Ditching the Shoulder Rest

The shoulder rest: that weirdly shaped device that has become somehow totally essential for the modern violinist.  I have probably tried just a handful of times in my life to play without, and every time have experienced discomfort and uneasiness.  Or maybe I was just being lazy and writing it off before I had given it a fair chance... Either way, before I started playing baroque violin, it was always the idea of playing without shoulder rest that I seemed to find extremely daunting.  I wouldn't even say I am one of those shoulder rest buff types, who knows a lot about the different kinds of shoulder rests and buys the really expensive one.  I have always just sort of chosen a reasonable Wolf and gotten on with it. But I have watched with envy, baroque violinists play without one and with such freedom and making such wonderful sounds,  I couldn't imagine how it could become something I could get used to. 

Well, I have now been ten days without shoulder rest, and I would say it's going pretty well! The first thing I did was go to the supermarket and buy a cleaning cloth - one of those leathery chamois ones (they are cheap and you can find them all over the place).  I then cut it into a shape that I thought was best and arranged it on my violin, where the violin fits into my neck.  I made a little mark over where the button should go, and then cut a hole in the cloth in that place - just big enough for the button to fit through.  Then I put the cloth on, and now it stays in place!

I have been doing a lot of experimenting with the violin, finding the most comfortable position; the chamois really helps.  Quite a lot of my practice has also been with the scroll of my violin against a wall.  This is a great help in the beginning.  Once you have found the best position for the violin against your neck, if you then stand with your scroll supported by the wall (you might want to put something soft in between the scroll and the wall to prevent scratches), you will find after a while that you can move away but the wall kind of follows you!  And the violin feels stable, and everything feels much easier and freer.  I find that it is really important with this, though, to keep re-checking your position and fixing it back into the place where it should be.

The wall is also useful for practising 'chin off'.  I am still unsure right now if I want to always play in the chin off style of if I will mix it up.  I have found a position for my violin where it is comfortable for me to play with or without chin, but the support of the wall is helping a lot with getting used to the chin off feeling and finding the freedom that comes with that.  When I move my practice away from the wall I try both ways, but always looking for the freedom.

Anyway I would say to another violinist who is scared to give up the shoulder rest: don't be! It will be alright! It takes some experimenting and getting used to, better to go slowly and not try to jump into playing a difficult Tartini sonata straight away, but it is easier than you think.  After ten days I have already felt a new freedom which I certainly didn't have when I was locked into a shoulder rest. 

Today

For now I am very much experimenting with the instrument.  My idea for this blog is not only to record my experience of transition from modern to baroque violin for anyone who would find that interesting, but also to share everything that I learn; all the tips and tricks as well as the information I learn from studying in the amazing early music programme in The Hague.  There may be other young violinists out there, like me, who are interested in baroque violin but not sure how to go about everything so I would hope that a blog like this could be of some help.

I am also still in the process of finding a place to live in The Hague, moving my life from Hannover to there and dealing with the inevitable beurocracy that comes with starting out in a new school but I definitely do not want to clutter the blog up with that stuff.  Instead, for now, I will say that it's an exciting beginning, let's just see what happens.

The Instrument

It was all very well to go running off to The Hague with all these big ideas of what was going to happen, but the fact is, I did not (and still don't really) have a baroque violin and bow.  This was the first hurdle.  Luckily the Conservatory has a collection of instruments, and they have kindly lent me one.  Although it is very limited, and I don't think it will be usable in the long run, it is sort of doing the job for right now, at least in this first stage of learning the baroque violin.  I will update on this subject as I continue to search for a good instrument.

Although I sort of knew in my head that I was going to have to learn how to play at the new pitch, that of A=415 Hz, I didn't really think through how weird it was going to be on first try! I tried straight away to play some Bach before realising that I was missing quite a few serious steps.  My advice to someone starting out is definitely first to download a tuning app.  I downloaded one called gStrings - it was free and seemed alright.  It's doing the job, you have to change the pitch of the A but that's easy and then you can tune each string.  I know there are probably better and more fancy tuning apps out there and I will definitely blog about others as I experiment.

After my first practice 'session' with the instrument at A=415, I had quite a severe headache.  I have perfect pitch, but now I realise it is only perfect pitch when A=442, and the new pitch made my brain swirl.  But it's OK! The headaches are very gradually dying away, and I am certainly excited to have a perfect pitch at any variable A. This was definitely something I never thought about before, but I reckon it's worth persevering and having some paracetamol to hand doesn't hurt.

Taking the Opportunity and Running With It

After recently finishing my work with the quartet I was a part of, and facing the hard reality that most music students go through upon initially leaving education and realising that they must now look for some kind of work, I decided that now was my window to really start exploring  and  getting into the baroque violin world.  Why not? I was bored of being told what to do by professors I disagreed with, and not interested in participating in the modern violin rat race. Moreover, I wanted to continue on the amazing path of discovery that I had begun with the d minor Partita.

Sitting at home on one Wednesday afternoon, only a  couple of weeks ago now, I browsed on the websites of The Juilliard School Early Music Department, about which I have heard many great things, and The Royal Conservatory of The Hague Early Music Department.  I recognised one of the names under the baroque violin professors category in The Hague; Walter Reiter.  I had met Walter many years ago in London and remembered having a lesson with him on Bach when I was about thirteen.  I decided to write him a spontaneous email there and then, telling him that I was thinking of really exploring baroque violin and asking if it would be possible to come and play for him at some point.  He wrote back almost immediately with an email that totally took me by surprise!   He said he had a space in his class in The Hague for this year, starting on Monday, and asking if I was interested to take it.  Bloody hell! Of course I was!  So there you go.  I booked my train ticket, and I went.

My History with Historical Performance

I have been playing the violin officially since I was about four years old; modern violin, that is (although that term has become somewhat new to me).  Since I was about age ten I have been told that I have a real 'feeling' for baroque music.  Unsure of what that actually means, I have mostly just ignored that kind of comment.  I mean, yes,  I do like to play with minimal vibrato, quite a lot of the time actually, just because I prefer a purer sound in which I can really bring out the meaning of every note and not cover it up with lashings of vibrato (similarly I do love to hear the piano played with minimal use of pedal - yes, even in late romantic works).   And I am definitely curious about playing old music in a more historically informed sort of way... but otherwise I really don't know very much at all!

My interest in researching more about historical performance definitely became stronger a few years ago, when I was learning Bach's d minor Partita.  I was lucky enough to study with an amazing teacher who asked me thousands of questions about why I had chosen to play in certain ways, and made me realise how many decisions there were  for me to make; about phrasing, articulation, tempi, chordal playing, repetitions, differences on repetitions.....  I started to question everything! And it was an amazing feeling! Then of course, in order to keep making decisions and to obtain more knowledge, I decided to go to a few baroque lessons with some experts, and read some great books.  Like with, well, everything really, the more you start to delve into the whole subject of historical performance, the more you realise how vast the subject is.  I wanted to write my Bachelor thesis on the d minor Partita, but it would of had to have been in one thousand volumes! So I 'narrowed' it down to the subject of an interpretation of bowings in this partita, and even then there was so much that I could barely touch on.

I realised then that I was definitely fascinated by historical performance/early music/baroque playing/whatever you want to call it.  Because of other things happening in my life, i.e. playing in a string quartet for a year and all the work that comes with that, I have had to put the fascination on hold until NOW.