Music Is Enough for a Lifetime -- Take Two

But a Lifetime Is Not Enough for Music

            In an earlier blog post I referred to this quote from my favorite composer, Sergei Rachmaninoff. It’s one of my favorite quotes because it proves true time and again.

            In my work in progress, working title Jamie’s Children, my protagonists are both musicians but are following very different paths. Laura is a violin prodigy who discovers her music at the age of four and begins an international career at nineteen. Younger brother Niall finds his way to his music later in his life. He’s drawn to folk music and learns to play guitar. He begins to use his voice … a voice he inherited from his opera singer father … and finally, Niall begins to write songs; all when he is in his twenties.

            As much as I love to listen to violin music, I knew very little about the instrument when I started writing this book. A local friend who is an exceptional violinist and teacher, Chris Souza, has been a great help to me in understanding more about the challenges of mastering the instrument, and I’ve listened to a lot of violin literature. And perhaps that’s one of the reasons I write about musicians; I can’t think of anything I would rather do than listen to music.

            The Brahms Violin Concerto plays a prominent role in the book. I first heard this concerto as a freshman or sophomore at the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music when the legendary Jascha Heifetz played it with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra to a standing room only crowd in Cincinnati’s Music Hall. It was mesmerizing, and I’ve loved the Concerto ever since.

Listening to it when writing the book, I tried to put myself in Laura’s place. How would it feel to bring this magnificent piece to life?  For Laura it represents a milestone in her professional … and personal … life. The work is filled with technical challenges for the soloist. But along with those technical challenges, there is Brahms’ brilliant and descriptive music. What a joy it must be for a musician to become one with that music.

Niall’s path presented many more challenges. Folk music was a genre I was only dimly aware of, though I appreciated and particularly loved some folk songs and singers. I’ve always loved some of the music of Simon and Garfunkle, Cat Stevens, Joni Mitchell, John Denver. I’ve come to appreciate the artistry of so many more great folk singer-songwriters, among them Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, James Taylor, Jim Croce, Judy Collins, and especially Gordon Lightfoot, whose music I find especially appealing.

I’ve come to appreciate the skill of these performers as well as the beauty of the songs they write. “Both Sides Now” … wonderful lyrics, beautiful melody. John Denver’s “Annie’s Song” is quite possibly one of the loveliest songs ever written. Gordon Lightfoot’s “If You Could Read My Mind” is, I believe, skillful writing and a great song. It’s become one of my favorite pieces.

Again, I’ve had help trying to understand the folk singer-songwriter, this time from a former voice student who over the past couple of years has begun writing and performing. Nate Taylor has been kind enough to read my attempts at lyrics for Niall’s first songs. The more I work on these, the more I appreciate what I hear from established folk artists. Playing the guitar … another instrument that’s beyond my experience. So I’ve been watching videos and listening to the different ways in which folk artists use guitar.

And just when I think I’ve come to know a little more about music, I find out how little I actually know. I’ve barely scratched the surface. I heard a recording today by flamenco guitarist Paco de Lucia. A magnificent artist with an astonishing mastery of his instrument. Intricate finger-picking that seems impossible, yet in the video I saw his fingers fly across the guitar strings and he makes it look easy. And I never heard of this man ─ who was world famous and had a career which went beyond flamenco to jazz and classical guitar ─ until today, nearly two years after his death.

“Music is enough for a lifetime … but a lifetime is never enough for music.”  (With apologies to Maestro Rachmaninoff.)

Violins and Violinists

Passing the Torch

One of my characters in Jamie’s Children, my work-in-progress, comments: “In the right hands, the violin can sing as beautifully as the human voice.”  A favorite college memory: hearing the legendary Jascha Heifetz perform the Brahms Violin Concerto with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. String players awe and amaze me. Mastering any string instrument has to be a challenge unlike any other, and I do love the sound of the violin. The Brahms concerto is one of my favorite pieces of music, and it plays an important role in the upcoming book.

I don’t recall when I first met violinist Chris Souza. I believe the first time I worked with him was, interestingly enough, in a musical theater production. In 2010 South High School performed The Secret Garden, which has a beautiful, lush, lyrical score which needs strings, and the school has no string program. Chris and a cellist with whom he frequently plays, Agnieska Rybska, agreed to join the high school instrumentalists and play for the show.

It was magical. The young musicians rose to the challenge of these two fine performers being in their midst; it was probably the best pit orchestra we ever had. The young men and women on stage also responded to the beautifully expressive and well-executed string sounds they were hearing, and the caliber of the show jumped several notches. It was an exceptional production.

When I was writing Eli’s Heart, I needed a violin and piano sonata that featured both instruments equally, and when I asked Chris for a suggestion he named Franck’s A Major Sonata, which I listened to and promptly fell in love with. The piece features prominently in the book, and last year when I held a “musical book signing” at the Pocono Community Theater … short readings from the book about specific pieces, followed by performances of those pieces … Chris and pianist Scott Besser played two movements from the Franck sonata. Hearing them was enormously gratifying. It was more than that; it was a thrill.

My current work in progress, Jamie’s Children, is about a brother and sister whose musical lives move in very different directions, and at very different times in their journey. Their father, Jamie Logan, is a world famous opera singer whose story is told in You Are My Song. Laura, Jamie’s firstborn, is discovered to be a violin prodigy at the tender age of four. Chris has been my “go-to”” person for learning more about Laura’s life and career. As a way to better understand what a child that age might have to experience when first beginning to play, Chris generously invited me to attend his studio classes one morning last week. It was an educational and delightful time.

Chris is as impressive a teacher as he is a violinist. I watched a few minutes of his “older” class (all these kids are home schooled and these were morning classes) and heard some nice playing. Then I watched him work with 5-year-olds who are just beginning. There were four little girls in this group but I believe Chris said two were missing.

I loved that one of the first things these children learn is respect for their instrument. They spent quite a bit of time learning to do a “concert bow” … how to hold the instrument and bow in one arm, keep the feet together, bowing to the audience, etc.  The kids were very attentive, partly because of Chris injecting humor into this part of the lesson. After he had shown them the proper way to do this, he had them close their eyes as he then demonstrated the wrong ways, one at a time, and had the kids tell him what he was doing wrong. It was a very effective teaching tool (and one I’ve used in audition workshops for aspiring musical theater performers).

At the beginning of the class they sat on mats and did rhythm exercises. Then after working on their concert bow, they worked on how to correctly hold the violin … they all seemed to have a good basic understanding of holding the bow … and did some open string exercises, and then were shown how to use the ring finger … the third finger … on the strings. As they played he moved among them, gently adjusting an elbow here, a bow arm there, checking hand positions.

He then had the children sit again and used some flash cards, again for practice with rhythm. When he asked them to stand, one child in the group said, “I’m sitting now.” And refused to stand, and her wise and wonderfully patient teacher ignored her and continued the lesson. Eventually she did get back on her feet.

Chris kept the class moving and I appreciated his soft-spoken and low-key approach with these munchkins. While I became very much aware of the amount of strength and coordination these young violinists would need to develop in order to play well, the kids were absorbing it a step at a time, and Chris made it fun for them.

At the end of the lesson they all took a final concert bow. They were a happy and excited group when they left, having experienced a joyful time with the violin. How great to witness a fine violinist passing on his passion for music and for his instrument to these fortunate children.

Chris Souza

photo by Tristan Flanagan