BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
Welcome to our series, What the Fact?!
Throughout 2018, we’re teaming up with talent at the Australian National Academy of Music to bring you informed answers to real questions and topics about your music career.
Ever wondered why you feel performance anxiety? What the deal is with tuning to 440Hz – or not? How to lead an orchestra? We’re here to tell you all about it.
When it comes to viola jokes, Alexander MacDonald has heard them all. So in this week’s What the Fact?! we wanted to learn just why his instrument gets such a bad wrap.
Alexander has played viola since he was 11, and the University of Auckland graduate will show us what his instrument is made of in his upcoming ANAM recital on 5 June (a school at which he is now a third-year student). Alexander specialises in solo viola works in his Masters of Music (Research), which delves into the performer-composer relationships of this area.
In 2013 he founded the Rothko Quartet, and it toured Europe on the won the ROSL/Pettman Scholarship – he performed with them at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and has been in international demand ever since.
Let’s hack violas!
Alexander, let’s start from the beginning. Viola. How and why did you dare pick up the instrument?
The beginning? I was born to a Kiwi couple – lawyer/fine art graduate, and electrical engineer lecturer in Calgary, Canada. After being moved at the age of 3 to the volcanic isthmus of Auckland, New Zealand, I had a full childhood of normal school and extra-curricular activities, with a severe interest in maths and the hard sciences.
My parents both had some musical abilities; classical piano, maternal; and Scottish bagpipes, paternal. Aged 11, I distinctly remember my mother offering me lessons on an instrument of my choice.
Years later, she told me of the sinking feeling she had inside when I asked for violin: she knew it would be months or possibly years of scratchy sounds. After a few years of sawing away, a growth spurt or two, and a change of teacher, it was clear that I’d outgrown my three-quarter sized violin.
This new teacher was a violist as well as a violinist, played me both of her instruments, and suggested this could be a practical point to transition. I’m not exactly sure why I chose to change, but I haven’t looked back. The viola suits me and I suit the viola. My mum loves the sound I make now, too.
Throughout your career, what have been some of the harshest viola jokes or insults you’ve received?
Just one? They’re all harsh in their own way. I really appreciate people who are able to laugh at themselves, and I think that’s a good trait for life as a violist.
The most gut wrenching is:
What’s the difference between a trampoline and a viola?
People take their shoes off to jump on a trampoline.
One of the funniest is:
What is the difference between the front and last desk of a viola section?
A semitone and a semiquaver
Let me ask you straight: why does everybody hate on violas?
There’s two sides to this stone – one is the current cultural situation with non-professional orchestras (youth, community, etc). Because of the similarity to the violin, the viola section often ends up as the dregs of musicians who didn’t quite have the talent or put in the time to be good enough for the violin section.
The other side to this coin is of the intrinsic acoustic quality of the viola. Where the violin is perfectly proportioned for the pitch of the strings, the viola is a compromise: if it were big enough for the pitches of the strings, it would be so large one couldn’t fit it under your chin, or reach the end of the fingerboard. This results in a much more introspective, gruff, mallow, dark colour than the violin and the cello, which has also the right proportions for the pitches of the strings.
If a violist is to imitate the basic sound of a violin or a cello, it takes so much effort and control, and the result will only be approaching the same quality of sound. Of course, this is an unfair assessment. If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree…
Beyond the criticisms, why is viola an instrument we should all start to take more seriously? What are the redemptive qualities?
“The viola is seemingly just a big violin but tuned a fifth lower. In reality, the two instruments are worlds apart. They both have three strings in common – the A, D, and G strings. The high E-string lends the violin a powerful luminosity and metallic penetrating tone, which is missing in the viola. The violin leads, the viola remains in the shade. In return, the low C-string gives the viola a unique ascerbity, compact, somewhat hoarse, with an aftertaste of wood, earth and tannic acid.”
– György Ligeti in the preface for his Sonata for Viola Solo (1991–1994)
I’m not sure what to add to this. Ligeti’s sonata is one of the corner stones of the modern viola repertoire. I guess it has suffered, as a lot of secondary orchestral instruments, with a lack of solo repertoire until the second half of the 20th Century. Bartok and Walton concertos, and the Mozart Sinfonia Concertante, are some of the exceptions to this. They’re all gorgeous pieces in their own right, but it is a bit cruel to put a violist in front of a symphony orchestra and demand they are able to cut through.
Viola is best for me when it’s in a string quartet – shifting between different layers of the texture, being a bass instrument sometimes, duelling with the violins, adding subliminal atmosphere, and on the rare occasion, pumping out a meaty solo.
In terms of unaccompanied solo repertoire, there is so much good material. Tabea Zimmerman, Garth Knox, Nobuko Imai, and others have been encouraging of the viola solo repertoire. Works like Penderecki’s Cadenza for Solo Viola, Ligeti’s Sonata for Solo Viola, Berio’s Sequenza, G. Grisey’s Prologue, etc. have often played a pivotal role in a composer’s development or development of a musical genre.
What’s the culture like within the different orchestras and ensembles?
If a section is understaffed or led by someone without enough experience, that’s when there can be an ingrained in-joke about any section. I’ve definitely been in a section where the leader has such a different perspective and idea of music-making than their colleagues that it had created a long-term problem with personnel and sound of the orchestra.
Why is viola better than the violin?
We’re literally less highly strung.
By the same argument before, judging a monkey on its ability to photosynthesise is not a very relevant. I really have enjoyed pretty much every viola player I’ve met – we usually have an instant non-competitive vibe.
Tell us about the works coming up in your ANAM performance and why they make your instrument shine.
This is a very special recital for me. I am falling in love with the Hummel Sonata for Viola and Piano, Op. 5 No. 3 – it’s such fun and gorgeous piece. The piano part is a monster, taken on by a more formidable monster-tamer – Peter de Jager (who should be no stranger to Melbourne audiences). Aside from this almost operatic beauty, I’ve a little bouquet of Kurtag miniatures, a world premiere by emerging New Zealand composer Reuben Jellyman, more Kurtag miniatures, and one of the seminal spectral works – Grisey’s Prologue to Les espaces acoustiques.
What do you wish people would understand about the viola?
It’s slightly larger than violin, not smaller.
And finally, when you hear a viola joke these days, what do you say back?
‘I’ve heard that one before.’ Or, if the mood is right, I’ll tell my favourite musical joke:
How can you tell a soprano is at the door?
She can’t find the key and doesn’t know when to come in.
Any parting words of advice for budding violists?
A, D, G, C.
No, but seriously, be your own artists, learn how to learn, how to teach, learn to be a musician that happens to be a viola player. It’s a lovely club, but at the end of the day, 97 per cent of the time, you’re going to be on stage with other musicians. And the end musical result is much more fascinating and engaging if we consider ourselves artists rather than viola players.
Rock up to ANAM Recital: Alexander MacDonald (viola) at 1pm June 5, ANAM, South Melbourne Town Hall. Tickets are just $5 at the door. You can also watch ANAM musicians perform in Lawrence Power: Shostakovich, 7.30pm June 16 in ANAM.
Check back in soon for our next What the Fact?! with professionals in the music industry.
