 | I offer lessons in:- Vielle
- Classical Violin
- Renaissance Violin
I also have these skills: - Baroque Dance
- Renaissance Dance
- Viola da gamba
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Shulamit Kleinerman | Offering private lessons in
Seattle, Washington |
| The kid-friendly Middle Ages | Posted by Shulamit Kleinerman - May 3, 2008 - 4:04 PM
| | Once again this year, of the two summer workshops I offer for kids, Renaissance Week is filling up much faster than Medieval Week. I guess it's not a coincidence: one of the parents signing up confessed that the Renaissance seemed "way more appealing" than the medieval era.
Meanwhile, I taught a session on medieval music recently to some adult students of traditional fiddle. “What do you mean by ‘medieval’?” one of them asked. “Was it when they had those low-cut gowns? Was it when they had those pointy hats? Is there maybe a movie we’ve seen that is set in the middle ages?” “Did they have any upbeat music?” asked another.
I had forgotten that regular people have few or no images for the middle ages. And the images they might have aren’t the same as mine. People may think of cold stone buildings and eerie Gregorian chant, of torture and gruesome martyrdoms, of the Black Plague, hunger, ignorance, witch-burnings… and then possibly of some Monty Python routines involving cows and coconut shells.
None of this, of course, suggests a week of summer fun for kids.
So let me mention that the medieval era is also the time of dragons, unicorns, castles, and mazes. The late middle ages featured fantastic storytelling, beautiful calligraphy, daring adventurers, knights in shining armor, music you want to dance and sing to, funny and captivating stories, fancy clothing, and gorgeously colorful, accessible, sometimes cartoonish art. (See England’s nearly thousand-year-old Bayeaux Tapestry, http://www.bayeuxtapestry.org.uk/Bayeux1.htm, for an example, or any unicorn art, such as this: http://www.yorkminster.org/img/fullsize/product62.jpg.)
In the places where art had a chance to flourish, the stuff that was produced in the late middle ages is (to me) unrivalled for simple loveliness. If I had another life to live right now, I’d spend it learning to draw the whimsical animals and narrative scenes and, best of all, the decorative borders of flowers, vines, and geometrical shapes that adorn the pages of medieval manuscripts: http://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/images/Rouen.JPG.
I never stop being fascinated by how -- with the important exception of high-church art and architecture -- nothing is ever quite perfectly symmetrical, even when the idea of symmetry is there. People who made art were craftspeople, not scientists (as would famously become the case in the Renaissance with figures like Leonardo da Vinci) and not even “artists” in the way we understand the term today. They were making things up in real time, literally doodling in the margins: http://www.24hourmuseum.org.uk/chg/content/images/2007_3368.jpg. Kids look at a few pages of medieval manuscripts and calligraphic alphabets and they reach for the paints or colored pencils, coming out with the most gorgeous illuminated capitals or newly-designed coats of arms. It’s as kid-friendly as can be.
I do skip the bloody martyrdoms and the Crusades, just as we might not want our kids to dwell on the latest news of torture and aggression in our present-day world. We do mention in class that many of the arts we enjoy were available only to those with leisure, and that life was full of toil and terribly short on choices for most people.
But one advantage it had over our own age -- and I think this was true for many more centuries, until relatively recently in Western history, perhaps the nineteenth century -- is that the arts and skills and crafts enjoyed by adults were equally available and accessible for children. There was no separate kids’ music or art, because there was no need. The children of working families also took part in practical crafts, rather than idling at home while their parents left to work in adults-only environments. In our workshops, the kids are always fascinated to learn how to spin raw wool into yarn and to consider that, in an earlier age, they would already have been be experts at these kinds of skills.
Our consumption-based culture doesn’t offer kids so many opportunities to enjoy a sense of practical competence. I wouldn’t take my chances going back in time, but we’ve paid a high price for our modern comforts. It’s a great treat to be able to bring some of these old arts to my young urban neighbors!
