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The Devourer and the Devoured, Part 1/4

By Emily Hogstad
May 16, 2012 11:46

Here is a very long essay (over a year in the making) that discusses the relationship between violin prodigy Vivien Chartres and her mother, author Annie Vivanti. At the turn of the twentieth century, Vivien Chartres was often mentioned in the same breath as Bronislaw Huberman and Mischa Elman, two of the greatest prodigies in the history of violin playing. And yet for a variety of reasons her name has been largely lost to history. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first Chartres biography publicly available in print or on the Internet. Hopefully it shines a small light on these two extraordinary women and their unique, symbiotic relationship. I would be absolutely delighted if other readers, writers, and researchers dig even deeper into their story...believe me when I say I only skimmed the surface.

I’d like to thank Douglas D’Enno (Chartres’s grandson) and Vivanti expert Annie Urbancic for their generous feedback and encouragement. Any errors that remain in the text are entirely mine. (If you see anything that you feel ought to be altered, let me know.)

This piece will be in four parts. After all four are published, I will make a PDF available for printing that will include a full bibliography.

Enjoy.

***

There was a man, and he had a canary. He said, “What a dear little canary! I wish it were an eagle.” God said to him: “If you give your heart to it to feed on, it will become an eagle.” So the man gave his heart to it to feed on. And it became an eagle, and plucked his eyes out.

There was a woman, and she had a kitten. She said: “What a dear little kitten! I wish it were a tiger.” God said to her: “If you give your life’s blood to it to drink, it will become a tiger.” So the woman gave her life’s blood to it to drink. And it became a tiger, and tore her to pieces.

There was a man and a woman, and they had a child. They said: “What a dear little child! We wish it were a genius.” …

***

Nearly every prodigy has a parent who supports the development of his child’s unique, oftentimes unnerving gifts. Witness to the blossoming of extraordinary talent from the beginning, he aspires to encourage it and train it, like a gardener might train a vine. The role tends to be a thankless one. It is difficult (some would say impossible) to nurture a well-adjusted prodigy who has also taken advantage of every opportunity to develop professionally. Curious bystanders are always on hand to criticize every decision the parent makes. Your child is playing too much; let her rest and be a child. Your child isn’t playing enough; she will never develop into a great artist. When the child’s successes begin to snowball, it becomes more and more tempting to push her harder, faster, to see what she is all capable of doing. Some parents drift from supporting to hectoring, then from hectoring to abusing. Then, once the child has achieved notoriety - if the child achieves notoriety – the supporting parent inevitably melts into invisibility, his name becoming a footnote in a dusty music history text read by no one but musicology students.

Many of the great violin virtuosas of the nineteenth century had counselor fathers, all of whom have since faded into an even darker obscurity than their daughters. The Italian violinist Teresa Milanollo (1827-1904) had a father who, to his great credit, did not care that the violin wasn’t an instrument fit for ladies; when his daughter begged him for a fiddle, he bought her one, and when she proved to be a prodigy, he traversed the Alps with her so that she might study with the finest Parisian teachers. Wilhelmina Norman-Neruda (c 1838-1911) was born into a family of prodigies, all, regardless of sex, taught and encouraged by a musician father. Camilla Urso (1842-1902) had a flautist father who faithfully badgered the officials at the Paris Conservatoire (an institution that refused to admit girl violinists) until they agreed to hear his daughter play. Teresina Tua (c 1866-1956) was the child of an amateur violinist who became her teacher and traveling companion. Unfortunately his support came at a horrific cost: according to one newspaper ‘account, Teresina’s mother “in the temporary absence of her husband…deliberately burnt herself to death.”

The case of Vivien Chartres, a violin prodigy born in 1893, was different. First, her counselor parent wasn’t her father; it was her mother, Annie Vivanti. And not only was Vivanti a mother; she was also a talented writer, and she had no qualms about pouring her conflicted feelings about her daughter’s talent into an unsettling novel called The Devourers, published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons in 1910. The Devourers is fiction, ostensibly. But it rings again and again with a gripping emotional truth clearly drawn from life.

