May 2014

The Mother of All Etudes

I was assigned a new etude this past week: Campagnoli #30. Here's a snippit:

Besides being a study in double stops, its also a study of bowing. How it's written is awfully confusing and I have yet to figure out what exactly is to be down bow or up bow. Then there is this nasty little double-stop on the 2nd line, 2nd measure, 3rd beat. I'm struggling with 9ths on viola, and can't even fathom attempting 10ths. Now if I were to play this on violin, that little feat would be much simpler.

But alas, somehow I need to either a) figure out how to get my hand to stretch that far without doing injury or b) master the art of playing one stopped note and one harmonic simultaneously then, as my first viola teacher described it, bail out and jump up to 3rd position, smile, bat my eyelashes and swear it never happened that way.

I think I'll take her advice and go with option B.

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