Scales and Vegetables

My father, in addition to having a PhD in music theory and composition, had the good sense to marry a woman with a degree in “home economics”. I don’t know whether this is still offered by colleges—probably not, since these days young women are more interested in being turned into attorneys and stock brokers—but my sisters, my brother, and I were mothered by a trained expert. One thing she always insisted on was that we Eat Our Vegetables.

Practicing scales is the musical equivalent of eating your vegetables. It’s important for building and maintaining good technique. Some people don’t care for either vegetables or scales, but I like vegetables and to some extent even enjoy playing scales.

I have just finished the Hrimaly two-octave scales for the violin and have started on the three-octave series. Proton, my black Labrador music critic, usually keeps me company while I practice. He hates the F major scale, the first step on our descent down the circle of fifths toward The Hell of Six Flats. I’m not too fond of it either, since it goes way up in the nose bleed part of the fingerboard where one finger has to get out of the way before the next one can be put down. I think the notes up there remind him of a dog whistle. Or maybe he has perfect pitch—I don’t know—I certainly don’t. Anyway, he goes to the door of the room, which I keep closed to avoid inflicting my scale practice on my wife, and waits more-or-less patiently to be put out of my misery. Sometimes I’d like to go with him.

Each step down the circle of fifths adds a flat and makes the scale harder by taking away one more note that resonates with an open string and can be used as a pitch reference. By the time I reach the smoking pit of G Flat there are none left and I’m adrift. The only non-flatted pitch is F. What good is that? After I’ve been up to like 17^th position and back I’ve usually modulated gradually to the nearest sensible key—G major or something—I tend to play sharp if I have nothing to hang onto.

Not only is it good for technique to practice scales in even the painful keys, now and then you actually have to use one of them. The orchestra I play in is preparing the Adagietto from Mahler’s Fifth for its next performance (life being too short for the whole Symphony, I suppose). It starts out innocently enough in F, then suddenly sneaks into six flats for awhile, then veers crazily into four sharps. At least he had the sense to come back to F at the end. Better composers than he have ignored that rule—think J. S. Bach’s A Musical Offering, in which one of the canons ends a key higher than it starts. Of course, Bach was using this device as a metaphor, sucking up to King Frederick II.

By the way, my dear mother also worked outside the home, as a teacher, so she wasn’t a complete fossil.