December 11, 2004 at 3:07 PM

Some people I've talked to, particularly those who have just started off on the violin late in life, have the attitude, "Oh, sure, a [Stradivarius/Amati/...] violin might cost $XXXXXXXX, but it doesn't sound any better than my [mass-manufactured] YYYYY." For the first three months of my time playing the violin, I felt the same way, although I always felt a flush of shame when a "real" violinist would ask me what kind of instrument I had. In my family we have a saying that, "It's a poor workman who blames his tools." In the violin context it means that if you don't sound good playing the violin, then it's you, not the violin, that sucks.

However, in the past month or so, I've come to realize that yes, the instrument does matter. I'm not sure if it was just all the concerts I've gone to or if it was being allowed to try playing Nicolá for the first time during a lesson, but eventually I realized that a violin's individual sound is something that a violinist just can't help. The cementing decision to buy Nicolá came when a violinist friend of mine visited and tried to play my first violin, a Strunal...and although she played a much more complicated song than I have the capacity to play right now with much more skill than I possess right now, the Strunal sounded just as bad in her hands as it did in mine. At that point I decided that it must not be me who sounds bad, it's the violin.

The first night with Nicolá as my own, I played the Strunal and her in turns, delving into the sound with all of my available hearing and intelligence (trying to convince myself that I had sold my soul for an equivalent increase in sound quality, frankly). The first thing that I noticed was Nicolá's resonance, how when another violin strikes a D, I can see it vibrate on her open Ding. Even my fourth-finger D on the Ging has this effect, which is something I may have to learn to play with in the future. The next thing took a little while.

The first time I played Nicolá was during a lesson and I found the sound from the open D so shocking (after having played with the Strunal for so long) that I was bewildered and speechless for an hour and would later describe it as sounding "like chocolate." (A violin, in my hands, making a sound like *that*?! Holy cow!) When I was comparing the two instruments in private, I had the time to figure out just what it was that had shocked me so...

It brought to mind the memory of sitting in the middle school auditorium at one of the "Winter Concerts" after having sung in the chorus. I remember thinking to myself, "Good God, they [the middle school orchestra] sound like a swarm of bees!" and wondering why this was so. At the time I'd pinned it on the out-of-phase bowing, but comparing Nicolá and the Strunal made me realize that if you played 30 Strunals in room on the Ging, you will get something resembling a swarm of bees, whereas if you put 30 Nicolás in one room, you will probably get a very clean, smooth, albeit flesh-penetrating sound (and an orgasm, if you're me).

Now that she's mine, it's not so much a question of how much better Nicolá sounds than the Strunal, but a question of what can I do with the sound? This little wobbly wooden box with strings has its own personality and shape and now the problem falls to me to dress it up so that I can induce spontaneous pleasurable muscle spasms in every other person who hears her voice.

Part of that is the question of Strings. The Warchals are great if only because they keep tune excellently and for the most part have a nice, smooth sound with excellent response (except for that darn Aing, when were they planning for me to receive the new metal Aing they promised?). I still find the Eing to be obnoxiously bright to the point where playing "Reflecting Images on the Waves" from the Hegedu ABC book is just painful. What I'd really love to try are Evah Pirazzis or Obligatos, something really warm and dark, like melting dark chocolate, like silk velvet... That's the sound I really want.

However, what will really make Nicolá's sound pleasurable is if I become a better violin player. Not that I'll ever become a virtuoso violinist--I've only been playing for... 4 1/2 months now, and I'm 23 years old--I accept that the fulfillment of my dreams of viruosity will probably have to wait for my reincarnation. Nevertheless, I spend about an hour or so before or after each practice just futzing around with the instrument, doing slides, scales, double stops, higher fingerings, trills, things my teacher hasn't told me about yet...just to learn what my baby can do. I told you about the resonance before, how the Ding sympathetically vibrates with the fourth-finger D (when I do it right). I see this as a neither a blessing nor a curse, just something I have to learn about my instrument. They say it can take a lifetime to learn to play a Guanieri beautifully, I think such may be the case with my violin. I never named the Strunal because I instinctively knew that it was, indeed, a generic instrument, which probably possesses virtually the same sound and problems of most of its siblings. Not that I didn't love the instrument, I slept with the violin by my bedside just as I do with Nicolá now, but there wasn't anything that made it my partner. It was a thing, a thing I needed to learn to play the violin.

Nicolá is different, she's a partner in making music, a companion when I'm lonely... When we're just messing around she sound speaks to me of the care her maker took in creating her, the centuries she has seen; when I look at the results of the restoration effort that went into making her playable, I see the wear of those centuries, I feel connected to the violinist(s) who made the rough place along the edge of the top.

*sniffle* I wonder if I'm the only one who feels so inordinately affectionate for her instrument. It's the personality and beauty of the instrument that makes me feel this way.

I'm so happy I could implode.

A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit, and a violin... indeed, what else does a person need to be happy?

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December 11, 2004 at 3:07 PM

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