Music
Guitar
 My best friend |
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Well, everybody knows what a guitar is, obviously. I started playing the guitar in 1986, but by about 1992, my battered old purple Hondo was becoming increasingly difficult to play and keep in tune because the neck wasn't as straight as it should have been, so I started looking for a better one. Having tried out all the Martins, Gibsons and Taylors (as you do), I was rather disappointed, because none of them felt or even sounded terribly good, despite their high price; until these new Seagull guitars arrived from Canada, that is. A hand made solid wood guitar, for much less than the Martins, Taylors and Gibsons, and at nearly 5000 francs less than the previous shop I'd been in, not that much more than the cheap and nasty ones - but infinitely better. Thank God for subsidised Canadian exports! If you want a really good guitar that is affordable and will last you a lifetime, go for these French-Canadian ones. If you are good with a plectrum, you will probably prefer a Martin (and actually appreciate it), but if like me you play a quieter finger style, the Seagulls have a much more balanced sound, and the neck is slightly wider as well, which I rather like (i.e. not a stick like the electric and chord-bashing guitars, and not a plank like the classical and Spanish guitars).
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 Twelve string head |
 Notice the Stevens book under the Chambers dictionary; I press a lot of four-leaved clovers! |
They even do an identical twelve string, and just like the six string, it is nicely made and unbelievably easy to play for a twelve string, without even having to tune down. The only problem with a twelve string in general, though, is that you can't give it as much umph as you would a six string. Unlike an electric guitar that screams if you as much as look at it, with an acoustic guitar, you have to work to get the sound out (you don't just put your soul in, you need your whole being); but with a twelve string, you have to be careful not to overdo it, or you will get buzzes, so gently does it. I find I play the six string better with long-ish nails, but the twelve string sounds better if they are shorter. Then again, it probably does come down to practice, and I do play the six string much more than I do the twelve string.
So what do I play? Irish and Scottish songs and music mainly, with a bit of classical and jazz thrown in, but neither of them in any pure sense (I can't read guitar music, and I can't improvise). I guess it's a strange mixture of everything I've absorbed over time (having listened to Ralph McTell, Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, Wizz Jones and that 'folk' scene a lot). No Beatles, no Bob Dylan, no Simon & Garfunkel; but definitely no flash git guitar wizardry either! Nowadays, I play mostly hymns because I seem to have been playing exactly that sort of music for years, and the hymns at Our Lady of Lourdes do have a nice folky-ness to them (none of that deadly seriousness or happy-clappy business, just good fun and songs of love).
F??? You can't play the F-chord in church!
David Wijnants, during rehearsals at Our Lady of Lourdes
Mr. Morecambe! Don't you know what good clean fun is? No, what good is it?
Morecambe and Wise Show
Flute
 Long F and stamp (right hand index and middle finger) |
 C. Nicholson's Improved, 3887 *** STOLEN -- THIS FLUTE HAS BEEN STOLEN, PLEASE INFORM SOUTH WALES POLICE, CASE #62100200384 -- STOLEN ***, T. Prowse, Hanway Street, London (stamp on upper body) |
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Obviously, I'm no Matt Molloy or Paddy Carty, but I do like to play Irish music, and the flute is just my idea of what Galway Bay is like. The flute has that rainy Atlantic climate of the west of Ireland and Scotland; it has a deep, intense sound; it has an element of "Sturm und Drang" about it; the music is not necessarily as fast or as lively as up north, in Dublin or in pubs around the world, but is deep, intense and full of "uig-ness". If you know what I mean, you will understand.
The concert flute is nothing like the modern Boehm system. It just has the six holes that are tuned and fingered in more or less the same way as the tin whistle (key of D, start with all holes closed, and take fingers off one at a time, overblow to go up an octave), but unlike the whistle, there are also keys between the holes, so you can play the sharps, flats and naturals without having to half-cover holes, and without the cross-fingering that was part of baroque flute playing. Two of these keys do the same thing (long and short F), the bottom three (D#, C# and C) aren't used much in traditional music (which is just as well, as they a bit difficult to blow without lots of practice), and nobody plays Bb (which is why the key of F is such a pain to play), so you can get by with just two or three keys in most traditional music (in fact, there are quite a few good players who play flutes without any keys at all).
Of course, what you gain in easier fingering, you lose in blowing, because the sound isn't as powerful as a modern flute, and it is difficult to keep blowing at the right angle so you don't go out of tune, but you do get a much richer sound. It may not be to the liking of modern classical ears (even though it was the classical flute until well after the end of the 19th century), but it is just the sound for Irish music.
The small-holed French flutes (and some of the German ones) have a clearer, sweeter tone that is more like the modern flutes (and the older, baroque and romantic, flutes), but from the middle of the 19th century onwards, English makers started using larger holes (of which the Nicholson's Improved is the classical example), giving a considerably louder and wilder tone than the old French flutes. If you get the blowing right, you can even play the bottom octave while at the same time getting the top octave coming through; you don't hear much of that in proper music, but it is quite common in Irish flute playing.
Theobald Boehm took the idea of using larger holes to its logical conclusion, went a few steps further (including the use of a cylindrical bore, rather than the old conical), and came up with a flute with holes that are too large to stop and too far apart to reach (because the larger holes have to be further apart to be in tune with each other), so he had to devise a keying system that would allow you to use the holes with normal fingers; but even with the old eight-key wooden flutes, tuning was always difficult to get right, and with holes the size and distance of Boehm's, tuning became impossible, so he had to abandon the familiar fingering altogether, and introduce a new cross-fingering system for the new flute. Nowadays, classical flute players can't play a normal flute because the fingerings are totally different (and like me, most concert flute players can't play a classical flute either).
Please don't misread the last statement; that's "concert flute" players, not concert "flute players".
As with my French-Canadian perfect guitar, I'm now very happy with my very nice English flute. It is not perfect, but it is just the thing for the music I like to play. Having said that, I do remember with fondness a really beautiful French flute I once played in a shop in Ghent but could only afford a German (the French flutes have the purest, sweetest tone you'll ever hear, even more so than modern classical flutes). Maybe I will look for a really nice French flute someday, for really beautiful music in church, but probably not before I get used to blowing this English one properly; they are really two different-sounding flutes for different styles of music.
Concert flutes used to be very hard to find, but there are now quite a few Irish flute makers who make very good quality affordable flutes that are ideally suited for Irish music (all the power of the 19th century English flutes, but with less of the pitch and blowing problems). But again, I've got this very nice English flute that I'll probably play for the rest of my life; so I can safely look at a nice Irish flute, say that's a really, really nice flute, and mean it, safe in the knowledge I don't need to buy a new one. It's a nice feeling that, being comfortable with an instrument that's become part of you.
Its sound releases something naturally untamed, as if a squirrel were let loose in church.
