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Frustrated Musician
In 1946, shortly before my 11th birthday, I was given a full-size violin by one of our neighbours in Cotton Street, Wakefield. I was never quite sure what prompted this gift because as far as I am aware I had never expressed any interest in playing the instrument. It was, however, widely known amongst our family and friends that I had by that time acquired an extensive knowledge of classical music.
The violin came in a rather tatty and heavy wooden case whose interior was covered in a gaudy orange felt-like cloth. Accessories included a misshapen lump of sticky, yellowish resin whose purpose was a mystery until someone explained later, and a grotty tuning whistle to enable the four strings to be tuned accurately. The kindly neighbour showed me roughly how to tune the strings, gave me a well-thumbed copy of 'A Violin Method for Absolute Beginners Volume 1' and then beat a hasty retreat up the street and out of earshot, leaving my parents wondering whether to be grateful or apprehensive.
The tuning whistle had, apparently, had a long and busy life, judging by the tarnished state of the metal and the suspicious bits of grit stuck on the outside and even rattling around inside the pipes. I suspect that the item had spent a lot of time inside some small boy's pocket rather than in the small receptacle inside the violin case designed for its safe and hygienic keeping. Still, no-one worried much about that sort of thing in the mid-1940s. I never did discover whether the pitch given out by each of the four pipes bore any resemblance to the true frequencies needed, but I could detect that one of them was definitely off-pitch because there was an interval of slightly less than a perfect fifth between two adjacent pipes.
For those who do not understand these terms but are interested, a perfect fifth is one of the two easiest intervals for anyone with a modicum of musical intelligence to recognise; the other is the perfect octave. A perfect fifth, or a perfect octave, even a few cycles per second too few or too many is not only imperfect and dissonant, but absolutely awful to listen to. So I did what orchestral professionals do with the assistance of the oboe player: I tuned the A string from the tuning pipe and then tuned the E and D strings a perfect fifth either side of that and the G string a perfect fifth lower than the D string. By so doing, all the strings were correctly tuned with respect to each other. Possibly they were all slightly off the correct pitch but the intervals between them were perfect and that was good enough for me - then!
I could tell that my violin had not been used for quite a long time because the tuning pegs were stiff to turn. I soon learned that if you do not keep the pegs pushed hard into their sockets, sooner or later one of them will pop out of its own volition causing the string to unwind alarmingly. Although I had never held a violin before, because I am left-handed I automatically picked it up with my left hand and took the bow in my right hand and that was a good start. The violin was not fitted with a chin rest but I did not miss one because I had no idea then that there was such a thing. The lack of a chin rest, however, did make it difficult to clamp the instrument under my chin and made it impossible to hold there without the use of my left hand. Initially I grasped the violin neck extremely tightly because I was afraid I might lose my grip altogether but that made it very difficult to stop the strings with my fingers to make other notes. Eventually I discovered that if I let the violin rest in the V-shape made by my thumb and first finger, my left hand could more easily slide up and down the fingerboard whilst still keeping the instrument under my chin. The disadvantage was that I quickly started getting pain in the web between my left thumb and first finger so every few minutes I had to put the violin down and have a rest. My parents soon came to value those interludes. To this day the web between thumb and finger on my left hand is prone to aches and pains.
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I soon learned that if you do not keep the pegs pushed hard into their sockets, sooner or later one of them will pop out of its own volition causing the string to unwind alarmingly