Learning Paul Hindemith’s Unaccompanied Sonata for Viola,

Opus 25 #1, 1922. 1st Movement

I had just finished performing a set of repertoire and was thinking of new goals. My teacher and I were discussing new pieces and he mentioned the Hindemith Sonata for Viola Opus 25 #1. I not heard of this particular sonata and was curious to find out more. My teacher said it was a good piece for auditions, and mentioned his success with the work for his auditions when he was young. He had an old videotape of him performing the piece for his graduate school auditions when he was my age. This was highly motivating as I was watching the process of this master teacher becoming the master.

When starting on a new work, I usually try to listen to a recording to get a point of reference. Then comes the hard and laborious stage where I drill small parts and start putting the pieces together. My favorite stage of the learning process is the personal interpretation I need to bring to the work. This is where I apply my own visual story or at least an emotional tone. After I figure out what I want to convey to the audience and to myself, I move on to the “polishing” part of the process. I drill any fragments of the work that feel insecure, and try to smooth the technical glitches out. I check rhythm, intonation, dynamics and I practice perform. I perform all or part of my program for small groups before the performance date to see how I’m doing and to check their response to my music.

My first reaction to Hindemith’s sonata was not what I had hoped. The piece is very dissonant and not pretty, it has a brutal, raw, unrefined texture. When I began practicing this violent piece I was careless with my intonation and technique, in part because of the seemingly harsh dissonances—I mean it sounded so nasty, how could anyone tell if it was out of tune or not? I had heard other players perform different Hindemith viola sonatas and I was not fond of those performances. I had a hard time hearing if I was in tune, and I was not inspired. Inspiration comes to me when I can hear the piece I want to play in my head the way I want to play it. Then I work towards getting that performance in my fingers and out of the instrument. I want to own the performance and my reading of the work. Even when I heard Hindemith played well, my prior impressions stayed with me and I didn't like the piece. I learned it and gave a mediocre performance. I didn't have a good understanding of the work and the underlying effects the composer was working for. The turning point for me was when my teacher made me pay very close attention to exact intonation and take the time to stop and look into each note and phrase.

This opened a whole new perspective on the work for me. My original negative opinion of the piece had affected my approach and my motivation to learn it. I had tagged it as ugly and I didn’t hear a performance in my head that I wanted to own. But my teacher instructed me to go home and get it in tune. I did. I gave it my full, attentive, meticulous ear. Then, looking into the piece I saw a hidden natural organic quality that I had not seen before. And I began to like it. After taking the time to correct my pitches and understand the phrase structure, the work transformed itself from a violent hacking mess to a wonderful piece of music that feels purely organic and natural to me. To me this piece is like a dirty root you pull out of the ground, and I’m touching the soil clinging to the root hairs with my fingers. It’s not “nice.” It isn’t pretty like a flower. It doesn’t please the senses like a piece of velvet, an heirloom rose or a cup of hot chocolate. But it is beautiful in its own way as a vital, living element of life. Nature is harmonious; it just doesn’t always look that way. That is the way Hindemith sounds to me; full of these raw elements, and full of life. I hear these dissonant harmonies as music in a natural state.

When I listen to this piece I see one person-- and there are two voices in that one person’s head, like in a cartoon where one voice is a devil and the other is an angel. These two characters are: a total controlling egomaniac and the second is a questioning, temperate voice, like a conscience. This second voice sweetly contrasts with the rough, brutal, grating, and demanding primary voice expressed in the opening 3 note motive. The rough voice is a recurring theme always answered by the contemplative conscience. These contrasting, arguing voices continue their argument, a sort of call and response, to the end of the first movement. Toward the end they begin to speak simultaneously, in a duet that sounds almost like a chase. The tone of these individual voices start to sound the same toward the end of the movement. Again, the two voices in one head, an internal conflict in a single brain. The raw materials are these natural feeling dissonant sounds that heighten the tension of the two arguing voices. They feel like some sort of primal emotions with a sound that comes right out of the earth- like the dirt covered root.

Hindemith had an interesting style; he rigidly used formal structure and form from the Baroque period, but filled these forms with modern sounds and ideas from the modern Machine Age. He was a contemporary of composers like George Gershwin and visual artists like Wassily Kandinsky and Pablo Picasso. As the jazz artists were making new chords, Hindemith was using the same harmonic ideas—but as a spare, minimal intervals. Like Kandinsky, he stripped the music down to its most basic abstract elements. The painter still worked on a rectangular canvas, just as the old Masters had, but what was in that rectangle was a new composition of rhythm, color, line. This is what Hindemith was doing. Maintaining the formal elements of form but filling it with new ideas for a fragmented world where all the formal elements must fall into a new order.

