No. 9 in A Major

Shane Dela Rosa

“It was the most horrendous, nightmarish, horrific (and any other synonyms you could think of) tutti of all time.”

Listen up.  

Being late for an orchestra practice is a musician’s worst nightmare. Especially for a violinist—the first violinist to be exact. I was first violin, so I was never allowed to be late. Ever. But every musician in this industry has had their fair share of terrible morning, alarm-not-alarming days, or subway-delayed-train problems. Those are only the tip of the iceberg. There are countless morning fiascos that instrumentalists have had, and they always starts with a question. Why are our rehearsals always in the morning?

Just to be clear, I have never been late for a rehearsal. Ever. Until that day, unfortunately so. And I swear to any human being, I was having a semi-aneurysm, running along the never-ending hallway that leads to the ensemble room. Running for my life to put it simply.

Don’t get me wrong, our conductor—Mr Busch is awesome, he can even be kind sometimes, depending on your definition of kind. But he can also be terrifying to no end, especially when he has to stop us mid-rehearsal because we suck.

Most orchestra members say all he needs is L-O-V-E. So, I handed him a piece of paper once with a formula.

The love formula.

I do agree that it may be the answer to his nerve-racking approach but like the equation, it may be too hard for him to understand. Not that it’s hard for me to understand.

To me, math is fun. Doing math is the only time when a person can buy 76 apples and everyone stops to wonder why. 

Sometimes I’ll be focused on answering one equation for so long, and once I get it right, it’s euphoric! Like, I’ll abruptly stand up and lift my arms shouting booya!

Only mathematics gives me that sense of bliss. And now, music as well.

The moment I reached the door to the ensemble room, I stopped breathing for five seconds just to try to calm my heart down. After opening the door a tad bit, I heard the rehearsal. It was the most horrendous, nightmarish, horrific (and any other synonyms you could think of) tutti of all time. It was foul. I’m not a perfectionist, but they were playing like they were a bunch of kids who just found out that instruments can produce sounds. It was the ‘noise orchestra’. Bunch of screeching, rustling, crackling, and scraping. I think I heard someone sobbing.

It was like none of them rubbed enough rosin on their bows and just going all out to bow the string. Both string instruments and wind instruments were screeching. Like a fork scraping on a rough ceramic plate. The sound rings and stays in your head. It makes you want to grit your teeth and writhe in the audible pain.

And it was worse when they tried to do a crescendo.

SOS. Please send help.

I was almost thankful I was late. But that all vanished, of course, when all of them stopped playing the moment I entered. My ears thanked them, but I’d rather not have everyone stop to stare at me. I looked everywhere but them . . .  or everywhere but Mr Busch. The stage was pristine as always. Wooden floor with angled walls that help project sound. Long wine-red curtains on each side. The orchestra theatre has about 1000 seats, also in red. We always practice here because we need good reverberation conditions for our rehearsal. It helps with the tonal nuances of music, the articulations and tones—the way the sounds are balanced.  

My face heated up. Did I say Mr Busch was awesome? His prickly stare and knotted eyebrows made me second-guess that. I wanted to disappear—to ask the universe to part the concrete floor so I may easily enter the Earth’s core.

I was ready to get an earful. He was going to tell me that there’s no spot for me, like what he did with Ms Freddy. Or he would tell me to stay back and discuss this unmannerly behaviour like he did with Mr Jonas. I mean, only Mr Busch would say that word, unmannerly.

But I was mistaken. This was worse than getting my working outs wrong. I mean that was frustrating, but this one? This is just straight up bricking myself.

‘Ms Williams, see me after rehearsal. We shall discuss this unpunctuality of yours. You just missed the first movement. So, hurry along and take this, this is what we’ll be doing for the next 4 months.’ He handed me music sheets that should be framed due to their abstractness.

I hurried along, opened my case, put my shoulder rest on my violin, sat down and picked the bow as I put the sheet music on the music stand. Everyone watched my every movement and I just hoped that the stage would split in half.

I looked at Mr Busch, waiting for him to continue.

‘Listen up,’ He’s got everyone’s attention now. I took a deep breath straight to my diaphragm and breathe out slow. ‘Today, we are doing something new. You all know I’m a major fan of avant-garde artists. And it is without a doubt also good knowledge for everyone in here to be open about untraditional practices when it comes to music.’ He stepped down from his podium, making a sweeping gesture that suggested he was about to talk passionately. No one dared to make a sound, I even halted my breathing as he approached.

‘And though I don’t expect everyone to understand, I certainly trust everyone to be engaged and open-minded about it. Which I believe everyone will do so. Because refusing to be open-minded is very unmannerly, right, Ms Williams?’ He tipped his chin forward, eyebrows raised as he looked between the gap of his glasses.

