I was struck this week by this post in which a member was showered with judgment for deciding to take a break from the violin, give up the private studio, and just teach ("just teach"!) public school.
Sometimes I think that the life of a violinist is a recipe for inevitable burnout and/or disillusionment. When I see someone opting for sanity and balance in his life, I can't possibly look on this as a bad decision.
What comes to mind is a blog comment that Buri made a few months ago: "Draw a square to represent your life, and write "violin" in it. Now suppose you lost the ability to play for whatever reason. Your life becomes empty and pointless. Now take the box and divide it into nine squares. In each box write something that is important to you: family, relationships, reading, exercise, cleaning, meditation, cooking, practice, study, volunteer work and so on...You lose something from your life that is important you still have eight other things going for you."
I think the problem comes for violinists when they make the nine boxes and fill them something like this: practicing, performing recitals, playing in orchestras, teaching privately, teaching in schools, doing lesson plans, researching repertoire, listening to violin music, and taking pedagogy classes.
What happened to family and relationships? Reading and exercising? Cleaning and cooking? Being a human?
Sometimes the "bottom line" financial situation requires filling the nine boxes like so: working at Starbuck's, practicing, performing recitals, playing in orchestras, teaching privately.....
Okay you get the picture. This is still a problem.
ONE BOX for the violin, in all its permutations. And lay off the burnt-out music teacher. I mean, have you ever been so frustrated you wanted to quit? I have! But I didn't. Instead, I did a few more things for those other boxes (journalism, motherhood, sewing, yoga, etc.), and that is part of why I've been playing the violin for more than 30 years and teaching for 20, while most of the people I went to school with do not even play any more.
Here's the big discussion we had a while back on the topic.
Basically, it's when one note gets a really wooffy fuzzy sound, no matter what you do. The note is usually on the G-string and becomes a bother mostly if you are playing something like Zigeunerweisen or the last movement of the Brahms Sonata in A.
It's the Fourth of July, and today, this weekend, people in the United States are celebrating Independence Day, one of our biggest national holidays. Besides those of us who like to read the actual Declaration of Independence (which is largely a list of complaints against...King George...) on this day, we Americans have other priorities for this holiday like:
not working cooking hotdogs and hamburgers on the barbeque beer watermelon fireworks ball games outdoor concerts!
My list of composers is very loosely based on music I've played repeatedly at Fourth of July and "American"-dubbed pops concerts. I stuck to the American composers, even though Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture and Dvorak's New World Symphony are very frequently featured as well. I'm AWARE that this is a woefully incomplete list. So pick your favorite of this bunch, and then if your true favorite is someone else, please tell us about it below!
Mark O'Connor's method books -- released this week -- teach students using many styles of American music. Enter to win a set of the books this week, on Violinist.com. Photo: Deanna Rose
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