An appealing ambiguity is available to authors when they write themselves into their fiction. If anyone ever questions them about a particularly thorny passage or plot point, they can always smile and say, “Oh, but that part I made up.” It is possible to say everything while admitting nothing. Vivanti takes full advantage of this freedom, interweaving fact and fiction until it becomes impossible to tell what exactly is what. One gets the impression that three-quarters of the novel is, in fact, a memoir. But which three-quarters? Vivanti never says. It is up to us to read between the lines – to draw our own hesitant conclusions about Vivien and Vivanti’s talents, their unique symbiotic relationship, and the all-consuming nature of exceptionally gifted children.

***

So Fräulein, after she had tried all the words she could think of, took Lenau’s poems from her own bookshelf, and read Nancy to sleep. On the following evenings she read the “Waldlieder,” and then “Mischka,” until it was finished. Then she started Uhland; and after Uhland, Korner, and Freiligrath, and Lessing.

Who knows what Nancy heard? Who knows what visions and fancies she took with her to her dreams? In the little sleep-boat where Baby Bunting used to be with her, now sat a row of German poets, long of hair, wild of eye, fulgent of epithet. Night after night, for months and years, little Nancy drifted off to her slumber with lyric and lay, with ode and epic, lulled by cadenced rhythm and resonant rhyme. On one of these nights the poets cast a spell over her. They rowed her little boat out so far that it never quite touched shore again.

And Nancy never quite awoke from her dreams.

***

When Annie Vivanti wrote herself into The Devourers as the prodigy poetess Nancy who is destined to be metaphorically devoured by her own prodigy violinist daughter Anne-Marie, it was not her first time recreating herself. Vivanti specialized in self-invention. Throughout the course of her decades-long literary career, she became a poet, novel writer, short-story writer, playwright, and journalist who switched effortlessly back and forth between English, French, Italian, and German. She was a chameleon, constantly adapting herself and her work to suit respective markets and societies. Accordingly she had a series of monikers she used professionally on different continents and in different contexts: George Marion, Annie Vivanti, Anita Chartres, Annie Vivanti Chartres, Anita Vivanti Chartres, A. Vivanti Chartres…the list goes on and on.

Her impulse toward re-invention came partly from her multicultural upbringing in Britain, Italy, Switzerland, and America. She was born in London in 1866 (although she later claimed 1868). Her father was a silk merchant named Anselmo Vivanti, a revolutionary from Mantua of Jewish descent; her mother Anna Lindau was a German writer who knew Marx and other intellectuals, and who died of tuberculosis when Annie was fourteen. It was an unconventional upbringing in an unconventional household, and it granted Vivanti a strength and independence that she would draw on throughout her life.

Annie Vivanti, mid-1890s

Vivanti began her career as a poetess writing in Italian. In 1890 a firm offered to publish a volume of her work if she could get Giosuè Carducci, the great Italian poet, to write a preface for the book. This was no small request, as Carducci made no secret of the fact that he thought women (and priests) were unable to write good poetry. Despite the misogyny, Vivanti refused to be intimidated by the great man; she traveled to his home to ask him for the preface in person. Not only did he end up providing it, but he declared her to be the equal of Sappho, Marcelline Desbordes-Valmore, and Elizabeth Browning. He even took Vivanti on as a protégée of sorts, their relationship raising more than a few eyebrows. That year her book Lirica was published to great acclaim.

Vivanti and her Devourers doppelgänger Nancy are tantalizingly similar. Nancy too is the product of a mixed-race marriage: her father is English, her mother Italian. Nancy too has lost a parent to tuberculosis. Nancy too is feted for her poetry from childhood, and she writes a bestselling book of poetry at a young age (sixteen, however, as opposed to twenty-four). From the very beginning of the book we are treated to Vivanti’s characteristic mix of fact and fiction.

