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Many Strings - One Journey My own violin learning path
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Chapter 2: Kayser, Kreutzer, and Concertos |
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We moved to On Shebang, I was ushered on a merry-go-round type contraption while the Miss Teenage L.A. song played. The contraption stopped in front of Mr. Kasem himself, and I was startled because I'd never seen anyone in TV makeup. |
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My father, had instructed me to say "Sir" after every answer, so when asked
what I was going to do for the talent competition, I said "I will play Belle
Nuit by Offenbach, Sir."
I had retrieved this piece out of my red Whistler Introducing the Positions book, and it is more commonly known as Barcarolle, but my dad, who spoke five languages, had coached me to say Belle Nuit, which he believed would be more effective and intriguing. "That sounds hard," answered Mr. Kasem. I did play it
later in a dilapidated shed in |
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We later found out that
since I was yet some months away yet from |
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Here I am in the turquoise dress I wore on Shebang and for the talent competition. I later wore it for my 11th grade yearbook photo for Pasadena High School. | ||||||||||||
| After school began and I joined the orchestra, I was able to start lessons with an eminent but strict teacher who lived about a twenty-minute walk from our home. She lived in a large two-story house, and when I arrived early, I was allowed to watch part of the lesson before mine. Having been a child prodigy herself, she had a fondness for young star violinists, especially the 8-year old prodigy whom I sometimes had a chance to listen to and speak with (she loved reading Dickens and was looking forward to going to music camp in the mountains). Soon afterwards she would perform Lalo Symhonie Espagnole with the Boston Pops. | ||||||||||||||
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| Though this teacher was renowned, I always felt intimidated by her "Old World" strictness, even though I sometimes helped out informally as a companion to her elderly mother when my teacher had to go out. I think I may have been afforded this opportunity because I could speak a little German. Ultimately, my fear that I would do something wrong during my lesson and incur my teacher's displeasure got in the way of productive communication. I remained with her for approximately 3 years. Examining her marked scores now, I can recognize and appreciate the intensity of the training and the immense scope of her experience. Even now I see her distinctly muscled left hand which must have seen far more training at a far younger age than I could ever imagine. | ||||||||||||||
| Somewhere around this time the Hrimaly Scale-Studies for the Violin came into my life. Revisiting this volume gives me the opportunity to tape its deteriorated covers back on. We seem to have skipped over the preparatory studies, the first position scales, the major and minor scales beginning with various fingers and bowings, directly to Chapter 7, Major and Minor Scales and Arpeggios in Two Octaves, Changing Positions. | ||||||||||||||
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This diligence lasted from March 4 to July 11, but what
year? Was it 1968 or 1969? I would practice these scales on the
stage of a nearby junior high auditorium during my summer vacation--I had a
penchant for seeking out interesting places to practice and dream.
Subsequently I was assigned some three-octave scales in Chapter 10, which
grueling instructions say to play them in every tempo from Andante to
Vivace, and with every kind of bowing (Ito be copied from Nos. 2, 4, and 5). I
don't imagine I followed these instructions.
These studies are also now available as part of the previously mentioned amazing library of violin studies on CD: Violin Methods & Studies: The Ultimate Collection (Version 2.0). |
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Fall and Winter kept me busy
with the Kayser Elementary and Progressive Studies for the Violin,
introduced in the Preface as being a suitable prelude for the Kreutzer
Etudes. It contains 36 studies divided into three "books." |
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The heavily marked first book shows I studied most of them except the slow second study. On October 14, my father's birthday, I am assigned Etude 8, slurred 8th notes in 3/4 time and told to use whole bows. I am often reminded by my teacher to play smoothly with steady bowing, to watch bow crossings, to prepare the fingers of the left hand, and to plan ahead. I appear to have studied fewer of Book II's etudes. With the markings as an indication, I studied #16, the #20 double stop etude, #21, and #22. In Book III, I only studied the dotted eight note study #32 and the #33 staccato study. On the inside cover my teacher explains to me the intervals coming up and down of the the melodic minor in a as well as the harmonic minor scales. |
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| As anticipated, the Kayser studies led to the Kreutzer 42 Studies for Violin. I am gazing at three versions of these studies. The oldest one is the Schirmer Edition without its cover. In college I studied the Carl Fischer Edition, and much later, I learned from the attractive International Edition (Ivan Galamian). | ||||||||||||||
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I
may have completed more studies in the early years than at any other time, but
it will be interesting to see which studies became repeat assignments with new
teachers.
