In context

I know I need to write about our weekend in Munich, but today was a little out of the ordinary. So while it’s fresh in my mind, I wanted to write about it. First, let’s address that last sentence. It should really be something more like “today was a little out of the relatively ordinary pattern that has been established in extraordinary circumstances.” I have a fairly regular schedule here (as does Andy), and I’m doing many of the same things I do at home (eat, sleep, work, practice), but let’s face it—this isn’t El Paso. I had a birthday over the weekend while we were in Munich, but I had a hard time feeling like it was my birthday. Partly this is because I have only a tenuous grasp of the actual date right now, but partly it’s because I’m somewhere completely different than home. Usually when you have a birthday, you do something a little different. Maybe you take a trip out of town, or maybe you stay in town, but you find a way to mark the occasion by doing something special, and slightly different than the usual routine. Right now for me, EVERYTHING is different than the usual routine, whether it’s my birthday or not.

I’m starting to digress—big surprise. Andy has been in contact with the conducting professor at the Liszt Hochschule here in town, and he has invited Andy to several events that were going on at the school. Last week I accompanied Andy and his conducting class to watch the student orchestra sightread Mendelssohn’s Scottish Symphony (as Andy mentioned below). The conductor asked if I wanted to sit in this week with the student conductor’s orchestra, so that’s what I spent today doing. Once a year, the applied instrumental faculty will sit in so they can critique the student conductors, and it’s kind of a marathon. I sat in the viola section for two two-and-a-half hour rehearsals, and they had a third one in the evening that I missed (followed by beer and bratwurst, of course, which I also missed). That’s the most playing I’ve done in a while, so it’s probably better that I only went to two sessions. I'm in this photo in front of the winds. You can't really see me.


It’s a great idea, and apparently one that the faculty suggested themselves. But let me tell you—they’re blunt. You could see that the student conductors were a little intimidated to get up there. I know I don’t understand a lot of German, but I understood enough. The interesting thing is that while the faculty used a lot of words, most of what they said came down to “you’re not being clear enough.” One of the things you learn in school as a classical musician is how to take criticism. And while you learn not to take it personally, being criticized in front of your peers by faculty members who aren’t your own teacher can be tough. Don’t worry, they didn’t make anyone cry. (But as a music teacher, you get bonus points for that!)

For me, the biggest thing was being able to function in rehearsal, i.e. not enter loudly at measure 49 when everyone else started quietly in measure 94. Generally I did pretty well, and out of five hours of rehearsal I only needed to ask someone two or three times where we were starting. And I understood what the conductors were asking for verbally even if I didn’t catch all the words, just like with the faculty members’ criticism. So it made me think a lot about context. I understood so much more German in rehearsal than in the TV shows we watch. I also think that if I knew no German, I would have been a little more lost in rehearsal, but I could have functioned.

I guess I could draw the conclusion that music is the universal language and all that. But it really made me think just the opposite. I could have functioned in rehearsal without German because I know those pieces. Maybe it wouldn’t have been obvious to me where to start, but I’ve played the pieces before so I could have figured it out. If these had been pieces that were totally new to me, it wouldn’t have worked. And the words I did understand—well, it’s the language of music (mostly Italian with a few German and French words peppered throughout) that got me through, not the music itself. Add to this the fact that I’ve specifically tried to learn music-related words in German, and also that I know how orchestra rehearsals work, and kapow! Functional violist! Sometimes I think in classical music we take it for granted that music is “universal” and if you just open your ears you’ll “get it,” whatever “it” is. But it’s a method of communication, with its own idiosyncrasies and its own way of talking about itself.

When I re-read the end of that paragraph, I think it sounds a little off-putting with regards to classical music. I’m not saying you have to know all about it to enjoy it. You don’t have to know the language of the composers who wrote the pieces, or the language spoken by the performers, or the terminology used in rehearsals. It’s just that the rehearsals today reminded me how much the context of what we were doing mattered over the words that were used. It could be the same in a lot of other professions or situations. All that pointing and gesturing I do in the bakery every day prove my point.

And what else for the rest of the day? I won’t tell you about the delicious asparagus, cheese, and hollandaise sauce crepe that I ate for lunch, nor the döner kebap for dinner. We did go to the National Theatre tonight for a preview of their upcoming production of Tchaikovsky’s opera, Eugene Onegin. They performed just the first act, up to the point where Onegin totally rains on Tatiana’s parade after she stayed up all night writing him a long love letter, and he’s all, “I can’t be tied down like that. But if I could, you'd totally be the kind of girl I'd like. But I love you like a brother.” Jerk. The production looks kind of weird. It’s sort of a 1960s socialist setting. Very bizarre, and it makes me curious how that will work later in the opera. Communist hoe-down instead of a ball? Onegin has a Five-Year Plan to break hearts and increase steel and wheat production?

We haven’t been taking so many pictures lately, but here’s our post-opera treat that we shared at the Eiscafé. Holy cow. It looks smaller in the photos than I remember it. My stomach still hurts from all the sugar, but now that we’ve ordered a giant sundae once, we can go back to our normal ice cream cone with a single lonely scoop. This is the Mochabecher, but there’s all kinds of other crazy Eisbecher with lots of fruit and whatever you can imagine would go on a sundae. Tip: don’t ask for a “Sontag”.