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| About buying a first violin | Posted by Shulamit Kleinerman - April 17, 2008 - 9:57 AM
| | This question has been coming up a lot recently, and I'd like to answer it here very clearly. I have strong feelings about this, as you’ll see!
Never buy from anywhere other than a violin shop -- not a general music shop, not Ebay, not Costco.
If you buy from any of these places, what you get will have about the same level of craftsmanship as a kazoo. A teacher I know calls these instruments VSOs -- Violin Shaped Objects. They are junk and they are all but unplayable.
"But," you say, "I'm [or my child is] just a beginner. Isn't it okay just while we're starting out? Does it really make such a difference?"
The answer is no, it's not okay, because yes, it makes a significant difference, a difference that matters as much when you're first learning as it ever can.
Here’s why:
The junk violins -- the ones that are as glossy as candy in the photos or hanging on the wall -- make a big echoey ringing sound instead of the substance and tone of a true violin. The problem is that the big echo doesn't give you any information: it just booms at you, so that it will fool you into thinking, "This sounds great, let's buy it." It keeps booming at you when you're trying to learn to tune the strings, so that you really can't hear the difference in the vibrations when the strings are in tune or out of tune. It keeps booming at you when you're trying to learn to place your fingers, so that you don't get any feedback from the instrument about which spot has the increased resonance that comes with being in tune. It keeps booming at you when you're trying to learn how to use the bow, so that all you get is "on" or "off" -- no gradations of sound, no expressive differences, no feedback about how tense or relaxed, healthy or unhealthy your developing bow arm is.
The other problem with these instruments is what violin people call setup. If the different small pieces of wood that hold the strings in place aren't carefully adjusted by a violin maker/repairer, the violin will have all kinds of problems. It might not physically be possible for the player to do some basic things on it: the notes might be in different places on different strings, for example, rather than the same place. The strings might be so far above the fingerboard that it takes a ridiculous amount of finger pressure to make the notes, so that it's impossible to develop healthy technique. You can't see any of these things unless you are trained. Even a violinist doesn't necessarily know what to look for; I've learned the hard way over my years as a teacher, when violins that seemed okay enough really turned out not to be. A violin that is poorly set up can sometimes be helped, but not if the instrument is just too low quality to begin with.
I know a great fiddle player who had a terrible experience as a student because of all the things she could never do on her instrument, despite teacher after teacher’s good advice and years of hard practice. It was only years later than she learned -- while working in a violin shop -- that the problem had been the violin all along, not her. Many people would have quit and never known what they were missing. It is hard enough being a beginner on the violin, making frustratingly unrefined sounds until you get the hang of it. It just doesn’t make sense to make these first stages any more challenging than they are.
If you didn't know what to look for in a used car, would you buy one off of Ebay for $50 and send your teenaged child across the desert in it alone?
What to do?
If you want to purchase a violin that is worth playing on -- worth the money you’ll spend on lessons and the time you’ll spend practicing -- you can expect to pay not less than $500 for a kid-sized instrument, more for a full size. For an instrument for a teenager who’s been working and progressing for several years, a base line $1000-$2000 is reasonable if you can possibly afford it.
To put this into perspective, a professional violinist in the classical scene would expect to pay upwards of $10k for their instrument. The priceline is lower in the trad music world, where the energy in the bow can be more important than the instrument’s still sustain; but a handmade instrument whose production requires specialized knowledge and craftsmanship just isn’t cheap. Even good wood is surprisingly expensive.
You can consider buying from an individual, a student who has physically or musically outgrown their instrument, but in that case it it very important to take the instrument to your teacher and especially to a violin shop to get their opinion on its price and condition.
