Excerpts from Mighty Muso - Musings behind Violetta's adventures for adult minds and readers.
This is a question I ask myself fairly often. You see, for musicians like me, who are not mathematicians/scientists/astronomers (and whilst I could come up with some things I could be slashed, none of them would be nearly as interesting), there might not be much use in researching such topics. I also don’t understand even a tiny percentage of it. However—and I do hope you agree—from a philosophical point of view, these things are worth contemplating.
So have I just been down a rabbit hole? I don't know, but imagining a place our music exists outside ourselves is fascinating to me. Where does sound go when we play it? Where does it come from? Does it somehow resonate with notes already in the universe? Do they stay up there, along with those played by other people ages ago? How is it that the timber of instruments seems alive, as though it remembers the sounds we play?
And maybe, just maybe it is possible to make music with the universe.
I believe it is. Why else would it be so moving, in a physical sense? I’ve often listened to a performance and wanted to be close to it. When you sit up in front of an orchestra, your experience is widely different from the back, the distances are greater, the sound travels more slowly, but at the front, you are right there, in amongst it. It’s almost as though music can draw you towards it. Many of us enjoy making our sounds soar, reaching the back of a concert-hall, the rafters of the roof and beyond, and perhaps there is more to why.
But what if it can take you places too?
Another particular interest of mine, as you know, is time-travel. For those of you who are familiar with my middle-grade Violetta series, you will know all about the weird and wonderful things that can happen. In case you aren’t, the books pose the question: What if a violin acted as a time machine? If you played a particular piece of music, is it possible that the atoms of that violin exist in multiple places at the same time—unlocked when you play it? Could all music live up in the ether, waiting for our minds to be clear, and hoping we’ll learn to hum/play the same tune?
Anyway, it’s all a bit sci-fi, but I do believe it is one of the reasons I enjoy playing.
In a much more logical sense; if I am playing a piece by Vivaldi, for example, I like to prepare by researching his time, and where he was when he wrote it. This helps in multiple ways. The most obvious, is stylistically; ie. bow strokes, vibrato, length of notes etc. Then of course, there is expression. When you know a bit about why a piece is written, it is easier to make sense of phrasing, dynamics and articulation. But my favourite reason for research is that the otherwise terrifying act of performance, can be managed through escapism. When the nerves set in, I head off to Venice, to the Ospedale della Pietà, or the Basilica San Marco. I’m rowing in a gondola along the canal, going to masquerade ball, racing across the ice, hiding from the hail, or basking in the sunshine… and the way I get there is through the ether.
Then, I imagine all those difficult notes are already there in the timber, vibrating—or morphic resonating—away in my violin, Ferdinand Maggini.
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