who gigs.

Childhood Wonder and Ambition
In Amsterdam at age five I received my first violin, a loaner, along with my father’s fervent hope that I would learn to play just like the young Yehudi Menuhin. I didn’t get a chance to hear the child prodigy because first, he was by then grown up, and second, we owned neither a record player nor a television set. However, I studied his photo for many hours, at all angles and with religious fervor and fascination.

Very soon after I began my violin lessons in Holland, I announced to my teacher that I wanted to learn vibrato. Upon being told I lacked the technical apparatus to produce vibrato and might for several years, I indignantly decided I would have to teach myself.

Score one point for early childhood wonder and ambition.

Adolescent Ardor

Our family immigrated to the United States when I was nine, settling first in Lawrence, Kansas, then in Southern California. All this moving interrupted my violin lessons, but sometime during early adolescence I acquired my next violin, which I named Benvenuto. I have no recollection of Benvenuto’s quality, and he alas came to an unfortunate end, to be discussed later in the Mishaps and Misadventures section. The Nurnberger bow that accompanied him for part of his life was selected by my teacher when I was 15. It survived Benvenuto and serves me to this day.

I fell in love with the Mendelssohn Concerto during the summer of ’66, my first summer in Pasadena. I listened to it endlessly and persuaded my parents to buy me a copy of the sheet music. The tan International Edition, peppered with my own insights and explanatory marks, remains in my collection today. I hadn’t begun my lessons yet, but when I did, I vowed to show my promise by playing the Mendelssohn.

While auditioning for my first of several distinguished teachers in California, I was interrupted during the opening Allegro, molto appassionato with this memorable verdict: “That’s lovely, dear, but very amateurish.”

Seeking a second opinion, I then played the beloved Mendelssohn for my high school orchestra conductor, the subject of my first adolescent crush other than the Beatles. He smiled, observed “You play that with a vengeance,” and placed me first chair second.

Despite these critiques, I pressed on, even going so far as to donate all my Beatles records to astonished friends upon deciding they detracted from my efforts to gain mastery of the violin.

During summer vacations I would practice for hours, sometimes in the empty auditorium of a local junior high school, sometimes in the practice rooms of a private university. I may or may not have asked for permission to use these venues but was creative in searching them out, and doors were generally less locked in those days. My three-octave scales emanating from the empty auditorium inspired in me visions of future excellence.

My porch playing could be judged as another positive indicator. Ramshackle as it was, its façade covered with bright fuchsia Bougainvilleas, our rented home, like many of the neighborhood’s Craftsman homes, had a front porch. During pleasant late afternoons, I would use this porch as practice room, simultaneously entertaining the neighbors and anyone traveling on Brigden Road.

This community outreach in combination with other indicators of adolescent ardor and effort deserves, I believe, at least one point toward my dream violin.

Mishaps and Misadventures

After two enjoyable and productive years at Pasadena City College as a music major, I transferred to Stanford to finish my degree. Amidst so many wealthy overachievers at an exotic, isolated campus far from home, I felt intimidated—so much so that I refused to join the orchestra.

Not because of fear of the conductor developed in high school, which several benign and supportive conductors in junior college had somewhat neutralized. It was for reasons more complex and neurotic. I shuddered to anticipate that my audition would land me in last chair second. The concertmaster and other players occupying premium seats would be physics, pre-med, or worse yet, economics majors. This would prove without a doubt that as a music major, I was an impostor.

In retrospect, I believe this may have been a wimpy, unadventurous decision not worthy of a person deserving a fine violin. Subtract one point.

Benvenuto came to an unfortunate accidental end by my own hand during my senior year at Stanford. The details of his demise will not be made public. Suffice it to say, I was suitably devastated and remorseful (our dorm advisor, a graduate student in material sciences, played Bridge Over Troubled Water for me), so no points need be subtracted as punishment for this incident.

Lost but not Forgotten

I returned home to Southern California with a music degree but without musical confidence, with bow intact but without a violin. A neighbor who remembered my porch performances and whose hobby was fixing guitars happened to have one violin in his inventory, a rough-hewn specimen down to the pitted fingerboard. I purchased it for $35, and it became my instrument for approximately the next twenty years.

