A New Year’s Goal-Setting Session — by Mark Summer
As the New Year dawns bright and full of possibilities, (the financial cliff not withstanding), this is a useful time to contemplate where we stand on our path of development as musicians, and to think thoughtfully about where we’d like to be in the coming year. My wife and I make it a priority to take turns, voicing our goals, and writing down each other’s dreams and aspirations for the coming year. It gives us a supportive place to dream big and to begin to put into practice what we are imagining for ourselves. Even if you don’t put much credence in books like “The Secret”, which posits that positive thinking brings us what we think about, I think that we can all agree that it’s useful to know what [...]
Backstage with the Boston Cello Quartet — by Blaise Déjardin
A few weeks ago, I had a video conversation with my 4 years-old nephew and my brother on Skype. At one point, my brother (also a cellist) tells my nephew: “You know Blaise plays in a cello quartet? He plays with three other cellists.” My nephew starts laughing: “A cello quartet? Noooo…That’s not possible!” Yes, it is! But it is indeed a strange concept and I believe it is rare to get a chance to have such a group with a long-term commitment. Since the Boston Cello Quartet is now releasing its first CD album, “Pictures”, it was interesting to look back on our three years together and talk about the challenges of being in a cello quartet. When I asked my colleagues to form a cello quartet, I knew [...]
Bach Suites and You – by Robert Battey
“In a work of art the intellect asks questions; it does not answer them” -Friedrich Hebbel Few tasks are more daunting than attempting to discern and convey J.S. Bach’s precise intentions for his Cello Suites. Just playing them is hard enough, but a true and meaningful interpretation of the Suites requires an entirely different heuristic model than that of our other repertoire. This is because the autograph of the Suites has been lost, and we are left only with several flawed and inconsistent copies. Since there is no original source, everything, from notes to rhythms to phrasings, must be questioned. With many pieces, one can rely on the fidelity and accuracy of a high-quality edition, prepared either from autographs or composer-supervised prints. There, you have the simple choice of either [...]
Exploring Beethoven’s Fifth: Second Variation — by Jonathan Pegis
Picking up where we left off last time, at the conclusion of variation 1 it is a good idea to keep counting in between the two variations. You want to play this second variation in the exact tempo as the theme and first variation. I will say right at the outset that there is no ideal fingering for this excerpt! It just doesn’t lie well on the cello. My fingering is a bit unusual in that I do not use the thumb at all, or any open A strings. I do, however, use the A string for some of the notes. I highly recommend not playing the open A just because it tends to really stick out. Many cellists don’t use the A string at all which is also fine [...]
The View from Both Sides — by Robert Battey
Critic. n.: one who walks out onto the field after a battle to shoot the wounded. As a still-occasionally-performing cellist as well as a regular music critic for the Washington Post and STRINGS magazine, I feel exquisitely the sentiment expressed by the wag above. There are few things more discouraging than to give a concert of which one is proud, only to later read that you “had an off night, with wayward intonation and a pinched sound.” On the other side, to judge from the press quotes sprinkled in concert flyers and musicians’ bios, one might think that everyone is incredible. In such a subjective realm as the performing arts, these anomalies and injustices will always be with us. No two people hear the same thing at a [...]
Exploring Beethoven 5th, Variation One — by Jonathan Pegis
Continuing our discussion of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, let us examine the first variation. As I did with the theme, I will first talk about the technical challenges of this excerpt and then look at the musical challenges. First of all, it is very important that you play this excerpt in the exact same tempo that you played the theme. A common mistake is to play this variation much faster than the theme simply because of that long first down bow. One trick that helps is when you finish the theme keep counting the quarter note rests at the end of measure 10, and then count off the two quarter note rests in measure 49. (Almost like you were making a cut!) You can do the same thing at the end [...]
The Process of Unlearning Habits — by Selma Gokcen
“It is not the degree of ‘willing’ or ‘trying,’ but the way in which the energy is directed, that is going to make the ‘willing’ or ‘trying’ effective.” –F.M. Alexander As professional musicians, we have a deeply trained muscle memory system, a network of learned movements which allows us to study and perform a huge number of works in any situation, often in a short space of time. This system is a blessing when it is reliable and accurate and a burden when it does not serve us well. Confronted by unwanted tension or a repetitive stress injury such as tendonitis or carpal tunnel syndrome, some of us, as F.M. Alexander did, may ask: what is my part in this? How have I brought about this condition? And it [...]