I forced a smile.

Avant-garde means pushing the boundaries of those artists, writers and musicians’ ideas, advancing and challenging the precedent ones. These ideas promote progress and advocate for societal reforms. Very innovative and very experimental.

Any style of music that works within conventional frameworks while attempting to push limits in some way is considered avant-garde. The word is thrown about to refer to the work of any musicians who completely breaks away from convention.

But don’t confuse it with modernism. Modernism’s concepts are self-conscious concerning artistic and social traditions. It’s a movement to transform with new values, deviated from social and cultural lenses. However, the avant-garde movement denies the ‘institution of art’, questioning societal and artistic principles and hence must integrate political, social, and cultural issues.

That being said, it is often not accepted. And in the music industry, especially the orchestra, taking on avant-garde works is risky.

I looked at the sheet music and I see notes that are not notes. Musical notations that are drawings. Symbols that tell us whether we have to go louder, quieter, vibratos. All annotations are changed.

‘I used all the symbols in there with the inspiration from Anestis Logothetis's work. Try and figure out what I am trying to tell you here. Perhaps, write a poem about it. See what I’m trying to get you all to convey to the audie—‘

How will we know what you want us to convey if we don’t have any idea what these symbols mean?’ Ms Zhu sounded sincere and genuinely curious. Still, a rookie mistake.

‘Ms Zhu, I would appreciate if you let me finish.’ He stared down at her, making her quiet and everyone still. He cleared his throat and continued to pace while holding the music sheets. ‘I won’t tell you what these symbols mean because I want you all to try and figure out what it could mean or how you yourself understand this. Because once you figure it all out, then comes a whole new sound you might aspire to hear.’

I let what he said sink in. These notations, though unfamiliar, new and abstract, they’re the same characters that tell the same story, the same characters that produce the same sounds. And sound is everything on this planet. Our own heartbeats, our own breath. And when you close your eyes, you listen to the auditory vibrations of everything that surrounds you. The sound that allows all of your senses to feel. As plain as listening to the sound of rain drops against your umbrella. All of these sounds, for a musician, are stimulation to express emotions and stories.

It reminded me of Luigi Russulo’s L’arte dei Rumori or The Art of Noises. Everything in life then was silent. A quiet world. Any sound that would punctuate this world of silence didn’t prolong. Didn’t vary.

That’s why the ‘noise orchestra’ was invented. The six families of noises. The roars and the thundering, the whistling and the hissings, the whispers and the murmurs, the screeching and the creaking. The noises obtained by beating objects; the voices of animals and people and the sounds they produce. All of these noises enrich the field of sound and evoke feelings. All of these noises could be music.

After the rehearsal, I smiled. Though we kept going off pitch or missing the entrance because of all the new notations, the variety of timbre noises became oddly satisfying. Since I was insπred … get it? Inspire—. Never mind.

I scribbled a poem on the back of the music sheet:

This poem reminded me of the interpolation equation. But trying to apply interpolation to music will most likely equate to an error. It would be pure chaos. But what’s the harm in trying?

Interjection in music has to have known values. Interpolation itself is a process of determining the unknown values that lie between data points. It could be between notes and lines, music and sound or people and instruments. The interpolation formula is:

  If we apply the formula to music, then:

y = ?

y1 = Composer

y2 = Sound

x = Performer

x1 = Instruments

x2 = Conductor

So:

If I follow this equation, performers minus instruments equals unplayed instruments. Sound minus composers equals an empty music sheet. Conductor minus instruments equals people who are not able to play the notes.

I guess it won’t work just as I thought. But perhaps if I tweak it to simplify it:

Then y = Orchestra. 

I guess that worked for me.  

Like these new notations, the formula might not be for everyone, but if you tweak it just a little bit, you could discover something special. The notations doesn’t use hard Italian words if it wants you to go loud or quiet. It shows you through images and symbols. A much simpler notation.

I begin to put the music sheets into my plastic folder and my violin back in its case. I halt for a moment to take notice of my surroundings. You always know an orchestra rehearsal is done when you hear specific noises. Chairs being stacked up, zippers being zipped, the clanking noise of metal stands and a lot of murmurs and whispers from people. Mostly discussing what they thought about the rehearsal.

It's very noisy. Yet, it’s better than the silent world.

‘Ms Williams, please stay behind. We have important matters to discuss.’ I forced a smile. I may or may not have forgotten about me being late. I nod at Mr Busch and finish packing up. I looked at these musicians around me once again.

Though at the moment we’re sounding suck-erish,

the noise we make is still art.

The noise we make is still music.