This was not as sad as it seems, since I didn’t use my violin much during those two decades. I had deemed myself a failure as a violinist and decided to concentrate on matters more mundane.

In San Diego, I began an amateur relationship with the soprano and alto recorders, developing a fondness for early music through workshops available to recorder enthusiasts. It was easier and far less mysterious to purchase respectable recorders for several hundred dollars than to even think about replacing my fatally flawed but well-intentioned fiddle.

Eventually, I was inspired to offer my violin playing to various early music ensembles and took a reverse pride in volunteering that I had bought it for $35—approximately the level of violin I deserved. A comrade at the early music weekend on Palomar Mountain observed that I nevertheless produced a big tone, and this filled me with satisfaction.

While visiting a friend in Denver, I came upon large music store and engaged two young staff members in conversation. I had been perusing recorder sheet music but upon telling them I also played violin, they invited me to play a Lupo they claimed had just arrived and was worth $100,000. But first, they said, they had to put strings on it.

I grabbed some recorder music and was handed the purported Lupo. My friend photographed me playing it with reverence and holding on to it for dear life. The young men said it was awesome that I could take recorder music and play it just like that on the violin. This statement alone might put the authenticity of the Lupo and their access to it in question. When I later considered the incident, it all seemed unlikely. No violin shop since has had the hospitality of inviting me to sample such a valuable instrument, but it was a stirring interlude.

No points added or subtracted for the lost years. They were not without music, and my misguided separation from the violin was its own punishment.

Millennium Renaissance

By the time I met my husband Bert I had begun to perform on occasion. Bert encouraged a modest upgrade to my violin, and through a newspaper ad I found my next violin. I regret not having subsequently taken some private lessons with the interesting man who sold it to me.

He lived in a senior high rise with his wife, previously a concert violinist but now suffering from Alzheimer’s. He had toured with her as her accompanist but played the violin remarkably well himself. To supplement his retirement income, he bought violins from various sources and then resold them. His latest stash had arrived from Boston. Pleased to have a visitor, he played for me the modern Italian violin that had been his wife’s instrument and said the violin I was about to purchase was not quite as good as that, but close.

The violin I bought from him for $700 had an Antoniazzi label, and for several years I thought it was indeed an Antoniazzi. More than one violin shop subsequently assured me that it was an undistinguished German violin with significant shortcomings. Apparently, spurious labels come in names other than Stradivarius. Or perhaps the label was real but the violin was not. Still, it was a far better instrument than the pitted wonder of my previous two decades.

We moved to Central California, where I recommenced violin study. For almost three years I averaged at least three hours a day of practice, kept practice diaries, surveyed lots of repertory, and continued gigging.

My teacher did not comment on my instruments, even when I played the Beethoven Concerto on the cigar box when my more recent purchase was being repaired. Never did he protest, “But this is a really terrible instrument” or inform me that I was now ready for an Advancing or perhaps an Advanced model as described in violin shop catalogs.

While observing lessons at a friend’s studio, I became aware that some beginning students were playing instruments far costlier than my violin.

I flashed back to Renaissance music camp the previous year, to the young couple with the matched custom-crafted recorders and sackbuts. Upon seeing us admire their wealth of instruments, they volunteered, somewhat apologetically, “What else were we supposed to do with all those dot com dollars?” At first I envied those people for whom resources for instruments flow freely, but this feeling was tempered when I considered that the opportunity to think about the mysteries and logistics of acquiring a wonderful violin is in itself a privileged pursuit.

Score one point for my violin renaissance. Or may I boldly claim three points, one for each year of committed practice? If necessary, subtract a half point for envy.