Exploring Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony — by Jonathan Pegis
Here in just a few measures is an excerpt that has confused, befuddled, and downright scared more cellists than just about any other excerpt (please click image to enlarge): The theme from the second movement of Beethoven's fifth, along with the first two variations, shows up on the vast majority of cello audition lists. I thought it would be educational to spend some time exploring this theme, and future blogs will explore the first and second variations. To begin with, this excerpt is one of a handful that I have coached for many years where I am actually LESS confident than I used to be. Why? Because every teacher, every coach, and every conductor has had radically different ideas about all the different aspects of this theme. Temp, color, dynamic, [...]
Teaching at Cello: An American Experience — by Mark Summer
As a founding member of the Turtle Island Quartet, I am grateful to Paul Katz for asking me to contribute to CelloBello. As a conservatory-trained, improvising cellist, I hope I can bring a unique perspective to this forum with thoughts on performing, teaching, and traveling with my cello. This past summer I enjoyed five days of intensely rewarding teaching and performing at the summer music program, Cello: An American Experience. The program attracted 18 young cellists from around the country, and is held at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, 44 miles south of Minneapolis. Left to right: Avery Johnson and Mark Summer My introduction to Cello: An American Experience began with a Facebook message sent to me from the director, and my old colleague, Anna Clift. Anna [...]
When the Music Stops — by Brant Taylor
For those of us for whom a musicians’ work stoppage in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra was something we’d read about in histories of the orchestra but had never experienced in real life, the e-mail message we received last Saturday was a bit of a shock: we were on strike. Much of the "what" and "how" has already been disclosed elsewhere by both sides, so I won't go over that here. Fortunately, the work stoppage was short-lived—about 48 hours—and the musicians have now ratified a new contract that will allow our season to proceed without further disruption. Any orchestral musician who has been through tough negotiations will agree that they’re strange times. An orchestral organization is tiny compared to the global business corporations in the for-profit world that deal with large [...]
The Tools of Embodied Music® – the Feldenkrais Method® for Musicians (Part 2)
The tools of Embodied Music® – the Feldenkrais Method® for Musicians: 1. Movement 2. Awareness 3. Reeducation of perception 4. Learning to change habits 5. Learning to use the whole self in playing Movement Dr. Feldenkrais used to say: “Movement is life. Without it, life is inconceivable. Improve your movement and you improve your life”. One can use the word “music” instead of “life” and the meaning will be as true. Playing an instrument is a succession of movements. The properties of movement are the properties of sound as well: time, space, weight, rhythmical impulse, gesture, momentum towards an action, the process of speeding gradually and slowing down gradually. Improving these properties in our movements will make it easier to achieve the sounds we want. We derive meaning from [...]
The Tools of Embodied Music® – the Feldenkrais Method for Musicians (Part 1)
Before discussing what the Feldenkrais Method is and how it can help you make better music without injuring yourself, let me start by asking a few questions. Have you ever observed how very young children respond to music – with rhythmic movement, with sounds, with all sorts of other movements? Do you remember how you felt as a child, when you wanted to make music? Do you ever feel something akin to ecstasy when you hear a piece of a performance you really love? Is the sense of ecstasy only a thought or is it a feeling also in your body? Where in yourself do you feel it? Do you feel the rhythm? Can you feel that sometimes music makes you feel light and sometimes heavy, sometimes it is [...]
Raising the Arms (Part 2) — by Selma Gokcen
A wheel needs a central point of contact, an axis, in order to turn and spin. One never loses touch with one's central point—the spine—as one moves through life. But society today has lost that core. It has no idea where it is going. - Svami Purna When I was well into my studies as a young cellist, I became fascinated with the question: How does one raise the arms to play? My naive mind wondered: is there a wrong way and a right way, and how does one distinguish between the two? I read a great many books on cello technique and for years I asked this question of my teachers. It seemed to me to be a very important gesture that most people took for granted, and my [...]
Stage-dreaming — by Mickey Katz
A few days ago I was on the Symphony Hall stage, playing Brahms’s A German Requiem in concert. While playing the second movement, I started thinking about what I was going to make for dinner the following night. The last time I cooked it, I thought, it came out a little dry. Maybe this time I should… But wait a second, I was playing one of my favorite pieces in one of the world’s best halls, with a great orchestra and a great conductor, how could I not be completely absorbed in what I was doing? Was I the only one on stage whose mind was wandering, and if not—did anyone in the audience notice? I was aware that I was a part of a great concert, and the audience [...]
Raising the Arms (Part 1) — by Selma Gokcen
You are a marvel. You are unique. In all the years that have passed there has never been another child like you. Your legs, your arms, your clever fingers, the way you move. You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. - Pablo Casals Pablo Casals, ever aware of the miracle of life and of how gesture can be informed with thought and feeling, could elicit from his cello or from his orchestra sounds that could penetrate the heart. To watch him moving his arms as he played or conducted was to witness the reaching forth from his inner being to the outer world. Arms are conductors of the energy within. They bear the fruits of our thought [...]