BY LAURA BARTON
When I began studying violin at the Australian National Academy of Music almost three years ago, I underwent the same process that most new students do: a complete technical overhaul.
This experience is different for everyone; mine began with reforming my bow arm. I started with two weeks of playing nothing but open strings. Then, I graduated to Rodolphe Kreutzer’s technically challenging Etude No. 2 (for the luckily uninitiated, check out this video), and played only that for a further four weeks.
Three hours a day.
Just Kreutzer 2.
It’s enough to drive anyone insane.
But, after my sanity broke, I came out the other side – and suddenly, I had won the battle against myself. I loved Kreutzer 2. It all made sense; the harmonic progression, the rise and fall of the melody, and I realised that it was the most beautiful thing I had ever played.
Because I had to.
The only way to play that 45 seconds of music for three hours every day was to think of it not as a study, but as music. Everything that we as musicians play has been written for a purpose; every note and marking took time and thought and effort to create. Even if the point of it is to be pointless (I’m looking at you, John “I have nothing to say and that is the point of my saying it” Cage).
If you can’t accept that and find things to enjoy in every piece you play, you’ll end up hating half of what you perform. And music is meant to be enjoyed, right?
Everyone gets frustrated and bored when we have to do the same thing over and over again. We’ve all been there; whether it’s someone at the back of the crowd shouting at you to “play Wagon Wheel!” for the tenth time that night, or performing Handel’s Messiah for the third consecutive weekend. In your solo practice, it’s playing the Mozart A major Concerto for the 613th day in a row because it’s on every single audition list. It can really wear you down. If we only changed our approach and started trying to find things we did like in it instead, chances are we’d start enjoying ourselves more. The more you practice something, the easier it becomes (or so my teacher tells me). So if we practice enjoying new and different things, it can become your innate response to a situation instead of something that you have to force.
The point is, we’re never going to love absolutely everything that we play – but we still have to play it.
One way that I have made it through performances of some of my less-favourite pieces has been by thinking: ‘I’m going to give this everything because this is the last time I will ever have to play it!!’. You also have to remember that, just because it’s not your favourite piece, doesn’t mean it’s not someone else’s. What is a chore to you might be the one thing an audience member has been looking forward to all day. If you don’t play for yourself, play for that person; play for the people who have taken time out of their lives and paid money to come and experience this piece, maybe for the first time, maybe for the hundredth.
The wolf you feed is the one that grows. I have had my fair share of feeding the cynicism and the impatience, until my love of music withered and it became a chore. Lately, I’ve been trying to change that – to starve the disdain and feed the passion again. To be honest, it’s a struggle to break that habit; but whenever I’m practising and feel like smashing my violin against the wall, I go back and play Kreutzer 2 again, and try and remember why I loved it.
I’d like to leave you with this quote from violin legend Jascha Heifetz, which I printed on the back of the program notes for my honours recital: “A violinist should always be happy when he is playing. If he is playing well, he should be happy that he is playing well. If he is not playing well, then he should be happy that it will soon be over.”
Laura Barton will give her recital at 6pm October 8 at ANAM, South Melbourne Town Hall. (She’s been practising Strauss and Szymanowski for the occasion.)
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Image supplied. Laura captured by Pia Johnson for ANAM.
