strings

hello humans. it's been a while. I am currently in a creative writing class at college and we've been writing some cool stuff. I like it because we don't write poetry all the time and I get to expand my horizons a bit. right now we are in our fiction unit, and I'm obsessed. But before that we were doing nonfiction, and that was a real challenge for me. nonfiction forces you to be completely real; it creates a sense of unwanted vulnerability and you kind of want to throw your notebook at the wall and cry a little bit. but I loved it. It put me out of my comfort zone and got a piece out of it. what I have written here is a braided essay. one part is a true story and the other is informational, and they all tie together at the end. it's beautiful but hard to write, and I challenge y'all to try it. so here is Strings, another piece about my cello.

“Lets try this one” my mom said as she put the giant violin in between my knees. It seemed like we had been there for hours. I didn’t even want to come in the first place, but mom made me. She placed a stick in my right hand that supposedly had horse hair on it, and I felt mortified. I could not stop thinking about that poor horse who sacrificed his hair to be put on a pointless stick. At least this giant violin had fit better than the last one. But I was still so bitter; how come mom wouldn’t let me play the violin? Feeling flustered, the teacher came over to me with excitement, explaining that it was the perfect fit. She took the thingy out from between my knees and snatched the horse tail stick out of my hand. I watched her pack up everything into a large case with the most confused look on my face. My mom was smiling with the teacher and talking to each other about how great I was going to become at the cello. Oh right, I thought to myself, that’s the name of the giant violin.

In some ways, I was correct about calling the cello a “giant violin”. Its very first name was the bass violin, but was more known as the “violoncello” which literally means “big little violin” in Italian. It was eventually shortened to just the cello, but you can still find violoncello written in old pieces of music. The cello originated in Italy, and from there it became wildly popular in France as well. With my family being prominently English, but with some Italian and French ancestry, you could say I was destined to play the cello. Sort of.

I was going into my freshman year of high school. It had been 6 years since I had started the cello, and it was what mostly consumed my time. I walked through the doors of the orchestra room for last period. My friend yelled, “later orchdork!” as she slid into the classroom across from mine. I went to the back, grabbed the school cello I always used, and returned to my seat in the second chair. This cello was now a full size; two sizes bigger than what I had started with. I listened closely as the hair on my bow grazed the lowest string on my cello. It was slightly flat, so I tightened the fine tuner knob. I made it to almost half a turn until the low C sounded richly in tune. I continued to go up the rest of the three strings, making sure their sound was accurate. I warmed up with a C major scale, and eventually found myself in A minor. I then reached into my backpack for the piece I had been working on for State Solo and Ensemble, The Swan by Camille Saint-Saëns. The strings felt like home beneath my fingers as the bow softly glided through the first note.

The Swan is an iconic piece for cellists. If you become good enough to play The Swan, you have achieved the artistic maturity every musician needs to be the best. It is one thing to be able to read the notes and play them, but it is another thing to read the notes and express them. The Swan is all about artistic expression. There is not one true way to play the song; it is all up to the cellist to decide how they want this piece to be perceived. 'Do I want to go into thumb position on the D string to make it sound richer, or do I want to keep it on the A string for a stronger vibrato? Should I add in a crescendo here? Oh, I definitely think I need to slow down here'. The Swan isn’t just a piece of music; it Is like a picture waiting to be painted. It just needs a proper artist who knows which colors to use and what message they want their viewers to receive when they see it—or in musical terms—hear it.

It is now senior year of high school. I still sit second chair, but my cello has changed. Its lighter in color and richer in sound. My teacher told me it was made to be used in the Salt Lake Winter Olympics in 2002. This is just my school cello, but I have a cello of my own at home. Her name is Jenny, but you pronounce it ‘Jenn-ay’ like in the movie Forrest Gump. 

I am going on 10 years of playing the cello. My fingertips are hardly fingertips anymore; they have formed rough callouses over the years that I’m pretty sure will never go away. I have just mastered this wonderful piece of music called Julie-O by Mark Summer. It is a modern piece, written only in 1986. It is one of the most fun pieces I have played up to this day. It has endless double stops and pizzicato; I even get to slap my cello to an off beat and making the sound of a percussion instrument. I played it for my private teacher with excitement in my eyes, she didn’t know that I had been working on it by myself.

“I don’t know; this piece is far away from anything classical. If you want any chance at placing first in the state, you can’t play this.” she explained.

The cello is a very classical instrument, like any other stringed instrument is. The music usually played on it is strictly classical. And if its not quite classical, it is usually frowned upon by judges in competition. Of course anywhere else non-classical music is accepted. There are various accomplished cellists who have done covers of many different songs. The Piano Guys, a popular musical group involving a piano and one cello from Utah, are a great example of diversity in music. They have various albums and have covered anything from Bach to Les Misérables to Taylor Swift, and they always put their own spin on the music. Although a lot of people wish this type of music was more widely accepted in music competitions, I believe it is best to keep the genre strictly classical. After all, that is what the cello was originally created to play.

I didn’t push my teacher to let me play Julie-O because I knew she was right, so I had to throw Julie-O back into the ‘for fun’ pile. My heart broke a little as I placed it nicely into the folder, but I knew I’d come back to it someday. My teacher took out Bach’s Six Suites for cello, and opened to the very first page. It read ‘Suite No. 1 in G major, Prelude’. I’m sure if I played it for you, you would instantly recognize it and say, “Oh yeah! It’s that one cello song!”. I practiced this song for six straight months, and when competition season came around I performed it for many judges. I made it through the high school and region sections with ease, scoring the highest marks you could. And when I walked on stage at 9am on that cold April morning, I got chills as I realized this was my last state competition. The nostalgia hit me hard, but I still had a smile on my face. My heart was pounding and my hands got sweaty. For some reason the only time my hands ever sweat is when I’m about to perform. But as I walked to the middle of the stage and sat down in my chair with my posture in perfect alignment, I tightened my bow and let myself go. I became the music, and the music became me. My fingers knew their place and my heart knew the pace and it seemed like I was the only one in the room. I could have sworn I never heard a flat, sharp, or out of place note coming from my strings. When the end was near, I let Jenny shine. We have never played more forte in our lives, and the sound was so rich. As I let my last note ring in the auditorium, I looked at the judges. All I saw were blank stares, no clapping, no nothing. My heart was racing and my lungs were burning, but I smiled as I let the adrenaline run through my veins. I stood up, curtsied, and left it all on stage. That was the day I became the best in the state.

It is now my sophomore year of college and Jenny sits in the corner of my room. I mostly just glance at her while I'm studying; my heart wishes we were still playing together every day. I try play her every once in a while, and when I do you better know I play Julie-O until my fingers bleed. I play her when I'm stressed or when we're asked to play in church, but we don't practice like we used to. I can tell she wishes we still competed and played etudes into the night. I can tell she longs for the hours spent together playing in orchestra. I can tell she misses her rightful spot in between my knees and her head resting on my left shoulder. I just hope she knows I miss that too. But she does know me extremely well, and she knows I will never stop playing her. Music is who I am. My callouses may be mostly gone, but the strings beneath my fingers will always feel familiar.