Consider rental instead
If cost is a concern, I would encourage you to rent from a violin shop; the rates are reasonable, and if you do decide to buy, you can apply your first several months’ rental to a purchase. Here in Seattle, Bischofberger Violins is still the most reliable source, particularly for kid-sized instruments. Do not rent from a general music store. They may tell you they know about violins, but they simply don't, and the instruments they rent often have the same problem as Ebay violins. Always rent from violin-family specialists.
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| Global vielle, part II | Posted by Shulamit Kleinerman - January 23, 2008 - 2:50 PM
| | Here's what my Tasmanian correspondent Ngiare Elliott -- a speech pathologist and cat lover -- had to say when I asked how she'd discovered the vielle:
"I came to the vielle by discovering a medieval band called Harlequin, who were playing at the Hobart docks a few years ago. I could hear their enchanting music from a block away, and I was drawn to it (much to my husband's horror -- I'm afraid he doesn't share my love of medieval music). I'm sure I must have been in a trance as I walked toward it -- and there it was -- a vielle, being playing beautifully by its maker (and my teacher now), Harry Wass. I saved for three years so that Harry could make me one, and he carved it magnificently too -- I just love it! I still sound atrocious, but I'm getting there, I think, and I practise every day. My little boy tells me to go to my room to play, because the music fills up his ears too much, or so he says!" | |
| Grupo ANIMA (Medieval/Brazilian crossover) | Posted by Shulamit Kleinerman - January 23, 2008 - 2:27 PM
| | While writing an article on early music performers in Brazil recently, I interviewed two members of Grupo ANIMA, a wonderful band in Campinas, Sao Paulo. The musicians sent me their three recordings to date. I haven't found the CDs for sale anywhere in the States, or I'd tell you where to get them.
In describing ANIMA's sound, I keep wanting to use the word "tribal" -- which fits the band's own search for a kind of mythologized, primal human past in the European repertoire. ANIMA isn't interested in the standard early music endeavor of performing old repertoire "as it was done at the time," but in, the band's fiddle player Luiz Fiaminghi told me, "the possibility of reinventing the past."
The group takes medieval and renaissance tunes to be fragments of a lost oral/memorial culture, musical traces of a pre-modern experience that library research can't reveal. The musicians use Brazilian folk music as the oral tradition in which to bring these old melodies back to life. It's not far-fetched if you consider how the Brazilian tradition absorbed and preserved the Portuguese colonists' musical influence in the fifteenth century. ANIMA began to take shape when recorder player Valeria Bittar returned from years of early music study in Europe and sought "an intimacy" with the old music of her own country. She found it: “music that was not notated, ancient music that is still alive in contemporary Brazilian ‘traditional’ societies of unlettered communities, far from mechanical thinking and industrialization, where a chronological time line does not exist.” In some of their publicity, ANIMA refers to such places as “islands of medievality.”
Fiaminghi plays -- and of course this is very exciting to me -- the off-shoulder Brazilian traditional fiddle, whose shape preserves the encounter of the local crafts tradition with the violin. ANIMA's crossover project goes both ways, with the recorder and harpsichord joining in with indigenous percussion instruments on Brazilian tunes. It's all just music. I wish I could go to Brazil and play with these people.
ANIMA's music-making expresses what I think is a secret longing of many lovers of early music: a nostalgia for the unknown pre-modern world, for a more raw, direct, magical experience. This is not a very academic longing -- which makes it even cooler that the members of ANIMA spend a good bit of energy in theorizing what they do, looking for influences in everything from cultural criticism to contemporary theater. Bittar and Fiaminghi are both working on doctorate degrees, but the band's music-making is fleshy, direct, and invigorating.
Grupo ANIMA can be seen on YouTube (http://youtube.com/). Their website's English version isn't operational yet, but it's worth trolling through the Portuguese pages if only for the luscious close-ups of the band's instruments: http://www.animamusica.art.br/#.
If anyone knows where to get ANIMA's recordings, let me know and I'll add that information here. | |
| Global vielle | Posted by Shulamit Kleinerman - January 7, 2008 - 7:19 PM
| | A couple of days ago I had an email from someone who asked where my medieval CD could be purchased. I was mystified, since I haven't even pressed copies, much less released or publicized it.