***

So Valeria had her wish. Her child was a genius, and a genius recognized and glorified as only Latin countries glorify and recognize their own. Nancy stepped from the twilight of the nursery into the blinding uproar of celebrity, and her young feet walked dizzily on the heights. She was interviewed and quoted, imitated and translated, envied and adored. She had as many enemies as a Cabinet Minister, and as many inamorati as a premiere danseuse.

To the Signora Carolotta’s tidy apartment in Corso Venezia came all the poets of Italy. They sat round Nancy and read their verses to her, and the criticisms of their verses, and their answers to the criticisms. There were tempestuous poets with pointed beards, and successful poets with turned-up moustaches; there were lonely, unprinted poets, and careless, unwashed poets; there was also a poet who stole an umbrella and an overcoat from the hall. Aunt Carlotta said it was the Futurist, but Adele felt sure it was the Singer of the Verb of Magnificent Sterility, the one with the red and evil eyes…

During the discussion that followed, the din of the two poets’ voices built a wall of solitude around Nino and Nancy.

“How old are you?” asked Nino, looking at her mild forehead, where the dark eyebrows lay over her light grey eyes like quiet wings.

“Sixteen,” said Nancy; and the dimple dipped.

Nino did not return her smile. “Sixteen!” he said. And because his eyes were used to the line of a fading cheek and the bitterness of a tired mouth, his heart fell, love-struck and conquered, before Nancy’s cool and innocent youth. It was inevitable.

***

In 1892 Annie Vivanti married John Chartres, a businessman, lawyer, and journalist who agitated for Irish independence. Together they moved to Italy. In 1893 she bore him a daughter named Vivien.

***

Nancy stirred, sighed, and awoke.

In the room adjoining, Valeria was sobbing in Zio Giocomo’s arms, and Aunt Carlotta was kissing Adele, and Aldo was shaking hands with everybody.

Nancy could hear the whispering voices through the half-open door, and they pleased her. Then another sound fell on her ear, like the ticking of a slow clock – click, click, a gentle, peaceful, regular noise that soothed her. She turned her head and looked. It was the cradle. The Sister sat near it, dozing, with one elbow on the back of the chair and her hand supporting her head; the other hand was on the edge of the cradle. With gentle mechanical gesture, in her half sleep, she rocked it to and fro. Nancy smiled to herself, and the gentle clicking noise lulled her to sleep again.

She felt utterly at peace – utterly happy. The waiting was over; the fear was over. Life opened wider portals, over wider, shining lands. All longings were stilled; all empty places filled. Then with a soft tremor of joy she remembered her book. It was waiting for her where she had left it that evening when futurity had pulsed within her heart. The masterpiece that was to live called softly and the folded wings of the eagle stirred.

***

After her daughter’s birth, Vivanti published several short stories and a novel called The Hunt for Happiness. She also wrote a play called That Man, which ran on Broadway in 1899. (The play became notorious when Vivanti brought the producer to court for altering the fourth act.)

Not long after came a mysterious interlude in her marriage. According to an article in The New York Times dating from December 1900, Vivanti and Chartres traveled to South Dakota in 1897 and were divorced. (South Dakota was famous at the time for its relatively lax divorce laws.) Existing Vivanti scholarship has so far been unable to shed light on the incident; it remains to be seen whether the divorce actually occurred, and in any case, it seems that Vivanti and Chartres were back together within a few years. In the interim, however, Vivanti was cited in The New York Times as London businessman Sidney Samuel’s fiancée. She went so far as to come to America to prepare for the wedding, when finally Samuel gave in to the wishes of his disapproving father and broke off the engagement. Vivanti, ever the businesswoman, demanded $8000 for the amount that she had spent at the Fifth Avenue Hotel and on her trousseau. The sorry affair ended in Samuel’s suicide.

