Hunter Miller

Why do people treat the viola like dirt?

April 2, 2011 15:24

I love music. I always have. But why do people make viola jokes? I never made a violin joke, or a cello joke, or a bass joke. And yet all I hear are painful remarkes about the insturment I play. If you look up Beethoven, he played the viola for a couple of years to help his family as a teenager. Bach loved playing the viola, calling it the center of harmony. Paganini also played the viola. Telemann wrote a viola concerto. So did Stamitz, Hoffmeister, Schurbert, Berlioz, Bruch, Glinka, Bartok, Walton, and Vanhal. Many respected violinists also played the viola. Some of them are, Paganini, Schuppanzigh, Oistrakh, Menuhin, and Vengerov just to name a few. So why do people still make jokes about the viola? If you havent had a hurtful joke directed at you in the past, you dont know how much it hurts to be made fun of. I want to be a professional violist, and go to a good music school but these jokes are really undermining how I feel about myself as a muscian. Why do people make such hurtful remarks about my instrument? :(

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