More intriguing still was that the message was from Tasmania. This didn't seem likely to be a case of word-of-mouth exposure.
The first mystery was solved when I remembered that the sound clips on my website, shulamitk.net, have labels that show up in some browsers.
As for the second: My correspondent is a student of medieval music and reports being in possession of one of only two vielles in Tasmania. I am hoping I might hear more of this story. I had just been writing some magazine articles about early music in countries outside Europe and North America, with an emphasis on big urban centers where there are early music "scenes" -- Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro. But Tasmania! I had to check the map to see just where the island is relative to the Australian mainland. Early music tends to feel like a very small world, but mine just got a little bit bigger.
Against the vast potential of the internet to make global connections, I find that in practice, I use it mostly just to keep in touch with people I know already, or to find and be found by people in my own geographical area. I'm delighted and honored that my little sound clips were useful to someone on the other side of the Equator and the International Date Line.
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| Exploring medieval/folk crossover | Posted by Shulamit Kleinerman - November 2, 2007 - 2:41 PM
| | I'm very excited about two crossover collaborations I have going on in the next six weeks with wonderful folk players, pairing my gut-strung vielle with traditional (modern!) fiddle. The smaller of these projects is with Portland player Betsy Branch in the popular Portland Revels. We'll take to the stage in historical costumes and jam as part of the show (not to mention backstage!). The other is a program at the Good Shepherd Center here in Seattle, where I'll be teaming up with Ruthie Dornfeld for medieval (and renaissance?) music along with Provencal folk tunes, and maybe some old-time stuff too. (Our set will be the second half of a full-length program, following some Chinese dulcimer music. Talk about crossover!)
It's wonderful to hear the sonorities of the vielle come to life with the buoyancy of the folk tunes and the more piercing, muscular quality of the metal-strung violin. Working with musicians who are such fluent improvisers is also a treat and an eye-opener (ear-opener?) for me. I keep wondering what it would mean to really internalize medieval musical style and be able to move around in it even half so confidently. Part of the problem, of course, is that there isn't just "medieval style." Medieval music covers many centuries and many countries, and we can observe and guess a little bit about what characterized each place and time. It sounds daunting---but good folk players like Ruthie and Betsy are able to play several different repertoires (Celtic, English, French, Old Time, etc) that share some traits but each have unique elements. I'm excited to learn as much as I can from these players!
The Portland Revels run Dec 7-16. The Seattle show is December 1; details are posted here on The Learning Musician in my calendar. Hope to see you there!
shula | |
| New Studio and Autumn News | Posted by Shulamit Kleinerman - October 7, 2007 - 9:58 PM
| | Hi everyone!
At the beginning of September, I moved to my new studio in the Phinney neighborhood. It's a great teaching space, and we've all been enjoying it. It feels good to settle in and bring a more clear-headed focus to my lessons.
Since I moved into a new living space at the same time, other activities have been on a brief hiatus while I get organized in my living quarters.
Some parents have written to ask what's up with historical arts classes. (For more information on these classes, go to http://shulamitk.net/teaching.html.) I'm eager to put together some parent-child workshops and some single-session classes for kids later this autumn. There may be a week-long session to look forward to in February or April school vacation week, and I'll definitely offer another week or two of summer camp. Topics are TBD -- I'm full of ideas as usual. Thanks to everyone who answered my parent survey in the summer! Feedback and wish lists are always welcome.
I've got a concert scheduled at the wonderful Good Shepherd Center in Wallingford on Dec 1 -- a double bill with a Chinese folk musician, which I'm really looking forward to. I also hope to revive the series at Kuan Yin Tea House soon, once I'm ready to start practicing a bit again. It's been great to have a little breather from the usual routine.
Wishing everyone a good autumn (brr!),
shula | |
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