Such stories – true or not – confirm Vivanti’s reputation as an independent woman who wasn’t afraid of doing what she thought was best for herself and for her family, other people’s opinions be damned. She would draw on every ounce of that self-certainty while raising Vivien.

In June 1905 Vivanti wrote a striking essay called “The True Story of a Wunderkind” for Pall Mall Magazine, describing Vivien’s earliest successes. In the article Vivanti relates how she had attended a concert of the prodigy Bronislaw Huberman “some seven years ago” (actually, it was nine), when Vivien was an infant. She found herself unsettled by the sickly boy who played so ethereally, whose astonishing talents she was convinced were being taken undue advantage of. She came home to say good-night to Vivien and whispered to her, “No! you shall never be a violin virtuoso, my baby!”

Vivanti continues:

At this moment – at this precise moment and no other! – that baby turned down the corners of its mouth in the extraordinary way I know so well, and set up a wail of grief, a sudden cry of despair! I was thrilled. It seemed a direct answer to what I had said. I kissed her and soothed her in vain.

Vivanti told her husband of their baby’s response. She brought him into the nursery and tried to produce another such reaction – but to no avail. “No vocation whatever,” Chartres finally pronounced. “She is a most commonplace infant. Just a brat.”

Only one thing spoils this dramatic story: it wasn’t true. Despite what Vivanti claimed, Vivien was born in 1893, not 1895. Bronislaw Huberman didn’t make his New York debut until 1896. Something – maybe everything – was fabricated. But whatever the actual truth, the story illustrates several themes that Vivanti would struggle with, both personally and professionally, in the coming years – the special, indeed sacred bond she felt with Vivien; the competing feelings of fascination and horror that her daughter’s talent engendered; the relative absence of John Chartres in mother and daughter’s professional lives; and most importantly, the sense that Vivien was destined to become a great genius, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

Next time: More italicized excerpts from Annie Vivanti's autobiographical novel. Also, Vivien takes up the violin and travels to Prague to study with none other than acclaimed pedagogue Ševcík...

0 replies

Staying Motivated

By Gerald Klickstein
May 15, 2012 14:49

People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents.”
–Andrew Carnegie (The Musician’s Way, p. 105)

We all know that musical excellence takes persistent practice. Still, motivating ourselves to practice isn’t always easy.

I’ve found that knowing a simple formula helps me and my students fuel our drive to practice. I hope that you find it useful too.

V x E = M
In On Course: Strategies for Creating Success in College and in Life, author Skip Downing points to an equation used by motivation theorists:

Value x Expectation = Motivation (V x E = M).

That is, the more we value our work – both in terms of the outcome and our experience doing it – and the greater our expectation that we’ll succeed at it, the higher our level of motivation.

For instance, let’s say that when we start on a new piece:

a. We’re in love with the music, so we deem the value of learning it to be 10 out of 10.

b. We could master the piece in a week, so our expectation of success is also a 10.

c. Multiplying V x E, our motivation score totals 100, so we’ll be keen to practice.

In a different circumstance, suppose that we pick up another composition that we value at a 10, but we realize that it outstrips our ability, so our expectation of success is a 2.

With a total motivation score of 20 out of 100, we might be inspired initially, but our urge to practice will probably fade because we know that we won’t be able to perform the music acceptably.

Likewise, with repertoire that’s easy (E=10) but unappealing (V=2), our motivation ebbs.

In sum, to motivate ourselves, we have to choose goals we value and know that we can attain.

Raising the Value Factor
Have you identified what you value about making music?

If not, I encourage you to write down why being a musician is important to you and what you dream of achieving (see my post Artistic Vision for an exercise).

Then, share what you’ve written with teachers, peers, and family members so that they can support you. Read accounts of other artists’ missions, too.

With your values clear, it also becomes easier for you to find meaning in routine practice tasks.

For example, when you connect working on technical exercises to your larger aim of contributing beauty to the world, your practice resonates with value, and your V number rises.