This sonata by Hindemith has been an intense learning experience for me. It was at first difficult to listen to, let alone play and play well. I have had to work through my own prejudices and preconceptions to find something to like. When I found a new way of hearing it and thinking about it everything changed. I found my own voice, threw out my misconceptions and I have found much to love and enjoy emotionally, structurally and harmonically.

This must be one of the most commonly performed concertos of the violin repertoire. Even though I have heard this Concerto performed countless times, I had never heard this artist play. My overall impression of his performance was nothing short than exciting and intriguing. Some of the techniques and musicality choices Teslov chose amazed me and contradicted some of the principal aspects of solo playing. What I mean by this, is when one is playing with a full symphonic Orchestra the soloist needs to play as loud as he or she can to cut through the heavy textures of the orchestra. So for example a passage that the soloist is playing is marked piano (softly) the soloist actually never comes down quite to the dynamic of piano, but rather is playing a dynamic of mezzo forte (medium loudness). In Teslov's playing his dynamic range was incredible, his loud parts of the Concerto were quite loud but the soft parts of the Concerto Teslov played them so softly that you could barely hear him. In my opinion this had a great effect on the performance, because when you play loud in certain sections and play extremely softly in other sections were dynamic range is quite large.. The effect of Christian Teslov's performance had me sitting on my edge of my seat straining to hear his notes in his soft passages. In my opinion this had a tremendous effect on the piece, and really engaged the listener through the whole Concerto.

I looked at a number of classical instrument artist’s websites. Hilary Hahn is a favorite player of mine, and I came to very much like her web page.

Stature: Hilary Hahn is a young very famous violinist. Her website exceeds what I expect from a typical musical superstar’s website. The information she has there is constantly updated. It is useful and entertaining, plus it is easy to navigate and find interesting information.

Interest: Hillary Hahn is an internationally acclaimed violinist. She generates interest from all over the world. As a classical musician myself, I found myself being very interested when I stumbled upon her page. Not only does she make her calendar events, tour schedules, past albums, and biography available for anyone to visit, she also has an online journal that she updates regularly. In her journal she describes her day to day events and activities. This is fascinating for me because I can see that Grammy winning violin superstars are real people who do the same things I do. It also gives the reader a chance to see what the life of a concert violinist is like.

Longevity: I see this website having the longevity directly related to how long Hillary Hahn decides to be a concert violinist.

Utility: The functions of this website are very easy to use and it is formatted correctly. Unlike some other Artist WebPages, I found that Hillary's is very straightforward. Unlike other websites that tend to put too much flash technology into their WebPages or you have to sit there and wait for the Web site to load and then see a meaningless clip before you get to the information you're looking for.

Hillary's site is divided up into two sections, one section is dedicated to her schedules and biography and a list of her past albums. The second part of her website seems to be dedicated more about her as a person. This includes her journal, a fan Art section, and her opinion section. Her opinion section particularly interests me-- she interviews other artists about their opinions.

In my opinion Hillary Hahn is one my favorite artists, because of her cleanliness in her playing and her clear tone. This blog assignment pushed me to really explore her website, and I got a lot out of it for future reference and for inspiration.

Mary Au,
Mary au is an accomplished pianist and businesswoman who has studied in Hong Kong, London, and the United States. Her degrees baffle me when I think about them. She has degrees ranging from music (specializing in piano) to business (business administration and accounting). As a musician she's traveled the world playing the piano and accompanying soloists. On the business side she worked for one of London's top financial forensic analysis companies, and for the Grammy Foundation where she worked in accounting.
This past year I've entered a new and exciting phase of my musical journey where I am seeing new possibilities in the music and art fields. When I express these ideas to others I often get this reaction: "yeah, well that's all fun and games but how do you expect to make any money?" My reaction to that is why should I let something like currency get in the way of my dreams is an artist? This made me think of my experience as a musician and accepting that canned line about artists and musicians can't make any money-- that in order for them to survive they have to sell whatever the public wants to spend money on.
I have found that Mary has created an unusual spot for herself which I admire. I have been taking a close look at the concept of the amateur lately. This is the 19th century idea of the amateur versus the professional. In those days the professional was looked down upon as a “tradesman”—someone who did their job for the money. The amateur was admired for their work as they focused on the quality of their passion only, they worked for the love of it. I think Mary has some of the amateur qualities that I now aspire to. She works in music as she likes. Known primarily as an accomplished accompanist, she also decides to promote certain artists she likes or believes in. If she doesn’t enjoy working with someone, she won’t work with them. She doesn’t have to take every job that comes down the road because of monetary considerations.