Dorothea Barth
Prose and Poetry

The antique shop we’ve stumbled across on our way to a  Napa  restaurant is about to close, the proprietor informs us. It’s 5:00 p.m. on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, which is supposed to be the most profitable day of the year for  U.S.  merchants. However, this little town in the heart of California’s wine country doesn’t appear to be abuzz with shoppers. 

We’ve perused the merchandise to pass the time, and as we are about to leave, I mention to my husband Bert how fascinating it would be to discover some old violins or sheet music. 

I’m not in need of either. My sheet music library overflows. This year, a work assignment outside music enabled me to buy not one but two violins: a robust 2008 gig violin and a wonderful old violin circa early- to mid-1800’s, guessed to be of Bohemian origin and affordable by me only because it has sustained a few injuries and repairs. Of twelve violins sampled, I’d been swept away by the mysterious, mellow Bohemian.  

Heading toward the store’s exit, I’m suddenly greeted by a pile of what looks to be old music, and on closer inspection reveals itself to be old violin music, $1.25 each, close to the original price. I grab all five Kreisler pieces, Carl Fischer editions. No matter that they may be included in my fuchsia Kreisler anthology--this is old, weathered, falling apart music with history, mystery to savor! I also grab Samuel Gardner’s From the Canebrake, Schirmer edition. I generously leave behind a volume of Sevçik etudes for some younger violinist to discover--I’ve endured Sevçik in an earlier incarnation and don’t welcome a return visit. 

I can’t wait to investigate the music and open the bag while awaiting my meal. Copyright years range from 1913 to 1920. Each piece was owned by a violinist named Noel, once an instructor at the Denver School of Violin. I return home and want to find out more about Noel, walk not in his footsteps but prance on his fingerboard. I Google the violin school and look up its address, which is actually a building named after silver baron Horace Tabor, after whom, apparently, numerous Denver structures, old and new, have been named. I find no sign to verify the present-day existence of the Denver School of Violin. 

Stamped addresses on the covers of the music reveal hat Noel did not always live in Denver. Of the Kreisler arrangements, the 1913 Danse Espagnole and the 1914 Dvorak Slavonic Dance No. 3 bear an address from the New York Life Insurance Company in   Cheyenne, Wyoming. But the 1915 Spanish Dance and the 1920 Tambourin Chinois are marked with the   Denver  address, as is From the Canebrake. The 1920 Nocturnal Tangier shows no stamp but instead an old label with a Bakersfield, California  address.

I’m hoping the Noel went from life insurance sales in Cheyenne to the violin teaching position in Denver. Judging by the copyright years on the books and the addresses, this could be true--that is, if he purchased the earlier copyrights first. I prefer this scenario because too often, the reverse is true: The violin is neglected, abandoned, and eventually forgotten in favor of earning a living, raising a family. Or disappointment sets in about one’s musical destiny, with similar results. I enjoy the thought that after selling life insurance, Noel returned to his first love, the violin. 

I feel bad that Noel moved to Bakersfield, California, as evidenced from the 1920 label.  Bakersfield is a place one passes while traveling the inland route from  San Francisco to Los Angeles, too hot and polluted to stay longer than to fill the tank and grab a snack. Perhaps it was an orchard paradise in the 1920’s--I hope so for Noel. What did Noel do in Bakersfield? Teach, or commute to  L.A. and take part in the studio scene? But wait—the   Bakersfield  home was built in 1963, my research tells me, so perhaps he retired there. Why am I finding his old sheet music in this Napa  antique shop? 

When exactly did Noel enjoy his violin teaching career? Had he already accumulated the music when he began teaching? Did he find this music in an antique store as I did and put his name on it? The latter theory I must discard, since the florid ink signatures don’t seem contemporary. The phone numbers has only four digits, so Noel had to have taught prior to 1959, when four-digit numbers evolved to seven digits.  

I gaze at Noel’s music, now mine, and at the markings I’ve inherited. The Danse Espagnole contains some second and third position fingerings and a 16th note run marked to transition from second to fifth position. On the second page, Noel deleted an artificial harmonic, which I might be inclined to do myself. The Slavonic Dance has arco and pizzicato markings in light red. Did Noel forget his black pencil that day, or was the pizzicato easy to overlook? The Spanish Dance and Canebrake are unmarked but heavily used, their middle folds reinforced with fabric and plastic tape. The Tambourin Chinois shows a few bowing changes to slur 16th note triplets to 8th note spiccatos in the following measure. A red reminder suggests a downward shift to the first position E string after a 16th note run. The Nocturnal Tangier with the Bakersfield  address has five markings in bold red ink, something I’ve seen Nadia Solerno-Sonnenberg do on her music. Did Noel perform this piece? 

Kreisler was in his prime when this music was published. Born in 1875, he would have been between 35 and 45 years old. Since Noel taught prior to 1959 at the latest, he taught while Kreisler was still alive. The publisher’s note on some of the Kreisler pieces adds to the copyright notice the warning that “Mr. Kreisler’s name must appear on all programs and whenever these musical works are played in public.”  

Except for those few markings and his authoritative, underlined signatures, Noel leaves me with more questions than answers about his life as insurance man and violinist. Though his mystery remains unsolved, it will be a pleasure this Christmas season to bring Noel’s notes in a bottle, his Kreisler and Canebrake music, to life, to mingle its mystery with that of my old Bohemian violin..