From the early edition, I seem to have plowed through Etudes #1 through 11. #2 is the etude Jack Benny used to have such fun with, the one with 25 variations. I must have had intonation difficulties with #8 in E major, judging by the number of up and down arrows my teacher marked. I also studied #13, 14, 16, 19 (a trill study where I am told to play the second half for 15 minutes twice a day), #20, 21 (a triplet study assigned on my 16th or 17th birthday in which I'm advised to ignore the trills), #22, 25, 27, 34, and possibly #37. |
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What traditionally trained
violinist's life would be complete without encountering Otakar Sevçik? I
met six of his volumes at least, and there may have been overlap
amongst teachers:
Sevçik School of Violin Technics: Opus 1, Part 1, Exercises
in the First Position |
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| All of my editions are Schirmer, except for the Opus 5, which is a Bosworth Edition. Looking back, I can hardly imagine I had to meet up with this many tortuous Sevcik books! I shared this sentiment once with the teacher in my adult years, and he reminded me that Sevçik, while it may seem tedious, holds a microscope to the violin's technical challenges, and that gives a certain beauty to it. He had me practice scales on one string using the Carl Flesch scale studies, but I see now that during my youth Sevçik offered a similar experience in his Shifting volume. | ||||||||||||||
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Some exercises were assigned me in each of these volumes, but by no means did I finish them,
or I'd still be sawing away. And these six volumes were only a fraction what
Sevçik offers to torment young violinists! :). Of course, I was required to
study these exercises slowly and deliberately. I wonder if the more athletic
violinists among us can race through them as warmup exercises? My teacher must
have been deeply steeped in the
Sevçik tradition, for she seemed to know clearly
what to assign me, sometimes skipping many exercises to get to that certain
one two-thirds of the way into the book.
From a distance of decades, I am bewildered trying to tell these books apart....Modern students encountering Sevçik, whether by order or inclination, might benefit from getting the CD collection. It has all of these except the Opus 6 (but I wouldn't fret over that omission) and then some. Bosworth also has more modern editions available, with more colorful covers than my bland Schirmer editions. |
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| Here is the modern version of Book 1 with colorful updated cover. I may investigate Books 2 and 3 for wedding performance use. |
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| Other short recital pieces I studied with this teacher included Lichner's Gypsy Dance (the latter may have been studied in Kansas; it is an interesting puzzle to analyze these old, undated scores!), Severn's Polish Dance, Schubert's The Bee, and possibly Beethoven Romance in F, although my original working copy was lost and replaced with an unmarked score. | ||||||||||||||
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| At PCC I played in the Chamber Orchestra as well as the Pasadena Community Symphony, both under the direction of Mr. Frank Vandermaten, a wonderful and supportive violinist/conductor, who due to the loss during his youth of several fingers on his left hand, learned to play backwards, using his left hand for bowing. My own frustrations and doubts about my musical future were put in perspective when I realized his plight and dedication to the violin. | ||||||||||||||
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Somewhere near the end of my
first year in Junior College I began study with a new teacher, who had also
been acting director of the Pasadena Community Symphony. Professor Kenneth
Fiske taught both at Pomona College and at Cal State Fullerton, and I took
my lessons at Pomona College in the Green Room. I traveled there every weekend,
taking several buses. I immediately felt comfortable with Professor
Fiske, who had dark eyes that always seemed to be smiling. I remember
waiting for my lesson in practice rooms at Pomona College, and how it felt to
be in the Green Room, but have more difficulty recollecting all that I
studied with him, at least in regard to etudes.
For a while, attempting to correct my nervous vibrato, he wouldn't allow me to use it at all until he said so. We did that exercise on the slow movement of the Bach E Major Concerto. I would unwittingly sneak it in many times and he would then stop me. It became kind of a game. I have images of working on the Bach E major Violin Concerto during the summer in another practice space I'd adopted at Pasadena Nazarene College, which was near my house and would later become Ambassador College. On the cover of the Bach are barely legible scribbles, my own, about what else I am to practice: 45 minutes scales, Medit. 20 minutes (probably Massenet's Meditation from Thaïs, as I wasn't into Zen at the time). I am to play some trouble spots marked 1,2,3 every other day for a half hour, and practice the Nardini for one hour (referring to the Nardini Concerto in E minor). The Nardini Concerto I practiced outside in some bushes one fine spring day at PCC. I worked from the International (Gingold) edition. |
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Professor Fiske encouraged me to transfer to intimate Pomona College or to Cal State Fullerton, where he taught, but different influences were pulling me in the direction of faraway Stanford University, which had also accepted me but where I didn't even know who my violin teacher would be. Although a state scholarship would pay for tuition, I have sometimes regretted that I chose Stanford, a more impersonal place that did not offer a music specialty such as education within its major and whose cost would not allow me to attend for more than the two-year length of my scholarship. But we can't go back, can we.... TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 3 |
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These pages were created between January 21 and January 27, 2008. Key words: learning violin, violin learning path, violin learning journey, Many Strings, One Journey, Dorothy Barth, traditional violin study, violin performance, violin pedagogy, violin teachers |
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