Gigs Galore

During the last decade, I’ve had occasion to perform at weddings as well as more motley occasions such as Renaissance faires and Twelfth Night celebrations. It began with our recorder duo but evolved into mostly violin and recorder. Lately, I boldly added solo violin to the wedding options. The precarious situation of performing solo led me to another instrument. The cigar box could no longer in good conscience serve as a backup instrument for weddings, so two years ago, I delegated my fake Antoniazzi to backup status and rented a premium Chinese violin from a local dealer, believing I would need it for about a year before acquiring my fantasy instrument.

For never having missed a gig in ten years, score one point.

Noteworthy, Not Worthy?

Two years later, I still play the rental violin and have even developed a fondness for it, though not enough to purchase it as my best and final.

The sum of the points itemized in the preceding sections yields a positive number, indicating that I am indeed worthy of my ultimate, not-yet-discovered violin.

Only thing, the lucrative work assignment didn’t last as long as anticipated. The upper range of my imagined violin is just below the sticker price of a budget Hyundai, and Bert is driving a 1999 Escort clunker 60 miles each way to his job in the South Bay .

Suddenly, my heart is filled with gratitude and admiration for my premium rental violin.

Dorothy Barth, Freelance Writer	Dorothy Barth, Solo Violin

Noteworthy, Not Worthy?
by Dorothy Barth Copyright 2007
Author's Note: The following article was published in 2007 in California Music Teacher as well as Stringendo (the Washington DC/MD journal of the American String Teachers Association). This article's theme addresses the problem of affording a quality instrument. It it is a dilemma shared by many serious musicians, but perhaps particularly so by string players due to the scarcity of valued older instruments as well as the increasing expense of fine new instruments. This article will appeal to a larger audience of musicians and non-musicians alike; magazine or newspaper editors who wish to purchase this story for reprint may contact the author.
My ultimate violin should cost between eight and twelve thousand dollars. A modest investment by professional standards, but for me my best and final instrument. The exact number within this range varies according to my optimism. Until now, I’ve not divulged it to anyone except to the staff at the shop where I rent my current violin, a premium Chinese instrument. The conversation usually goes like this: “I’ll likely return the rental in the next 4 to 6 months so that I can purchase something permanent. If I were to come up with (x) number of dollars, might you have something interesting in stock?” Sometimes I add how I think my future funds will appear—perhaps through a particularly generous work assignment, perhaps through savings from gig money. Their reply is always cordial and encouraging, and if I share my imaginary range, they generally steer me toward the higher end. Had I managed to purchase my life’s violin right after college, I would not now have this dilemma. Several friends acquired violins in the early seventies that were in the five thousand dollar range, a number then incomprehensible to me, representing more than double my student loans, already a terrifying sum. Other friends bought mansions in Southern California for the preposterous price of $25,000. Looking back, they shared a gift of foresight that was and may still be unfamiliar to me. My process for deciding whether or not I am worthy of a fine instrument involves a complex formula, something akin to the point system presented to us by Canadian Immigration when my husband Bert suggested, just three months after we had met, that we relocate to his favorite vacation destination, Vancouver, B.C. We never quite got there, although we might have been able to gather the points in 1996. My personal point system involves my entire life’s relationship to the violin, so it is even more intricate than the Canadian immigration model. My assessment covers the areas of childhood wonder and ambition, adolescent ardor, university misadventures, early adulthood (the lost years in matters of the violin), millennium renaissance, and my current life as a violin player who gigs. Childhood Wonder and Ambition In Amsterdam at age five I received my first violin, a loaner, along with my father’s fervent hope that I would learn to play just like the young Yehudi Menuhin. I didn’t get a chance to hear the child prodigy because first, he was by then grown up, and second, we owned neither a record player nor a television set. However, I studied his photo for many hours, at all angles and with religious fervor and fascination. Very soon after I began my violin lessons in Holland, I announced to my teacher that I wanted to learn vibrato. Upon being told I lacked the technical apparatus to produce vibrato and might for several years, I indignantly decided I would have to teach myself. Score one point for early childhood wonder and ambition. Adolescent Ardor Our family immigrated to the United