Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

While I’m taking a hiatus from writing (and if you didn’t realize I’m on hiatus, you haven’t been paying attention), I’ve been reconnecting with the musical avocation I put down when I picked up the author’s pen.

David T Stone and company did an excellent job repairing my instruments, including fixing the divots left in my viola when a mic boom fell on us during a performance. Natalia (my viola) looks wonderful, and my violin is once again in playing condition.

I, however, am not.

My last musical gig was decades ago–literally–and there’s a lot of rust to knock off my skills. In fact, “skills” is a pretty generous term. I’m really at the “excellent fakery” stage.

Muscle memory is a powerful thing, though. My body remembers how to hold the instrument, how to keep the bow straight as it passes over the strings, and my fingers remember (in general terms) how to shift from Ist to IIIrd position. My ear remembers how the scales and arpeggios are supposed to sound–major, minor, modal, diminished seventh, whole tone–and my fingers have been taking their cue from my ears, a fact that has ramifications both good and bad.

Good, in that I can open my book of Bach suites and my fingers know where to go, not with precision, but they remember the road from the many, many times they’ve traveled it.

Bad, in that playing musical pieces I already know doesn’t exercise the one area where I need the most work: reading music.

Remember those language classes you took in high school? I, through a ridiculous process of elimination, decided to take German in school. My reasons were faulty at every turn: I never thought I’d have a need for Spanish (it was a different world, back then), Latin was for serious eggheads (which I denied being), French seemed too twee (hey, I hadn’t been on a date yet), and they didn’t offer Italian (which I would have leapt at). German was left, so German I took.

I studied German for four years in middle and high school, and once the requirements were fulfilled, I never took another class. Today, my German education has shrunk to one sentences–“Meine Plattenspieler ist kaput.”–and one exchange–“Sie ist meine Schwester…Nicht schlecht!” Hand me a book in German, and I’ll hand you a blank stare.

However, having played violin and viola for three decades, I never thought I’d forget how to read music.

Not so. In my first practice session, as I opened the sheet music, I realized I couldn’t even name the notes on the staff.

I cannot describe how utterly depressing that moment was. It was as if a towering edifice that I’d constructed over decades of toil suddenly crumbled like a castle of sand. Notes, key signatures, the circle of fifths, alto clef, treble clef, double-stops, mordants, trills, turns, appoggiaturas…they were all shrouded in dusty linens in the dark and unlit attic of my brain.

I’ve had a few practice sessions, now, and some of those shrouds have been pulled off. I’m forcing the issue, including some sight-reading in each session and slowly, reluctantly, my brain is retrieving those old items and bringing them downstairs. There is so much that I took for granted, though. Intonation, bow position, stance, even stupendously basic things like keeping an adequate grip on the viola between chin and shoulder. And it’s agony, hearing how bad I am, but each session I remember more, and each session I sound a little better.

I end each session either with a piece I know, or with a little “symphonic karaoke” where I take an orchestral part and play along with a recording of a world-class orchestra.

I also end each session bathed in sweat and aching from the tips of my fingers to the balls of my feet.

And yet, I’m enjoying myself.

Go figger.

k