V.com weekend vote: Do you have dreams about your violin (or other instrument)?
Do you have dreams about your violin, viola or other instrument that you play?
And I mean literal dreams - do you go to sleep and night and occasionally dream that you are playing, or trying to play, or are in some music-related situation? Here is an example for you, of a cello-related dream:
@classicalmusicdaily Musicians Nightmares are Unique via ???? @nick.canellakis_cellist
? original sound - Classical Music Daily
I think my favorite part of this is where the pianist randomly says, "It's for Rostropovich!"
I've certainly had a number of violin-related dreams over many decades of playing and teaching. The earliest one I can remember was actually a really positive one: as a teenager I was working very hard on learning the first movement and cadenza of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, and I just could not get over the hump with it. I was due to play the piece for some auditions, and I was very frustrated. One night I dreamed that I was playing the piece, but it was actually unfolding just exactly the way I wanted it - and it was easy! It was a real break-through, it made me feel like this was going to be possible and that I was on the right track.
Not all violin-related dreams have been so positive, though - a number have been like the video above! I've dreamed that I went to play my violin, and instead of being my beloved violin, it had turned into a squeaky little 16th-size violin! I've also had the equivalent of the panicky final exam dream, where realize you've missed class for the entire semester - but in this case I was taking an audition, but wait, what was I supposed to practice?
Have you had any dreams related to your instrument? Does this happen often? Please participate in the vote, and then tell us about dreams you've had about your fiddle!
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Replies
No, but I think I had one nightmare of showing up for a performance and being handed an instrument that I did Not know how to play.
It's five minutes before the concert and I can't find it!
interestingly, while the violin is very important to me, and I do tend to have quite vivid dreams, I somehow never have (as far as I am aware) violin-related dreams.
I have a recurrent nightmare. I'm about to go onstage to play (usually in a quartet or as soloist) but I hadn't studied the part. In fact, I hadn't even looked at it. I would have to face the public - sightreading, which I've always been miserable at. Finally, after evidently enough anguish, I wake up.
Performing a piece that you never studied ? -- Recording studio musicians do that all the time.
I blogged about one once. My bow had turned into an archery bow and I kept having to climb over one more hill to get to a concert. Recently I’ve had an anxiety dream about the Rosenkavalier suite that I’m playing in orchestra. I don’t have all the time I need to practice it!
I voted yes, on a fairly regularly basis. I dream that I am late for my violin lesson. And every time my teacher’s house is completely different to what it’s really like. Sometimes I dream that I am in my teacher’s house but I shouldn’t be there.
I have recurring dreams about showing up at a performance:
Without my violin
Or without my bow
Or without my sheet music
Or without any clothes, or just in my underwear
Or performing difficult music which I have never seen, heard, practiced, or played before
Somehow, I always forget to tell my mental health therapist about all this...
I've had recurring dreams where I come home and find that someone took everything I own and put it out on the driveway for a yard sale. When I come home to discover this, there's almost nothing left, and I see people walking away with boxes of my beautiful lifetime collection of tools, books, musical instruments and everything else. And in my dream I can see that they sold it all cheap too, because they had no idea what any of it was or was worth. I don't like those dreams!
That’s a twist on the violin dream theme, Mark! I like it.
Thank you very much Dimitri and David - I hadn't been positively aware that either of you actually played!
I don't remember having dreams about making violins either - well, not in my sleep, anyway; I've daydreamed about it ever since my lovely Stainer model was repaired out of its exquisite G-string tone by a firm that seemingly didn't know about the use of hot sand (any more than i did) - To be fair, this technique may only have come in since they did that repair near the end of last century.
I don’t recall having any dreams involving my instruments. This may be, at least partly, because I don’t earn my living in music and no longer have any auditions coming up, as I did during my student years. The only music-related dreams I remember had sounds but no visual images. A few times, tunes have played in my mind that I’d never heard before but later wished I’d written down. One of these, I identified right away as being in the key of D, just moments before the alarm, which beeps on the note D, wakened me.
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April 13, 2024 at 10:26 PM · I voted "not ever". However I forget the vast majority of my dreams. I can't guarantee that the violin played no role in any of them.