On learning the viola

I have recently taken up the viola, after years of mulling over the idea. I have followed the well-trodden path of crossing over from the violin, which I played many years ago but never developed a real bond with. I am fairly sure that a large part of the reason why I didn’t develop this bond was that it wasn’t the right instrument for me: it was simply too high-pitched and screechy to be satisfying. The lower pitch and delicious throaty purr of the viola, I have discovered, are so much easier on the ear, and practising has become a pleasure.

Learning music in France comes with a particular challenge, though, and that is the Sol-Fa system. We English-speakers learn to call our notes A, B, C, D, E, F and G. But French-speakers (among others) call them Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La and Si. And it is of limited helpfulness to have watched The Sound of Music once when you were little, when you have a teacher bellowing in your ear, “No, no, play Si on the Sol string, not on the La string!” and you don’t have a clue what he’s talking about, so you just say, “OK,” and try to work it out for yourself.

Apart from note names, the biggest shock to the system is the alto clef. "What is the alto clef?" you may well ask. Quite. You would be forgiven for not knowing what it is. To fully grasp its obscurity, you first need to understand the overarching importance of the treble and bass clefs. Here’s a whistlestop tour:

This is the stave, which you write your music on:

This is Middle C:

Any note higher than Middle C is in the treble range. The treble clef is a system used for writing music at a high (or highish) pitch. Using this system, the middle line of the stave represents this note:

Any note lower than Middle C is in the bass range. The bass clef is used for writing at low or lowish pitches. Under this system, the middle line of the stave represents this note:

So music for high-pitched instruments is written using the treble clef system, and music for low-pitched instruments is written with the bass clef system.  (The piano, being both high- and low-pitched, uses both simultaneously and makes no drama about it.)

So far so good, but this doesn’t take into account instruments with a middle pitch. If you try to write for such an instrument using either the treble or the bass clef, you will frequently find yourself overflowing off the top or bottom of your stave (which is permissible but horrendously cumbersome and hard to read.) So then you might try flitting between clefs, selecting the most appropriate for that moment – but you’re likely to get a headache keeping track of them.

A number of instruments, such as the saxophone or French horn, get round the problem by transposing, meaning that whatever you write for them to play, they will play at a lower pitch. This is quite an ingenious contrivance, because it means the music is written at a higher pitch than it actually sounds, i.e. in the treble clef, with the notes all fitting comfortably on the stave and not falling off the bottom, but when it’s played, it still comes out right. The transposition business does create its own set of problems, certainly, but for the most part, it serves its purpose.

And then along came the viola. The viola is a middle-pitch instrument, but it won’t be transposed like the others. Nor will it have messy staves or unwieldy clef-work. So what is an instrument to do but use a different clef altogether? One in which the middle line represents not D nor B but Middle C.

The viola is the only instrument that uses it on a regular basis; in fact, the alto clef is sometimes called the “viola clef” for that reason. A very few other instruments, such as the English horn and the trombone, may venture into it from time to time when they are feeling fruity, but generally go scuttling back to the relative safety of the treble or bass clefs fairly quickly.

And now you understand the full significance of the alto clef and may have some sympathy for me, who, having had the treble and bass clefs instilled in me at the dawn of my music-playing life, have now had to go back to Square One and learn to read again.

I feel my teacher doesn’t always appreciate just how confusing an undertaking this is. He should, since he’s a violin immigrant himself, but he probably went through this stage so long ago now that he’s forgotten how it feels to have to recalibrate both your brain and your fingers. In my second lesson, he had me playing Pachelbel’s Canon (sad but true; and what’s even sadder and equally true is that in the metro station on my way home from the lesson, I passed a string ensemble playing it too. You’d think they would know better). He played it together with me (four bars behind, for the sake of authenticity), and at one point I hesitated over a note.

“Continuez!” he barked. “Jamais arrêter! Si vous vous arrêtez, tout le monde vous casse la gueule…”

(Approximately: “Don’t stop, or you’ll have everyone coming down on you like a tonne of bricks.”)

Ah. My first reminder that the viola is a social instrument.

The social aspect of the instrument is a big reason why I chose viola lessons over piano (although I still hope to start piano lessons again one day). I might not have been the most enthusiastic of violin students, but I loved playing in orchestras. It is a wonderful experience of divide-specialise-and-cooperate: each person makes their contribution, and it all adds together to make something magnificent (for a given value of “magnificent”). And my objective at the moment, the lighthouse that I’m steaming towards, is to learn to play the viola well enough to play in an orchestra.

In the meantime, even just playing a duet with my teacher gives me enormous pleasure, because it makes me feel I’m cooperating to produce something pleasing. When I play together with him, I don’t only want to play the notes correctly, I also want to play beautifully, because I feel responsible for making what he is playing sound beautiful.

I expect that playing the viola in an orchestra will be a very different experience from playing the violin. The violin is a bit like the mollycoddled youngest child of the orchestra – it gets all the fun parts, usually the melody, and is only rarely required to sit quietly while the grown-ups talk, on top of which it is usually positioned at the front of the stage where everyone can see it. So it generally ends up hogging the attention. The viola, meanwhile, is shunted into the middle to provide the musical wallpaper – the parts that give colour and texture but that nobody is likely to actually notice.

This unobtrusiveness is the source of countless viola jokes.

How do you make a violin sound like a viola?

Sit it in the back row and don’t play it.

Why can’t a violist play with a knife in his back?

Because then he can’t lean back in his chair.

Why don't violists play hide-and-seek?
Because no one will look for them.

A violist and a cellist were on a sinking ship. 
"Help!" shouted the cellist. "I can't swim!"
"Don't worry," said the violist. "Just fake it."

What do you do with a dead violist?

Move him back a row.

I don’t think I’ll mind this background role, though. Having done my stint as a spoilt youngest child, I’m happy to shift into the unobtrusive middle-child role, making my contribution to the overall magnificence without demanding any personal credit.

I leave you with a video of the viola sounding beautiful:  

Kathy Corecig playing her "Degustation: seven courses for solo viola"