cello novelization

Tonight's cello lesson was more Gavotting in third position. Surprisingly, I've picked up the fingering and rhythm of this piece pretty quickly. I suspect this is because I'm becoming fairly familiar with the Baroque style, which is the club some of the really good cello music finds itself in - the Bach Cello Suites being the most well known.

The dotted notes are really important in this piece. However, I tend to play all the notes either as dotted notes or non-dotted notes, instead of going back and forth between the two kinds the way the blasted thing is written. I get into the flow of one and keep going with it, rather than switching to the other and back again where needed. At least no one can say I don't know how to focus on one thing at a time.

Ben noticed this right away, and the analogy he came up with to help me fix it really made me perk up my ears.

Normally, when more advanced musicians start talking in abstract concepts, my face takes on the deer-in-the-headlights look. This is because, as a word person, I'm over-sensitive to the idea that a word can take on different nuances of meaning for different people, especially abstract words, like "deeply," "fully, "round," "bright," and so forth, so I am often not sure what the advanced musician really means, and I feel too stupid and embarrassed as a beginner to ask them to clarify and really show my ignorance. When I have been brave enough to ask, I tend to get an answer like, "well, if you draw the note out more, and really dig into it, you can amp it up." And out come my deer eyes, because, really, HOW do you do that? I need a different vocabulary to grasp what they mean. Something more concrete, or at least more familiar.

So those dotted and non-dotted notes? Ben said, "they're all about characterization and motive." Ooh! I know those words! As a fiction writer, they are rather important to a story. In fiction, motive is the drive that makes a character do what he does and makes him continue his quest in spite of the obstacles. A character's motive will re-surface in the story repeatedly to get him through all the events. Characterization refers to traits about a character (physical features, mannerisms, personality, interaction with others) that can hint at, or point directly to, his motive.

Musically speaking, motive can be a phrase or pattern that occurs repeatedly. The first movement of Elgar's Concerto showcases one of the most overt motives I've ever heard - "lament" always comes to mind when I hear it. It was his musical response to the first World War, which saw the loss of nearly an entire generation of men. Lament, indeed.

Gavottes have such distinct rhythms that they were the dance tunes of their day. The dotted notes in the Gavotte I'm working on give the piece a spring and bounciness that a good dance tune needs. The non-dotted notes have a smooth glide, which also makes for good dancing. Those are its character traits, and they come around again and again in the rhythm.

Ben said that playing the whole thing as dotted or non-dotted notes makes for a flat piece. It's the difference between a vague, never-changing character whom you don't want to pay any attention to and one who rubs his neck when he's thinking and eats shortbread cookies before his weekly session with his therapist. Small details like that make him, and a piece of music, more interesting.

Ben knows that I am a writer, but I don't know if he deliberately chose his analogy because of that. Either way, I get it. I feel a smidge less musically stupid. Finally.

the sweater that wasn't

One phenomenon of knitting that I encounter every once in awhile is a change of plan for a particular yarn or pattern. Sometimes, the pattern I have in mind doesn't fit the yarn I have in mind. I'm not sure why this happens - I'm going for the same weight of yarn that's called for in the pattern or I go for a pattern that fits the weight of yarn that I want to work with. But sometimes, the match just isn't meant to be.

When this happens, I've got to let the pattern or the yarn sit for a bit until something else comes along that fits better with one or the other.

A recent case:

I had several skeins each of these two lovely colors:

My original plan was to make a bold-striped sweater or cardigan out of them, but I couldn't find a pattern that I liked, and I am not a good enough knitter to be able to make up a pattern on the fly - I need guidelines at least. It was driving me crazy because these colors go so well together. I finally gave up trying to find the perfect pattern and let the yarn languish in a box for a bit.

I have a closet in my office/writing/cello practice room, which now houses the yarn stash. A week or so after I moved in, I was putting the various bags of yarn up on the shelf in the closet, and I came across the bag that had this yarn in it. I remembered the sweater/cardigan that I wanted to do, but the image of it had gotten fuzzy. Then another thought occurred to me...

I recently got some red couches:

I love them, and they are exactly what I pictured for the living room. However, I'd started to wonder where I'd find blankets that I could lounge with on these couches that would go with the red in them, and then I came across the yarn I'd wanted to use for a sweater, and the little voice said, "make a blanket out of it, silly."

And so I am: