Notes from The Dark Side

For roughly the first half of his career, my father was the Head of the Music Department in a small liberal arts college in Iowa. But every summer for a period of about seven years he packed the whole family off to National Music Camp in Interlochen, Michigan. I was about thirteen when this started and didn’t think very hard about what motivated him, other than since it was a music camp, it was just his thing. I found out later that he wanted each of us kids to have the benefit the camp could provide, and there was a deep discount offered to the children of camp staff members. He couldn’t afford to send any of us there unless he went also and joined the teaching staff. So that’s what he did. What he earned for the summer just barely covered the family’s expenses and our camp tuition.

It was an priceless experience. I was used to being a fairly large fish in an extremely small puddle of a school orchestra back home. The first orchestra rehearsal at Interlochen was a rude shock. I don’t remember what we were playing, but it started off with an impossible run up the fingerboard that left me in the dust. The other violinists, most of whom had been there in previous seasons, were unfazed. By about half way through the eight week (!) season I could keep up, but getting to that point took a lot of work.

The next season started off with a shock of a different kind. The initial seating assignments for the string players were announced by posting a list at the entrance to the dining hall. My name did not appear on the list for either the first or second violin section. Entirely against my will and without my knowledge I had been forced over to the Dark Side to play the viola!

I knew absolutely nothing about the viola, except it was heavier than the violin, used a different system of notation, I didn’t own one, and I had to suffer this purgatory for two weeks. There were several other violinists who had been similarly violated and we were given no instructions except to go borrow a viola from the instrument shop. For learning to read the music, we were on our own.

One thing that I should point out here is that the better you play, the closer you sit to the front of the section. Every week we performed a little ritual of one-on-one comparisons with our peers using the harder passages from the week’s music. The rest of the section voted on who played better, the winner taking the seat closer to the front. A lot of self-esteem was at stake in these little dramas, let me tell you. And here I was, stuck playing an instrument I wasn’t familiar with and couldn’t read the music for, competing against a bunch of actual violists, complete with horns and pointed tails. And meanwhile, my colleagues in the violins were getting all the good seats.

The viola part for most orchestral music is even less inspiring than the second violin part, by the way, just to add to the insult. However, somehow I survived my two weeks, learned to read the notes just in time to return to the violins, and now can even admit that in retrospect I’m glad for the experience. I haven’t played the viola for some time now, but I still know how, and I’m ready if the need arises to return to the Dark Side.