My granddaddy and the violin

[dirkronk]

Not sure if this belongs here or in Corner Pub, but because it involves a violin, I'll try here...

My grandfather played fiddle, but I never got to hear him play.

When I knew him, he was a brilliant man, read voraciously (history, science, philosophy, comparative religion). But he was an autodidact. A true self-educated man. As a child, he never made it past the 8th grade in formal education. Reared in the country, partly in Oklahoma, later in his uncle’s half-dugout house in the foothills of the Rockies in New Mexico, he was often required to interrupt class attendance to work in the fields, tend trap lines, or help his uncle around the ragtag ranch. Later worked the oil fields, where he got into more than one scrape, got his nose broken and never re-set properly (which gave him a distinctive appearance!), and apparently played fiddle to impress the ladies or entertain buddies on his time off.

He told me that when he was a child, he had made his own fiddle out of a wooden cigar box. Later, when he was a young man, he bought one of the "Stradivarius copies" that were common in catalogs (Sears, Montgomery Wards, etc.) back in the teens and 20s, only this one was used and a bit beat up. He treasured it like it was a real Strad, eventually took it to a violin shop, had it restored, put special tuning pegs on it, the works.

But in early midlife, the Great Depression hit. In his effort to better his lot and provide for the family, he took a correspondence course in chemistry. Actually became a working chemist for an outfit in Waco, Texas, in the lead-up to WWII. Later got a job as a research chemist for National Gypsum in Buffalo, NY. At some point, whether in a rush or just showing off, he handled a red-hot beaker with his bare hands and burned his fingertips. Claimed he couldn’t even touch violin strings for years…and after he healed fully, I guess he’d lost the urge.

I have his violin. It leans next to a bookcase on the staircase landing in my house, so I see it multiple times a day. I wish I could say that it's a treasure, but it's really more a curio. Never learned to play it myself, though I don’t really feel like getting rid of it, either. I'll pick it up on occasion...not to bow or pluck the strings, but just to feel the old, old wood under my fingers and pick up a sense of my grandfather again. And I confess that it makes me sad that I never heard my grandfather play.

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I'm guessing there are other people here with similar stories of family members or friends who played an instrument that's now silent. Please feel free to add onto this thread to share tales of your own.

Dirk

[maestrob]

Dirk, that's a remarkable story, thanks!

My mother and maternal grandmother both played piano. My grandmother had her own distinct style of arranging popular tunes from around the beginning of the last century, and could play without music in front of her at the drop of a hat at family gatherings. I have an old reel tape of her music-making interspersed with commentary that's now about 70 years old.

Mother was even better at it: she was professionally trained and could play a great deal of Chopin (her favorite composer) at our family piano. My father could play tunes as well with both hands from memory, although I doubt that he was a serious student when younger. My mother actually trained me in the basics of music at the same tender age (pre-school) when she was teaching me to read, as she picked up on my love of music beginning at age two. She continued my musical instruction and did so well that I won a talent contest in my school (of 800+ students) as a fifth grader playing Schubert/Liszt and a Mendelssohn piece. Alll this without formal instruction.

Sadly, I never took to lessons, and so they stopped after just a year or two. Couldn't work up the interest to practice endless scales as I discovered rather quickly that I didn't have the fine-tuned reflexes to be a great keyboard artist, I guess.

I've had a piano in my New York home since I began teaching voice about forty years ago, and it was used for rehearsals for my vocal competition, played wonderfully by Gergiev's Assistant Conductor from the Kirov, who immigrated to New York with her family just when I was starting out. Sponsored by Igor Kipnis and referred to me by a New York City Opera conductor on my panel, she played everything from Verdi, Bellini, Donizetti & Puccini to Wagner and Copland on it, much to my delight as I prepared singers in their repertoire.

When I was forced to retire from producing concerts in Carnegie Hall in 2002, I closed the lid on that piano for the last time at the final rehearsal after having produced roughly 95 concerts (35 in Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall) and have not opened it since. All that glorious music from an instrument obtained from a failed Broadway hopeful back in 1980.

Now, it sits quietly as the display centerpiece of my music and family memorabilia, including posters that stood in front of Carnegie Hall, autographed head shots and magazine photos from my teachers and family photos going back generations. Not a note has been played on it for nearly 20 years although I keep it tuned. I suppose I'll never part with it.