States when I was nine, settling first in Lawrence, Kansas, then in Southern California. All this moving interrupted my violin lessons, but sometime during early adolescence I acquired my next violin, which I named Benvenuto. I have no recollection of Benvenuto’s quality, and he alas came to an unfortunate end, to be discussed later in the Mishaps and Misadventures section. The Nurnberger bow that accompanied him for part of his life was selected by my teacher when I was 15. It survived Benvenuto and serves me to this day. I fell in love with the Mendelssohn Concerto during the summer of ’66, my first summer in Pasadena. I listened to it endlessly and persuaded my parents to buy me a copy of the sheet music. The tan International Edition, peppered with my own insights and explanatory marks, remains in my collection today. I hadn’t begun my lessons yet, but when I did, I vowed to show my promise by playing the Mendelssohn. While auditioning for my first of several distinguished teachers in California, I was interrupted during the opening Allegro, molto appassionato with this memorable verdict: “That’s lovely, dear, but very amateurish.” Seeking a second opinion, I then played the beloved Mendelssohn for my high school orchestra conductor, the subject of my first adolescent crush other than the Beatles. He smiled, observed “You play that with a vengeance,” and placed me first chair second. Despite these critiques, I pressed on, even going so far as to donate all my Beatles records to astonished friends upon deciding they detracted from my efforts to gain mastery of the violin. During summer vacations I would practice for hours, sometimes in the empty auditorium of a local junior high school, sometimes in the practice rooms of a private university. I may or may not have asked for permission to use these venues but was creative in searching them out, and doors were generally less locked in those days. My three-octave scales emanating from the empty auditorium inspired in me visions of future excellence. My porch playing could be judged as another positive indicator. Ramshackle as it was, its façade covered with bright fuchsia Bougainvilleas, our rented home, like many of the neighborhood’s Craftsman homes, had a front porch. During pleasant late afternoons, I would use this porch as practice room, simultaneously entertaining the neighbors and anyone traveling on Brigden Road. This community outreach in combination with other indicators of adolescent ardor and effort deserves, I believe, at least one point toward my dream violin. Mishaps and Misadventures After two enjoyable and productive years at Pasadena City College as a music major, I transferred to Stanford to finish my degree. Amidst so many wealthy overachievers at an exotic, isolated campus far from home, I felt intimidated—so much so that I refused to join the orchestra. Not because of fear of the conductor developed in high school, which several benign and supportive conductors in junior college had somewhat neutralized. It was for reasons more complex and neurotic. I shuddered to anticipate that my audition would land me in last chair second. The concertmaster and other players occupying premium seats would be physics, pre-med, or worse yet, economics majors. This would prove without a doubt that as a music major, I was an impostor. In retrospect, I believe this may have been a wimpy, unadventurous decision not worthy of a person deserving a fine violin. Subtract one point. Benvenuto came to an unfortunate accidental end by my own hand during my senior year at Stanford. The details of his demise will not be made public. Suffice it to say, I was suitably devastated and remorseful (our dorm advisor, a graduate student in material sciences, played Bridge Over Troubled Water for me), so no points need be subtracted as punishment for this incident. Lost but not Forgotten I returned home to Southern California with a music degree but without musical confidence, with bow intact but without a violin. A neighbor who remembered my porch performances and whose hobby was fixing guitars happened to have one violin in his inventory, a rough-hewn specimen down to the pitted fingerboard. I purchased it for $35, and it became my instrument for approximately the next twenty years. This was not as sad as it seems, since I didn’t use my violin much during those two decades. I had deemed myself a failure as a violinist and decided to concentrate on matters more mundane. In San Diego, I began an amateur relationship with the soprano and alto recorders, developing a fondness for early music through workshops available to recorder enthusiasts. It was easier and far less mysterious to purchase respectable recorders for several hundred dollars than to even think about replacing my fatally flawed but well-intentioned fiddle. Eventually, I was inspired to offer my violin playing to various early music ensembles and took a reverse pride in volunteering that I had bought it for $35—approximately the level of violin I deserved. A comrade at the early music weekend on Palomar Mountain observed that I nevertheless produced a big tone, and this filled me