For a few months now I have been grinding away trying to learn to play the Allemande from Bach’s Partita #2 for solo violin.  I suppose it is one of the easiest pieces in the set but I am certainly challeneged and extended trying to learn it.   I seem to have a habit of trying to learn pieces that are a bit beyond my capability to play well, and quite honestly I usually don’t get them to a refined enough position where I can claim to play them well.  I am determined to learn one of these pieces to a point where I would be comfortable playing it for somebody.

Often when working on a piece that is a bit above my level I work on it quite determinedly and then run into some technical limitations which prevent me from making it sound how I’d like it to sound.  I cannot yet play the Allemande through comfortably where I think it sounds fairly good, but I have sections that I can play in tune with a pretty good tone and the beginnings of some expression.  I believe I will actually get this one playable before too long.

When I started learning this piece I was pretty intimidated by all the black on the page.  I am not the greatest sight reader, and I find it difficult to get the music in my ear merely from the page.  Fortunately I had a recording and found a couple of  others to get the melody in my ear and this helped me in trying to figure out what it should sound like.  Then I set to it.

I start the piece in 3rd position playing a D on the G string.  I suppose I am at an early intermediate level so I am working on shifting and playing in position and I am able to do it.  I find that my consistency is what suffers the most as I don’t get my shifts 100% of the time and my intonation strays more as I move up in position.  I have heard that the Allemande really works out your intonation and this has certainly been my experience.

When I began learning the piece just getting the first few notes in 3rd position on the G string to sound right was very difficult.  Particularly playing the notes in tune, but also generating a pleasant tone.  I have spent an awful lot of time over the last couple months practicing the first line and even the first bar.

As difficult as it is getting and keeping everything in tune though, I feel like the more difficult challenge is maintaining a pleasant tone across the whole piece.  I recorded myself playing through the first section recently and was surprised how scratchy it sounded when I played it back.  I thought that I had played it better, with a better tone.  I think this is largely due to needing to work on my bowing and developing my right hand/arm to be more nuanced and refined.

Despite some of the difficulties the agonizingly  long time it is taking me to learn to play the piece with everything in place and in tune, it is progressing.  I am becoming much more confident and in sections as my hands move more comfortably I have felt the experience of being free to connect a feeling of expression which is in my mind or emotion with getting it out on the violin.  More often than not these moments are fleeting, but it is a great experience as I begin to not have to concentrate so hard on the many details of hand position and  finger placement etc. and begin to feel playing the piece less as a series of notes and more like a melodic line.  All within the context of an intermediate player of course.

I have the first section memorized and the second section is kind of quazi-memorized, as I can get through it stumblingly without the music. My goal is to be able to play this through memorized from start to finish, be in tune with a good tone.  If I get that far I will consider it a victory.  There seems to be an endless spiral of refinement and it is sometimes hard to see the progress.

Yet, it is such a fascinating process, learning a piece and learning the difficult skills necessary to try to make it music.  There are so many variables and factors which complicate the skill required to play any piece on the violin.  In a world where instant gratification is always on our minds it is such a good lesson to see that deliberate persistence produces results over time.  What is important is that progress is made.  The more you practice success the more success you have and I am constantly having to remind myself not to practice my mistakes over and over, but to slow it down or break it into smaller pieces so that I can sucessfully perform the particular acrobatics required.  It is agonizingly slow for someone who wants to be able to do it all now, but seeing the effectiveness of persistent and consistent working at it really pays off.  Hopefully, that experience is one which I can always use to remind myself that it isn’t today that I need to be able to play this piece, but that if I can at it and make miniscule, even barely perceptable progress eventually I will get there.

I hope to write on here one day that I can now play the allemande from Bach’s Partita #2 for  Solo Violin well enough not to be embarassed to play it for somebody.  In the mean time my poor wife will have to endure the hours of repetition.  In the end she’ll probably know the piece better than me!