Such big-picture values ignite our devotion to practice and enable us to persist despite life’s ups and downs.

In the words of Luciano Pavarotti, “People think I am disciplined. It is not discipline, it is devotion. There is a great difference.” (The Musician’s Way, p. 106)

Boosting the Expectation Factor
Whether you strive to perform professionally or not, here are some tips that will help you succeed as a performer and thereby feed your gusto for practice:

Choose accessible repertoire. Consult mentors, colleagues, and online resources to identify repertoire that both excites you and is appropriate for your level.

Refine your practice habits. Keep upgrading the strategies you use to sight-read accurately, start new pieces, solve problems, memorize, and so forth so that you can efficiently bring pieces to stage-ready condition.

Build performance skills. Develop your stage presence and the mental habits needed to play artfully under pressure. Reinforce performance skills whenever you practice.

Practice performing. Grow your confidence by doing private run-throughs, playing for peers, and lining up low-stress public events.

For inclusive practice and performance strategies, see Parts I & II of The Musician’s Way.

A version of this article first appeared on The Musician’s Way Blog.

2 replies

de Beriot Concerto No. 9

By Emily Allen
May 15, 2012 13:49

This is one of the pieces my teacher assigned me for next semester. I really like it, but it sounds super hard. Has anyone ever played it? Is it as hard as it looks/sounds?

1 reply

Violin Maker's Wife: Bombatura Part Two

By Jonathan Hai
May 15, 2012 06:15

Post No. 13

You know the 80:20 rule? The one that says that 80% of any given work take about 20% of your time, and the remaining 20% of the work take up 80% of your time? I personally find that this rule applies to almost anything you need to accomplish in life, and apparently it is also true for the violin making process as a whole and each step within it specifically.

Last time I wrote about the Bombatura process – the arching process that defines the instruments’ external shape, volume and body – the heavy-duty work was basically done with, and the “only thing” that remained was to fine-tune the external shapes. Well, in addition to numerous other projects Yonatan has undertaken over the past three weeks or so, he has been working on this last 20% of the Bombatura process. As I wrote, special planes called “thumb planes” were used to carve the external arch of each instrument’s front and back. Below you can see two such planes during work on the viola. The trucioli – wood curls – they produce are very fine indeed.

Then, when all four instruments have reach the phase that their external arching has basically been shaped and carved, Yonatan uses a special scraper (rasiera in Italian) to fine-tune the shape even further, and actually to smoothen the surfaces as you would with a sandpaper. So why not sandpaper? you may ask. Well, there is apparently a WORLD of difference: while sandpaper sands wood by scratching its surface (thereby leaving…well… scratches on it), the scraper really cuts the wood’s surface, like the planes and gauges do, but in a very exact and minimal way, leaving the surface smooth and scratch-free.

When Yonatan first set up his workshop in our apartment in Cremona, this was one of the phases that blew me away – seeing his never-ending patience as he scrapes one thin layer of wood, and then another … and another still…. until finally the surface of each instrument becomes smooth and begins to glow so that the distinctive shapes and colors of the wood begin to really show.

Once this phase ended and all four instruments’ fronts and backs were smooth and shining, Yonatan put them away for a day or so. The next morning, he came into his workshop, lined all of them up (four instruments, times two pieces, so eight pieces all in all) and took “a fresh look” at them. He went once again over each of them, to check if the shape of the body is what he wanted to achieve, and made final corrections and modifications. Then, once again, he placed all of them next to one another and checked that the “line” he created has a common denominator for the entire Quartet.

And finally, as he did at the end of the “purfling” process, he attached each instrument’s front and back to the appropriate wooden mold, to make sure the pieces don’t bend out of shape from humidity, temperature changes etc. He uses special clamps for this purpose, that have rubber endings and do not harm the delicate wood, and when these claps are attached all around the instrument – smaller clamps around the smaller instruments, and larger ones around the mold of the cello – the instruments have a very particular look, as if there are snails or multiple eyes all around them… or maybe they actually look like the famous Barbapapa family!.