with satisfaction. While visiting a friend in Denver, I came upon large music store and engaged two young staff members in conversation. I had been perusing recorder sheet music but upon telling them I also played violin, they invited me to play a Lupo they claimed had just arrived and was worth $100,000. But first, they said, they had to put strings on it. I grabbed some recorder music and was handed the purported Lupo. My friend photographed me playing it with reverence and holding on to it for dear life. The young men said it was awesome that I could take recorder music and play it just like that on the violin. This statement alone might put the authenticity of the Lupo and their access to it in question. When I later considered the incident, it all seemed unlikely. No violin shop since has had the hospitality of inviting me to sample such a valuable instrument, but it was a stirring interlude. No points added or subtracted for the lost years. They were not without music, and my misguided separation from the violin was its own punishment. Millennium Renaissance By the time I met my husband Bert I had begun to perform on occasion. Bert encouraged a modest upgrade to my violin, and through a newspaper ad I found my next violin. I regret not having subsequently taken some private lessons with the interesting man who sold it to me. He lived in a senior high rise with his wife, previously a concert violinist but now suffering from Alzheimer’s. He had toured with her as her accompanist but played the violin remarkably well himself. To supplement his retirement income, he bought violins from various sources and then resold them. His latest stash had arrived from Boston. Pleased to have a visitor, he played for me the modern Italian violin that had been his wife’s instrument and said the violin I was about to purchase was not quite as good as that, but close. The violin I bought from him for $700 had an Antoniazzi label, and for several years I thought it was indeed an Antoniazzi. More than one violin shop subsequently assured me that it was an undistinguished German violin with significant shortcomings. Apparently, spurious labels come in names other than Stradivarius. Or perhaps the label was real but the violin was not. Still, it was a far better instrument than the pitted wonder of my previous two decades. We moved to Central California, where I recommenced violin study. For almost three years I averaged at least three hours a day of practice, kept practice diaries, surveyed lots of repertory, and continued gigging. My teacher did not comment on my instruments, even when I played the Beethoven Concerto on the cigar box when my more recent purchase was being repaired. Never did he protest, “But this is a really terrible instrument” or inform me that I was now ready for an Advancing or perhaps an Advanced model as described in violin shop catalogs. While observing lessons at a friend’s studio, I became aware that some beginning students were playing instruments far costlier than my violin. I flashed back to Renaissance music camp the previous year, to the young couple with the matched custom-crafted recorders and sackbuts. Upon seeing us admire their wealth of instruments, they volunteered, somewhat apologetically, “What else were we supposed to do with all those dot com dollars?” At first I envied those people for whom resources for instruments flow freely, but this feeling was tempered when I considered that the opportunity to think about the mysteries and logistics of acquiring a wonderful violin is in itself a privileged pursuit. Score one point for my violin renaissance. Or may I boldly claim three points, one for each year of committed practice? If necessary, subtract a half point for envy. Gigs Galore During the last decade, I’ve had occasion to perform at weddings as well as more motley occasions such as Renaissance faires and Twelfth Night celebrations. It began with our recorder duo but evolved into mostly violin and recorder. Lately, I boldly added solo violin to the wedding options. The precarious situation of performing solo led me to another instrument. The cigar box could no longer in good conscience serve as a backup instrument for weddings, so two years ago, I delegated my fake Antoniazzi to backup status and rented a premium Chinese violin from a local dealer, believing I would need it for about a year before acquiring my fantasy instrument. For never having missed a gig in ten years, score one point. Noteworthy, Not Worthy? Two years later, I still play the rental violin and have even developed a fondness for it, though not enough to purchase it as my best and final. The sum of the points itemized in the preceding sections yields a positive number, indicating that I am indeed worthy of my ultimate, not-yet-discovered violin. Only thing, the lucrative work assignment didn’t last as long as anticipated. The upper range of my imagined violin is just below the sticker price of a budget Hyundai, and Bert is driving a 1999 Escort clunker 60 miles each way to his job in the South Bay . Suddenly, my heart is filled with gratitude and admiration for my premium rental violin.