Ill-Timed

Having finished my work assignment by noon, then having handled a bunch of lingering accounting stuff, I read a book and then sat down to mess about with the cello.

I have been in the mood to go back and explore a Rudolph Matz suite I bought ages ago called Lights and Shadows. Except I can't find it anywhere. And I realised as I searched for it again today that I hadn't seen it since I packed the last apartment. I have concluded that it seems to have mysteriously vanished between there and here, along with my copy of the sheet music for "May It Be" (which isn't anywhere near as great a loss). I haven't misplaced anything else, only those two pieces.

So since I worked on the musical stuff for the concert last night, today I played some Bach suites instead, then fiddled around with some old band stuff for the heck of it. I came up with a new fingering for the miniature bass-drum duet-solo-thingy in "Till My Head Falls Off" and wondered why I hadn't thought of it before because it was so blindingly obvious. I worked on "J'veux pas viellir" and cursed the freaking solo again. There's an ugly bit that no matter what I do, it doesn't sound good. But apart from that bit I polished the delivery and decided that should I ever play this again in performance, I'm making it completely legato, original be damned. (Heck, I've already messed with it by transposing and rewriting parts of it, why not make the cheerful heresy complete?) I think something a lot more flowing and resonant would sound better than the choppy staccato stuff. Staying close to the original is boring anyway (says the girl who hacked and hacked and hacked at "The Bonny Swans" and eventually settled on something that kind of sort of sounded like something Loreena McKennitt might have done in a studio once, and whose compatriots in musical crime gave songs such as "First We Take Manhattan" and "Insensitive" drastic makeovers).

But through it all, there was a part of my mind today that was saying, "Hey, you know, this instrument has really mellowed over the past couple of years. I really enjoy this sound."

And then I found the hole.

The seam between the back and the rib between the upper and lower bouts on the right side is starting to separate. It's not a real hole yet, but it will be as the gap continues to widen. At the moment there a millimetre of space between the two, held together with bits of varnish.

Wow, is this ever a bad, bad time for this to happen.

Fixing this will cost as much as, or possibly more than, that lateral move to the 7/8. It's the same position our station wagon was in: the repairs it needed would cost more than the value of the vehicle itself. Repairing this cello won't increase its value, so it's like sinking money into a black hole when I could be putting the capital towards the new cello instead. Since I haven't the money now to replace it, nor is the 7/8 I wanted currently available, I just have to be extra super obsessively careful with this one until the concert is over. And pray a lot.

(Originally posted on Owls' Court.)