..it's been a while so check out lots of new picturs in the Quartet Slideshow!!.

0 replies

Mother's Day Evaluation

By Dottie Case
May 13, 2012 21:03

Today was our annual Mother's Day Spring Concert for the non-profit arts school where I teach. As with every thing that happens only once a year, it has become, with repetition, an opportunity to look back, measuring and reflecting.

Here where I live, there is no history of string playing. When my now 21-yr old daughter was young, I had to drive across the Canadian border for her to have violin lessons. Our small and economically depressed area had no teachers, and in fact, children playing strings was so unheard of that people would often ask why we would 'cross the river' (our expression for crossing the border) every week 'just' for violin lessons.

This has changed. About 6 years ago I formed a youth orchestra, the first ever here. It was small but very excellent. Somehow, this group has continued, even with the loss of our older, most advanced students to graduation. Then, a very advanced student of mine went on to get some Suzuki training after graduating, and began teaching here with me. The result is that today, we presented a new intermediate level youth orchestra of about 13, a New Horizons adult group of about 10 and my advanced group, numbering about 15.

I know that this terse, facts-only reporting is not my usual writing style, but I find it fits the evaluation I found myself making today, on the 'state of strings in my area'. There are details, and history, but the point is this: There is a new life and vitality here, and a sense that more and greater things are ahead...the birth pangs are almost over. Looking back at the Mother's Day Concerts from the last 6 years, I see a consistent string of excellent young players (some of whom have gone into performance programs) who fed the program while in its infancy. That era has almost passed....I have only 1 original member left in my group and he will be a senior next year. Still though, somehow, we are still here...and for the first time EVER, there is a group coming up behind us.

Mother's Day is a day devoted to communicating that which we take for granted most times. I find it very fitting that I get to do these concerts every year on Mother's Day, as I always have a 'good' Mother's Day. The concerts give me a chance to step back and see what has been built, and what continues to grow, comparing it to the past. I have kids who I know are richer by their participation with us, I have alumni students who are eager to return, and I have grateful parents who don't really realize that this opportunity did not exist 10 years ago. I go home after the concert every year feeling appreciated and as though my life and my work is making a real difference.

For those of you who live in places where there have always been string programs, where they are taught in schools, to students by the hundreds, this likely seems normal. But for me, and now for US, it's huge. It feels like the sort of thing that people write movies about....our own personal Mr. Holland's Opus sort of opportunity. Something beautiful rising up from nothing....

I feel grateful. If I knew how to post pictures here I would, just to share the joy.

10 replies

Restless Experiment - Episode 3

By Mendy Smith
May 13, 2012 20:05

After a few months of practicing a few minutes each day without a shoulder rest, I gave the 2nd movement of Telemann a try without one.

First, the up-side of playing without a SR. The sound of the viola is noticeably purer of tone without a SR. The position of the instrument to my body feels more natural without the extra hardware and I do tend to relax more than with a SR. It took quite some time to find the balance point, but once found, it was never lost.

The downside is that shifting down is a bear. I'm amazed that I can do so without the instrument hitting the floor even with a small 1/2 step down-shift. The challenges without a SR, on viola at least, are extensions (even the most minor to reach a fingered 'A') and vibrato. The smallest bit of tension make these basic techniques nearly impossible. But then, that is why I'm doing this.

So, all that being said, here is my first attempt at Telemann sans SR.

... and no, I'm not giving up on my SR just yet.

15 replies

Queen Elisabeth Competition: The 12 finalists VIOLIN 2012

By Hugo De Pril
May 13, 2012 00:50

On Saturday night 12 May, the names of the 12 finalists of the 2012 violin competition have been announced. You will find their names and their order of appearance below. They will perform from Monday 21 to Saturday 26 May at the Brussels Centre for Fine Arts, with the National Orchestra of Belgium and Gilbert Varga.

