EMBRACING THE FULL SPECTRUM
Over the past few years, we have seen a particularly strong interest in our V. Richelieu violins and violas among the Suzuki teaching community – Suzuki teachers from around the country have been contacting us, and many of them have invited us to attend quite a few Suzuki conferences to present the line to their colleagues. It is fascinating to explore why so many Suzuki families enjoy the V. Richelieu; we’ve heard from so many that the instrument they had allowed their child the opportunity to fully develop their musicianship and grow into fine players. “Thank you, V. Richelieu!”
Suzuki instruction is a proven leader in string education and much has been written about it. Like many other methods, it relies on ear and arm development, coordinating the fine motor skills with the brain’s processing of tone and tonecolor. Ear development is a complex skillset, and it does require excellent tools, an excellent instrument.
Why does the V. Richelieu line of fine instruments work so well?
Let’s begin with intonation. To clearly hear whether a note is in tune, the instrument must have a clear, ringing tone. The clear expression of sound helps students identify pitch, and helps them become more precise and more consistently accurate as their brains and finger-muscular memory falls into line. To get this right in violin making, we start with extremely carefully chosen high-grade spruce and maple woods. But even among the best woods, there are variances in stiffness and density that must be accommodated in the building process. At V. Richelieu, every piece of wood, and therefore every instrument, is a snowflake: each beautiful and each unique. To individualize every violin, our luthiers hand-graduate the plates to bring out the best tones and clearest ring.
Most commercial instruments are not uniquely graduated and the plates are carved overly thin. A thinner plate will have a louder voice, often attractive at the get-go when trying out instruments, but the open, constant, sometimes hollow ringing masks the true intonation of the instrument. We make our instruments to have clear ringing tones that complement, not mask, the intentions of the woods we use. The effect is a clearer sound that enables excellent intonation.
Looking beyond intonation, however, there is much more that a student must learn about how to use their instrument to effect tone and ultimately tell their musical story. Indeed, the beauty of performing a piece of music does not come from a rote playing of each note (a computer can do that!) but the expression of the sound that is shaped by the bow, the right arm, the vibrato, and all the tools in a musician’s toolbox to create the most beautiful, human-ly shaped, musical picture.
Consider a child learning to draw. Hand him or her two crayons, they will use both colors to the max. A page will fill with color, but visually, the drawing will ultimately be limited by there only being two colors. Over time, that child will come to believe that there are only two colors in the rainbow, and their brains will process these colors as the “norm” of visual expression.
Now give this child the entire box of crayons. Now the child has a world of color to use and experiment with and their drawings will become more expressive, and tell a more dynamic musical story. But learning to use all these colors (complimentary colors, contrasting colors, etc.) is complicated and takes time. It’s a bigger process of learning, but ultimately more rewarding!
Instruments and music works the same way. On day one, beginners learn and focus on simpler tasks: how to shape the left hand, how to bow in a straight line, where is that “C”? Beginner instruments are like a box of two crayon colors and they can be perfect for the starting player. But we don’t want our students to believe that the world of music is defined only by a two-color violin!
And Suzuki instruction, with its emphasis on ear development, is particularly vulnerable to these weaker instruments. How can you learn to use all the colors in the rainbow if you’re only given two crayons? We want our players, as most Suzuki instructors do, to learn to use all the colors in the musical rainbow to paint a musical picture that is drop-dead gorgeous, that fills the mind with images created under a player’s bow. Our students must learn that the musical norm is NOT a two-color picture, but a complex expression of sentiment, conceived by the composer and player and expressed wholly by the player using an instrument that speaks with a full color of sound, expressive and balanced across the instrument! And just as no two musicians are alike, every violin is a snowflake as well, or should be!
And don’t think that fractional, child size instruments, can’t create these tones – they can and should! Just as violins and violas require different qualities in the wood, so too do fractional instruments: we choose different woods for our small instruments than we do for the larger adult sizes. Small violas should not look like small violins…the C string requires a different shape and model. We’ve all heard about protégé young players performing masterworks at Carnegie Hall. The tools these children learn to play on are extremely sophisticated. Just as a racecar driver can’t win a race with the car I drive to work, no matter how good they are at turns and braking, a master player needs his/her racecar as well! Each instrument is designed to provide a broad dynamic range relative to the size of the instrument using shape and design, wood choice and unique plate-graduations.
Finally, we can’t ignore the importance of set up. In developing the left hand and bow arm technique, set up is critical. Shaping the bridge and fingerboard, a soundpost made from excellent stock and correctly positioned and selection of quality strings all create the ultimate playing experience. A good set up both enables the violin to work and the player to fully utilize the instrument.
Suzuki instruction has for over half a century provided one avenue to guide children from the youngest age through a curriculum of music and ear development that has yielded many of the finest musicians on the planet. Even those children who do not become concert players, the experience of learning the violin, with its neural development and transference to other disciplines is a valuable part of many children’s growth. We want all children to experience a joyful life with their violin and to find a musical home with our instruments. Suzuki instruction, paired with a good instrument and a supportive family, will bring such joy and make our world a better place for it!