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Frustrated Musician
Long before I was gifted the violin I'd been able to read music but I can’t remember how that came about. I certainly never had any lessons. When I attended Morning Prayer at our local Christ Church, adjacent to the Little School, as I had done every Sunday without fail from an early age, I sang from the music version of the Ancient and Modern Hymn Book and I recall that I was more interested in the harmony than the words. Automatically I learned the names of the tunes and their composers without any apparent effort on my part but I found it much more difficult to commit the words to memory. This was a bit of a nuisance because when we sang hymns in school at Morning Assembly we were required to sing the words from memory.
Whilst going through an old packing case when I was about 8 years old, I came across a copy of Haydn’s 'The Creation' published by Novello in 1929. Never having heard the work in performance, I tried to work out from the score what it sounded like. I'm not sure now what I imagined the opening orchestral 'Representation of Chaos' sounded like because, even in short score, it was very complicated. However, halfway through the following short chorus I did notice the fortissimo direction in the score on the word '...light' after several bars of pianissimo on the preceeding words 'Let there be...'. In about 1945 I put a large tick alongside that section of the score to show that I recognised Haydn had created something really special. I still have the volume and still wonder at my childish annotations made all those years ago.
I now know that blazing C Major chord represented for Haydn's purposes God creating 'light'. Many years after Haydn, Richard Strauss used a similar fortissimo C Major chord, but strengthened it with a fortissimo and unexpected blast on full organ, about 80 seconds into 'Also sprach Zarathustra' to represent the 'Dawn of Life'. (For those who do not know, those few seconds of Strauss' music were used with spectacular effect in the film 2001, but the entire work, lasting 35-40 minutes depending on who is conducting, is certainly worth listening to if you've never heard it.)
We also had a much earlier copy of Handel’s 'Messiah' published around the turn of the century and I was able to follow that score when listening to Messiah on the wireless - which it was every Christmas. I can't remember which Christmas it was, somewhere around 1945-48 I think, the wireless relay of Messiah from Huddersfield, with the Huddersfield Choral Society, orchestra and soloists, conducted by 'Sir' Malcolm Sargent, was my introduction to the work, the conductor and the choral society - and it all happened just 10 miles from where we lived. That seemed miraculous to me at the time.
By comparison with those two volumes of choral music, the elementary tunes in the primer that came with my first violin were so simple that I could hum them accurately on sight. It was more difficult learning how to reproduce them on my violin.
A diagram in the primer showed the principles of how to finger the strings to make stopped notes. The very first tune in Volume 1 was ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star’ in the key of D Major and all the notes were annotated with the recommended fingering. As soon as I had the instrument tuned to my satisfaction, I launched into the tune with great enthusiasm – and my parents promptly withdrew to the other end of the house.
Tunes in the keys of D Major are very suitable for one’s very first violin lessons because all four open strings, G, D, A and E, form part of that scale although, as Eric Morecambe once memorably said to André Previn, not in the correct order! It must have been excruciating for my parents listening from the kitchen to me scraping away at ‘TTLS’ in what we called ‘the other room’. Initially I needed to devote most of my concentration on getting the bow to cross the strings at right angles, as illustrated with diagrams in the primer, without getting either too close to, or too far away from, the bridge. I used to watch myself in a mirror. Playing the open D and A strings for the words ‘twin--kle, twinkle’ was easy. It didn't take me long to discover exactly where to place the first finger of my left hand on the A string to produce the B natural required for the word ‘lit-tle’. After ‘star’ on the open A string it got rather more complicated needing, as it did, three fingers on the D string. By trial and error, I eventually produced descending notes approximating G, F sharp and E before triumphantly reaching the open D string again for the final ‘are’. Once that opening phrase was mastered, the rest of the tune was easy, consisting of a repeat of what had gone before. I imagine that my bowing technique left a lot to be desired but at least I was happy.
As I progressed and learned to listen more critically to the notes that my fingers were producing, I began to realise that my early efforts at ‘TTLS’ had probably been pitched somewhere between the keys of D Major and D Minor. For example, if my first finger was planted insufficiently far up the keyboard, instead of producing B natural it probably resulted in a note nearer to B flat. Similarly, a lazy second finger on the D string probably produced a note halfway between F natural and the required F sharp. Without knowing it I had discovered both the quarter-tone and minor scales! I was fascinated by this discovery and for quite a time thereafter I deliberately played the entire tune in D Minor with a proper B flat and F natural, and that was the start of my liking for minor keys. It didn't take me long to realise that I could play ‘TTLS’ with exactly the same fingering using the A and E strings, thereby transposing my efforts into either A Major or Minor. Similarly I could use the G and D strings alone for an abrupt modulation to G major or Minor.
Up to this point the fourth finger of my left hand had been unemployed. It had mostly remained cocked in the air trying to keep out of the way, "like a posh lady does when holding a cup of tea" my Mum used to say helpfully! Eventually it dawned on me that by placing the little finger on any of the first three strings about an inch further up the keyboard than the third finger, I could produce the same note as the next higher unstopped, or open, string. Thus I learned about unison! I then practised playing both together: for example, the note A with the little finger on the D string together with the open A string. There were some horrendous dissonances until I found exactly the correct position for the little finger. It was quite awkward at first keeping my small fingers sufficiently bent to ensure that they didn't interfere with the open A string. I then started practising octaves by bowing simultaneously an open string and the next higher string with the first three fingers clamped on the keyboard. It's the easiest thing in the musical world to detect when an octave is perfect: any slight misplacing of the fingers produces a really horrible interval that grates on the ear of anyone within earshot, whether they know about octaves or not.
Thereafter, my self-taught progress seemed to go ahead quite well. I began to develop a keener sense of pitch so that there were far fewer F naturals and B flats when I needed F sharps and B naturals. Pianists, of course, do not have to go through this trial and error process. I had no access either to a piano or a teacher so I had to learn the hard way.
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There were some horrendous dissonances until I found exactly the correct position for the little finger