Jonathan Brodie, Guest Blogger

From his substack "Adventures in the Clef Trade"

In memory of Abraham Chavez

And the music played on and the mercury just went higher

It’s just the vertical expression of horizontal desire . . .

[The Bellamy Brothers]

Why not go both horizontal and vertical at the same time? But where is it possible to do that? Try a string quartet. Take a seat with your buddies and play through the second violin or viola part. Preferably Franz Joseph Haydn because who else? Even though you are sitting down, the middle voice gives you the illusion, no…the realisation that you are simultaneously standing tall and pushing your feet down into the floor. You hear what’s up and know what’s down. That takes care of the vertical. Now you are able to take a peek over the music stand and see the first violinist holding close in the hollow of the box all manner of tuneful stuff while your feet feel the shakes of the cellist offering the solace of fundamental things. So where’s the horizontal? Here: you are spread flat and and thin in between two upscale neighborhoods; while peering from this middle place you are moving your eyes across the page of your music from left to right. It was type-set that way by a 19th century typesetter in Danzig or Vienna on that old and patched Peters Edition. You are in two different places at the same time; and I don’t mean East St. Louis and rural Moline. Illinois.

In the midst of a string quartet is the place to be. Forget Moline.

But let’s go back to Boulder, Colorado. That is where, in 1975 at my University, I encountered for the first time the happy business of being inside such an ensemble and to play a middle voice. The group consisted of three Graces and had conveniently just lost their violist as “Four Graces” doesn’t sound right. What led the temporary trio to invite me, a scattered and undisciplined violin student, to fill the position? I will never know. The invitation was accepted immediately if not sooner. Apparently, if properly motivated, I could put my aleatoric meanderings aside and find the center. It took me less than a day to pretend to read the alto clef more or less accurately. The motivation for this education had nothing to do with gaining more musical perspective and everything to do with the social embellishments of the ensemble that issued the invitation.

A perfect-accuracy reading score in the new clef used by violists wasn’t in the cards. This was because instead of figuring out the actual pitches notated on the page and then calculating where those notes were to be found on the fingerboard, I resorted to a foolish transposing method that frequently, but not always, worked. It should be described here just in case a violinist asked to play viola is tempted to try such a dubious method of learning alto clef. Maybe describing it will alert the potential victim to sniff out the dangers found on such a sketchy street. My advice is to take a little extra time and know the names of the notes you are playing. Don’t use the following tactic:

Even though you are holding a viola, pretend you are still playing your violin and still reading treble clef. Then place your finger two whole steps lower than the note under consideration, and sound the note. Be sure to have a look of serenity and wisdom that comes sooner and usually later comes to the face of all violists. To some, after they are dead.

My problem in those days was that I was so constantly distracted by the strangeness and exoticness of the world around me that I found it difficult to learn new things. Everything was remarkably peculiar or radiant. Sometimes both at the same time. All I could do was witness. My new string quartet was working on Beethoven’s charming Opus 18. No. 4, but the charm of my colleagues interfered with my being able to fulfil my charge; to express competently and expressively the manifold charms of the Beethoven while staying at least approximately in tune. The impediment to reaching this standard happened mostly because my attention and priorities lay elsewhere. Gilbert Keith Chesterton’s words describe my state of mind exactly. To work on Opus 18 with those musicians was like working “with the first plough in the childhood of the world.” I was so stunned by the ambiance of the situation that I couldn’t concentrate on being a musician. All I could do was luxuriate in the warmth of the new-found land where miraculously and unaccountably, I found myself. I was a tourist, not a music-maker.

It was no better with my violin lessons. My teacher was the extraordinary Abraham Chavez. His musical abilities were profound. He could transpose unaccompanied Bach sonatas and partitas into any key at a moment’s notice without benefit of the score. His solfege skills were unexcelled. When asked to whistle any snippet presented to him from the score that lay on his desk and he would do so with pitch-perfect accuracy. During my lessons he would demonstrate passages from the music I was studying while holding a lit cigarette in his right hand. When he moved the hair of his bow from the tip to the base of the stick, his unfiltered Camel would briefly be positioned over the exquisitely formed f-holes of his Stradivarius. How could I take in his musicianship and pedagogical insights when my principal preoccupation was wondering if burning ash would fall onto the top of that rare instrument and then through the sound holes into the sacred interior.

When unhappy with the sloppiness of the University Orchestra’s rendering of the opening bars of The Marriage of Figaro Overture, this Magus played the passage impeccably, to show how it should be done. Perched on his tall three-legged stool in front of the ensemble, he first played it on violin, followed by viola, then cello. This last instrument was hard to hold while he sat on his high stool. He held the cello with his legs, the sharp point of end-pin jutting out crazily towards the orchestra like a weapon but not interfering with the dexterity of the fingers of his left hand. The message implied by the awkward position of the cello’s endpin was not lost on the orchestra. We were a perceptive bunch.

But he wasn’t finished. He left the podium and went to the bass section and played. And then the woodwind section, where the bassoon was, and rendered the notes expressively on that instrument as well. That was it. Mozart hadn’t scored the passage for any other instruments. But had the Marimba been part of the orchestration of the passage, it was certain that this conductor would have nailed it on the wooden keys.

How could I learn from Abraham Chavez? All I could do was gawk and wonder.

Occasionally his actions percolated into the mystic. Hanging from the chain on his neck were several emblems that revealed that, beyond music. he was walking an esoteric path. Most prominent of these emblems was the Rose Cross and a Magan David to show that he was both a Rosicrucian and a Marrano. Why be one when you can be both? Once a bass student, confused about the time of his orchestra try-out, showed up during my lesson time. Welcomed to audition then and there, he asked what he should play; an excerpt from the repertoire, a scale, or solo. Professor Chavez told him there was no need to play anything. He removed a pendulum that was housed in the vicinity of the Rose Cross and Six-pointed Star and dangled it in front of the astonished candidate. It moved clockwise. “You’re in” said Professor Chavez. My lesson then continued, but I remember none of it. To this day I recall nothing Abraham Chavez taught me that day. That lacunae applies to the totality of the lessons I took with him. This failure to learn is on me. The virtuosity blinded me. I didn’t have the strength to pick up at least a few glittering shards that my teacher was offering.

There was still something else that got in the way. I sensed that to better hold and replicate the graceful violinistic motions this artist was teaching, I had to become a convert to an obscure, almost unrevealed knowledge. Alas that an innate skepticism prevented me from becoming an initiate. Had I thrown aside suspicion and entered the temple, I could have learned more and become a better violin player. Instead of entering, I tried to look but vapours from the burning stick took the shape of a knotty curtain that hid what was behind.

My teacher’s knowledge was obscured by what I was able to see: a pebble slowly moving; and then smoke drifting vertically and horizontally until it became a whirlwind rotating counter-clockwise.