First, thanks to my continual poking around to look for the first second first second OH WHATEVER incarnation of that B theme, I now have four versions of the thing floating around in my auditory short-term memory, all duking it out in a giant mud puddle and getting nowhere. I finally did what any parent surrounded by a broken fishtank and four screaming children does — I shushed them all and went with the first idea. At least, I tried to. I ended up getting it into Lilypond and working out the modulations.
That irksome measure in the middle of the “Garotte” “Gavotte” is still annoying me, mostly because it’s written for a violin and transposed, which makes the whole pinky issue a far greater challenge than otherwise. My instructor recommended a very small shift in mid-slur that is simply not going to happen, so I’m going to just wing it and use the open string. I admit, I’m also having a hard time with it because I can’t see the point behind slurring these two particular groups of 16th notes.
I admit I’m also becoming annoyed with the viola in general. I’m having a harder and harder time seeing why I am killing myself to make one note at a time when I can make handfuls of the things on the piano and write pieces besides. At least I can during the time I’m not struggling with that viola. I’m wondering whether or not, if one wants to makes one note at a time, it might not be a better use of one’s time to just sing. Someone else’s time at least … not mine.
We’ll see how this works. I’ve committed to two years on the viola come hell or high water, so we’ll see how that works out. I don’t want to make a decision I’ll later regret based on nothing more than frustration with one stupidly written measure in a book that was meant for the Barbie viola violin.
A lot of strikeouts in today’s post …