Seamus Heaney, writing the sleeve notes for Matt Molloy's "Stony Steps" record
Viola d'amore
| A large fourteen-string tenor viol, played on the shoulder, like a violin. Bigger than a violin, but nowhere near the size of a cello, though possibly larger than a viola. Like the Norwegian hardingfele (Hardanger fiddle), it has sympathetic strings running through the neck, but whereas the hardingfele has four of each (i.e. a total of eight strings), the viola d'amore has seven of each (that's fourteen)! And, of course, the hardingfele being slightly smaller than a violin, the amore is a lot bigger. The range is enormous - the key of A does three scales just in first position - from the violin strings at the top right down to the almost chocolatey cello notes at the bottom. The key of D only does two full octaves, but still has half an octave above and below on the top and bottom strings (if you go into third position, you can complete the third octave and end in a nice harmonic, and if you go right into the dusty bits, you'll probably annoy a few violinists). Not as noisy or as solid a timbre as the violin, but much, much sweeter in tone - and it hums as you play it! | ||
 Standing up, all 80cm of it |
 Pegbox; bowing strings on top, sympathetics underneath |
 Strings on and through the bridge |
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Ever since I first heard a recording of Vivaldi's viola d'amore concertos (about 1988), I've always hoped to see one for real, and just to be really wild and imaginative, I even thought I'd like to play one someday; but what are the chances of that? Well, nil is pretty close, because viole d'amore are about as rare as hen's teeth, and you might have to negotiate part-exchanging the car to get one. August 2003, bored at work (as usual), so I did a bit of Googling around for viola d'amore reading (just pick a subject off the top of your head). Then I went to the images page, and there was this for sale sign; and I wouldn't even have to mortgage the cat to get it! For that price, it probably wasn't going to be a terribly good instrument, but I couldn't very well let it go, could I? And my advice to anyone learning a new instrument has always been "start with the cheapest nastiest instrument you can find; if you can learn to play that, that's when you will really improve with a better instrument". So, thanks to Pamela's Music, I'm now fulfilling the dream of a lifetime. |
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A week or so later, a big box arrived in the post, and there it was; a 1974 viola d'amore by Wolfgang Uebel of Celle, Germany. Still in one piece, but not in the best of shape. The neck was cracked and badly repaired, and the peg box was beginning to detach from the neck, but otherwise, it looked sound enough. Still, I wasn't going to risk putting strings on and have the love of my life die in my arms.
But just by chance, at the same time I found this amore on the hinternet, I also came across viol maker Tony Lacey, who actually makes viole d'amore, and just happens to live on the other side of the moors from where I am, just an hour's drive away; so what are the chances of that? He had a good look at it and pointed out the structural problems; but took the neck apart and reset it properly, pinned the peg box, turned a couple of the pegs to fit the worn holes, balanced the bridge, and helped with the stringing. And he didn't even charge a fortune to do it; some people are lucky enough to love their work, and I guess Tony is one of them.
Two days later, I broke my first sympathetic string, and then another... Aaaaarghhhh! Guiding a string through the neck without it getting tangled in the others is a real pain; you've got to love it, after all - but that's amore... So I just left them untuned for the time being, and concentrated on the playing strings because I knew I'd have more than enough trouble getting the hang of them - and relearning the bowing after fifteen years without a violin, when I'd never been terribly good at it anyway. Lots of D and G scales, serendipidously going into "Danny Boy", "Eamon an Cnuic" and a couple of O'Carolan tunes; this is going too fast, it must go horribly wrong at some point. Or is it just love at first sight?
After about three months, I finally plucked up the courage to replace the broken sympathetics with guitar strings, and get the whole lot in tune for the first time. What happened then is something you've got to hear to believe; the whole thing hums along with itself as you play it! When you're playing one D, the other two D's resonate, along with half of the sympathetics; even a couple of the ones that aren't actually in D! And believe it or not, it actualy feels easier to play when the sympathetics are playing along with you; you're playing the bowing strings and making the sympathetics hum, and the sympathetics are humming along, and helping you play the bowing strings. It's love!
Meanwhile, I'm getting the hang of D and G, moving quite freely between first and third position, and starting to get into C and F. And even playing it in pitch a lot of the time, even double strings! My neighbours must be getting sick of hearing the same tunes all the time... I wonder if they've figured out yet whether they're hearing a violin or a cello, or what? It's a mystery!
If you want to hear a viola d'amore played like it should be, listen to Thomas Georgi's CD Many Strings Attached, or look for Vivaldi's viola d'amore concertos, or Bach's St. John's Passion. There are also works by Janacek, Stamitz, Biber, Telemann, Puccini, Schubert, and many others, but you can't beat Vivaldi for tunes you can hum. And of course, it beats the Four Seasons, because Vivaldi wrote wonderful music for just about every instrument that was around at the time, not just for violins! And he did play the amore himself!
Or if you understand poetry, take a look at Viola d'amour (Liebesgeige), by Gustav Falke. I've never understood poetry myself, but I rather like this one.
I can't help it, Bloodnok, my nerves are strung up to breaking point <twung?> - there goes one now...
Neddy Seagoon, the Goon Show (The Affair of the Lone Banana)
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