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Question about becoming a violinist

May 8, 2012 at 2:30 PM

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Music history's almost as important as technique, just as passion's almost as important as correct intonation. Will you play Bach like you might play Bartok? How will you understand the passion, the drama behind Brahms without knowing his silent, patient, self-sacrificing love for Clara? Will you play Mozart as you might play Prokofiev? Do you play Schubert as you might play Debussy?

What you're suggesting is writing a historical novel without knowing historical background. Each composer had a life, their philosophies shaped by their environment, the events during childhood, political turmoil that may have moved them. Chopin's Revolutionary etude was not written during the French revolution, it was written during the Polish. Chopin was Polish, and he was greatly distressed to know that his homeland was divided by turmoil. Without knowing that, how can you play the etude with passion, anger, the scream? Just as singing the Beatles like Lady Gaga would sound odd (and probably wrong), you need to know the era to guess what the composer was going through, feeling and seeing to play it with conviction.

All my teachers, from local studio to world-class violinist, all insisted that I look up the historical era for the piece I was playing. One of them even insisted that I look up the food they ate, the clothing they wore, what kind of things were in trend then. "You can't be the composer, but you'll have to try to think like one," was what he said. I agree. Completely.

Music is not about technique. It's about telling the story. You can't tell a story without setting a proper background.