Imagine you’re meeting a group of friends for a run. You’ve just gathered in the park and are so much looking forward to having fun together. But a second before you start, the sun disappears and everything is a couple of shades darker, so although it’s the middle of the day, you have trouble seeing where you’re going. You decide to run nevertheless. But alas, the group leader sets off at triple the speed you would normally go. At the same time, you are told to stop breathing so hard. In fact, it would be preferable if you stopped breathing altogether. You still hang in there. You’re so proud of yourself for running and not breathing until you look down and notice that your shirt is suddenly see through and you have gained 20 pounds, which is all the more embarrassing because there are people with x-ray vision watching you. But worst of all, your shoes are no longer the comfy trainers you love but horrible 80s plateau shoes. But you have no time to be sad. ‘Could you please try to use your feet differently?’, your group leader asks you, oblivious to your suffering. ‘And run as if you had smaller shoes! And the length of your steps is not ideal either. Your steps have to be of unequal length.’ In desperation, you’re looking for your favourite running buddy. She doesn’t look great either. She’s just crawled out of the ditch she fell into a couple of seconds earlier and is trying to catch up with the group. You know that ditch. You’ve been there a couple of times before. Have you had enough yet? Great, then try to look elegant. Make it seem easy. Look like you’re having fun. ‘What’s wrong with me?’, you begin to scold yourself. Little children can do this and I have trouble running. Can you feel yourself slowly beginning to lose your mind? Good. Welcome to the wonderful world of Baroque music!
To be honest, I am not much a fan of Baroque music in the first place and I am not an opera lover, but as it is well known that two negatives make one positive, I signed up to play in my university’s Baroque opera production aptly entitled ‘Too hot to Handel’. And how I came to regret it. Not only is the pun really bad, but Baroque music is one of those things that seems deceptively simple but is so hellishly difficult that it can take away your will to live. To a violinist used to playing on a modern violin, everything, absolutely everything you do is suddenly wrong. You play at a lower pitch, which makes every note a bit of a surprise and takes away your ability to decide if you’re playing in tune (and in violin playing, the only thing that stands between you and wrong notes is your hearing, so that’s a bit of a problem). Vibrato, normally ever so convenient when it comes to covering up things and adding that tiny bit of affection that distracts from the fact that you’re not quite sure what you’re doing is forbidden. The bow you have, designed to do the very opposite of what a Baroque bow would do, is much too heavy for your purposes and needs to be held differently. And then, everything was much too fast not only for my taste but also for my abilities. The lowest point of the first rehearsal came when the conductor started counting in German, which, because I am the only German-speaking person in the group, was most certainly directed at me. But then, being singled out in orchestra practice because I have messed up is not a novelty for me.
After the first frightful rehearsal, I hit the practice room. And it was horrible. The best thing I have to say about the process is that I only cried three times (the second time doesn’t count because it was only dry heaving and no tears, but the third time counts double because I lay on my bed wailing for 20 minutes). Fortunately, I remembered that preparing a concert is an awful lot like going for an extended run and that my sister and I have a weird tendency to get tearful after around one kilometre (Sister: ‘Bei Kilometer 1 rea i imma a bissl.’) In the end, I did what I always do. I look at the problem and decide that if I am going under, I will be going under in style. In my case this meant that I decided that I would be playing without a shoulder rest, which is the running equivalent of taking your shoes off because it basically takes away the least bit of stability and decency you have left. And unsurprisingly, the universe did what it always does: it gave in. The moment I ditched my shoulder rest, things started to fall into place. Intonation improved slightly, my vibrato stopped because I was too busy holding my violin. But best of all, my resting bitch face changed to a weird grin that people who don’t know me might misinterpret as a sign of emotion and that people who know me recognize as the sign of madness it really is. If nothing else, I deserve an Oscar for my impersonation of a violinist who knows what she is doing.
My colleagues were somewhat less enthusiastic about practice and unashamedly frank about it. On the upside, I was made section leader, not on virtue of my playing but because of my spotless attendance record. The only other person who practiced like mad was one flutist, which was nice, because I really looked forward to meeting her in the practice room every day but not also not so nice because I had to listen to her flawless interpretation ‘The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba’ at breakneck speed while I just could not get it together. But finally, I managed to make peace with the fact that nobody ever practiced anything and I was too bad a player to master some of the pieces. One of the things I always criticise about historically informed performance (apart from the fact that it exists) is that it doesn’t adequately take into account that most musicians in the Baroque period did not hold 6-year degrees from a conservatoire. Also, I am 100% sure that none of them could play any of the Paganini caprices. And if I’ve learned anything from devouring all those composer biographies it’s that in the past orchestral musicians were somewhat less enthusiastic about preparation that they are today. In my mind, a real Baroque orchestra would not have sounded like the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. It would have sounded like a badly prepared amateur orchestra. And that’s just what we were. Handel would have loved us.
The other people who loved us were my course colleagues. At first, I had generously invited people. Then, I had panicked and started to un-invite people, which made them want to come even more. Once word had spread about how badly everything went, more and more people approached me to ask where they could get tickets. As it turns out, my daily post-practice rant in the library was the ultimate marketing method. People came and even brought friends. And they were rewarded for their loyalty. The concerts went much better than expected, although I need to point out that conductors should be aware that counting the orchestra in while running towards them can be quite confusing for the orchestra members. What I am trying to say is that I am sorry I tried to get up and bow while everyone else was playing the first bar. From then onwards, I bravely worked my way through a number of pieces some of which I handled better than others. The eternal source of light shone one us and we did our best not to make it sound sterile like an ‘atomic holocaust’ (the conductor’s words, not mine). Even the Queen of Sheba arrived successfully albeit with a bit of a limp and she tripped over her feet a few times. And when it was time to finish with the Hallelujah chorus, I like to believe that in spite of the fact that I am an atheist I really meant every word I played.
Looking back on the whole experience, you might be surprised to hear that I am a bit sad that it’s over now because apart from the fact that I learned a lot and made my peace not only with Baroque music but also with historically informed performance, I really enjoyed myself. Yes, it all had been chaotic, but to some extent that is ever so fitting because if you want to see art as a representation of life, this is the closest a performance has come to representing my life in a very long time. Life is messy. But in the end, it really doesn’t matter if you’re running around in the dark with bad shoes, see-through clothes and tripping over your own feet because you can still have the time of your life and as long as you love the people you’re running with and your friends are cheering you on from the side lines while sipping a glass of wine.