The performances will also be broadcast live on the internet, radio and television.

The 12 FINALISTS (in order of appearance):
Josef SPACEK (Czech Republic)
Ermir ABESHI (Albania / USA)
SHIN Hyun Su (Korea, (South) Republic of)
NARITA Tatsuki (Japan)
Marc BOUCHKOV (Belgium)
Nikki CHOOI (Canada)
Andrey BARANOV (Russia)
KIM Dami (Korea, (South) Republic of)
Artiom SHISHKOV (Belarus)
Nancy ZHOU (United States)
Esther YOO (United States)
TSENG Yu-Chien (Chinese Taipei)

Schedule of the final:
http://www.cmireb.be/Concours2/documents/3rdroundCopie13025.pdf

1 reply

Queen Elisabeth Competition: the finalists

By Bart Meijer
May 12, 2012 15:39

Ermir ABESHI
Andrey BARANOV
Marc BOUCHKOV
CHOOI Nikki
KIM Dami
NARITA Tatsuki
SHIN Hyun Su
Artiom SHISHKOV
Josef SPACEK
Esther YOO
TSENG Yu-Chien
Nancy ZHOU

17 replies

Shlomo Mintz celebrates 50 years on stage and launches his 1st Online Music Academy

By Irma de Jong
May 12, 2012 11:07

In January 2012 Shlomo Mintz launched his 1st Online Music Academy. In order to contribute to the development of the next generation a possibility was created to download lessons online.

The Online Music Academy gives the opportunity to acquire, at home, through a series of online lessons, the mastery and musical sensitivity required for interpreting the great classical repertory. By keeping the price low and offering lessons of 45 minutes, this 1st Online Academy will be accessible to a worldwide audience of classical music interpreters and lovers. The 1st Online Music Academy combines nowerdays technique and the experiences of many great musicians for the new generation and everyone else, who can benefit from a vast collection of knowledge. Other artists of various disciplines will join the Online Music Academy soon. http://www.shlomo-mintz.com

2 replies

'Pedro Mendoza's Violin': An enchanting story about how a violin can change our destiny.

By Duncan Alexander McKenzie
May 12, 2012 06:10

Greetings to all.

Can anyone really imagine how it must be to be a young boy and to live next to a huge garbage dump in Manila? And to work collecting garbage from that dump? Day after day, with no future and no hope of escape from this life of dreadful poverty. But all things in the human web of existence are linked and a man in Manila who is dying of leukemia tells his family that they must throw away his beloved violin on his death. All material things are transient and we must let go of them to allow our spirits to be liberated. Magically, Pedro Mendoza, the little boy, finds the violin on the garbage dump and becomes infatuated with it. He begins to play and it brings out a gift and a talent in him for music and for the violin. He is by "luck" discovered by an Australian who is being shown around the slum where Pedro lives. He hears Pedro playing Vivaldi and is entranced by the music and energized by this discovery. He arranges a music scholarship for Pedro in Australia and Pedro becomes a famous violinist. But there is one more thing Pedro must do to fulfill his destiny.....

My book is called 'Pedro Mendoza's Violin' and is available on Amazon.com. Please read it; it is a beautiful and inspiring story, with 5-star Amazon ratings. Musical instruments can shape our fate and our destiny, and everything happens for a reason.

Best wishes to all readers from Duncan Alexander McKenzie, R.N.

Here is one of the Amazon reviews:
"This is a story of a phoenix rising from the ashes. Pedro is a young boy who grows up in a poverty stricken area and whose life is full of constant struggles. However he finds solace when he plays his violin and is able to journey out of poverty. This story is packed full of empowerment and shows you that you have the power to choose your destiny. This novel is a truly inspiring story that will make you think about what you have in your life."

0 replies

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Violinist.com's editor is a professional symphony violinist and former newspaper journalist who interviews top violin performers and pedagogues, as well as reports on her experience in violin music and education.