Transcript for the Piece Audio version of Linda's Gift

Linda's Gift - TRANSCRIPT

5/4/04
Catherine Girardeau
Earprint Productions
415/821-4264 h
415/794-1374 cell
catherine@earprint.com

In the past year, I lost two mothers - my mother in law and my music teacher -
but found a voice.

Let me explain.

I developed an obsession during the months before my mother-in-law's passing. My husband was away, most days and many nights, helping his mom through cancer treatment. When he surfaced, for a meal or a change of clothes, his exhaustion and grief filled the house. We couldn't seem to connect. I felt like I was losing not only my mother-in-law- but my husband too. Everyone and everything I'd ever missed haunted my dreams. I desperately needed to gain control, to reclaim something I had lost.
So I began to search for a violin.

I'm an amateur musician - I'm lucky if I can find ten minutes a day to get out the violin and practice. But until I was 17, I'd planned to become a professional violinist. Until Linda, my violin teacher said, "If you can imagine doing anything else when you get up in the morning but play the violin, don't go into music."

I thought of all the things I'd rather do in the morning than the scales, the bowing exercises, the dreaded octaves.

I didn't go to music school, but I kept the violin my parents had bought me. It was big, and red, with a big, red, sound -- a fine violin for an ambitious student. I still played it, but I'd outgrown its bright, strident tone.

In fact, I hated to play it.

I secretly wanted a rich, dark sound -- a violin that could play the blues. But back then, I'd never really needed my violin the way I did now.

Besides, dropping $6000 on a violin - which is about what I would have to spend to get anything better than a student instrument - seemed so indulgent, I'd never even considered it.
Until I was faced with real mortality.
Who knew how long I might have?
The decision wasn't whether to choose music, or some other career, anymore.
If I waited, I could die before I got a violin that would help me express what I felt inside.

Late at night, I began to haunt the Internet forums of Maestronet, a website for classical musicians. I read heated discussions of Italian versus French violins, and learned how stringed instruments are priced. The quality of sound was the least important factor in determining the cost. Since tone was what I cared about - rather than a famous maker, or a gorgeous varnish - it seemed like I had a chance of finding what I wanted, for less than I'd paid for my car. I took a deep breath, and plunged into home equity. I could really DO this!
If I could find a violin that matched the sound in my mind.
A dark, sweet sound. A sound that lived so far back in the recesses of my musical memory, I wasn't even sure if I'd ever heard it.

A friend and I started visiting local violin shops every Saturday. Each time, we'd play 8 or 10 instruments, and then I'd choose two to take home for a week-long trial. I felt like I was speed-dating -- which violin would I pick up for a moment -- and decide instantly it wasn't my type? Which would I linger with? And which would I take home to thoroughly explore?

To my amazement, I soon found out that just about any violin dealer in the country would Fed-Ex violins for me to try.

I filled notebooks with comments on each violin I played.

French, 1900 - nice lower, but thin on top.

Modern Italian - brilliant, strings evenly matched.

But it's way out of my price range.

At one point, I had nine violins in my house. French, Italian, American and Dutch, mysterious violins from 18th century attics; brash, young, contemporary violins; golden, caramel-colored, burnished red, and dark, chocolate brown.
I was surrounded by temptation
- but only my soul mate would do.

Most violinists want a brilliant-sounding, powerful instrument. I didn't need that kind of power - I was after a full, rounded tone: clear and sweet, but not big and loud.

Near the end of August, I met my friend for one last visit to Roland Feller's San Francisco shop. My mother-in-law's prognosis was terminal -- the doctors had advised us to stop treatments. And I was starting to think the violin I was searching for just didn't exist.

Feller's shop is a walk-up apartment, packed from dingy carpet to ceiling with instruments and bows.

The dealer brought out a few violins in my price range and lined them up on the couch.

The last one I tried was narrow, dark, and slightly asymmetrical. It looked old. Feller told me it was -- made in 1730, in Prague, by an obscure maker called Thomas Rauch.

"Rauch" means smoke in German. I wanted a smoky sound. And I got engaged in Prague.

My hands trembled as I picked it up and drew the bow.

The instrument's voice was mellow, deep, and rich below, with a quivering, silvery quality on the upper strings.

I took it home.

I made a long-distance call to my former teacher Linda. If I were crazy to be doing this, I knew she'd tell me.

"Should I buy it, Linda?" I ask her. "I mean, it's really old, but it's not Italian, or French - it's Czech! Whoever heard of a Czech violin?"

Linda replied, "Do you love it? " (silence) "If you love it, buy it."

I bought the violin a few days before my mother-in-law passed away.

Five months later, I got a phone call in the night from a childhood friend. Linda had fallen down the stairs at the symphony hall and died of her injuries. She wouldn't have wanted a long, slow decline, I told myself. Better for a musician to go at the symphony than somewhere else. I hung up the phone, and not knowing what else to do, went downstairs to play. Memories of Linda flooded back.

She had a Klotz, an old German instrument. It was slender, dark, and slightly asymmetrical.

That's it! That's the sound that had obsessed me -- Linda's violin. Hers was the first real violin I'd ever known, and it was lodged in my memory like the sound of my own mother's voice.

Her violin was mellow with age but not fragile, like it had absorbed the vibrations of centuries.

Linda used to say that performing was giving a gift to the world. In a way, the violin I found was Linda's gift.

I used to use my violin as a means to an imagined goal: music school, a career.
Now I play it for pleasure, and the comfort of memories.

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1 (c)2004 Catherine Girardeau

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