Dorothea Barth
Prose and Poetry

“It’s a Stradivarius,” Papa proclaimed with wonder, intently perusing the label of my new, borrowed, half-size violin as we hunched around the wobbly dining room table of our second-floor apartment in one of Amsterdam’s less poetic housing developments.

“Let me see,” I, the soon-to be-tested prodigy, shouted with excitement, flinging my arms toward this treasure, which, moments later, slid on the floor with a thud. The precious instrument landed in one piece but with an unmistakable crack running the length of its belly. Slapping both hands to his forehead in sheer “What now?” terror, it took Papa a minute to collect his thoughts.

“We must tell them as soon as possible, and we must offer to pay for repairs.”
What these repairs would entail and whether his modest proofreader’s salary would cover what delicate surgery might be required, he dared not consider. The little violin, it turned out, was not a Stradivarius. How relieved Papa must have been to learn about spurious violin labels on factory-made violins!

Such was the memorable beginning to my music career. I was 6 years old, born to Holland’s post-war baby boom. The economics for a struggling writer/linguist with three children were tight, but Papa vowed his children would have music, and if he could help it, greatness.

The little violin was fixed and my lessons began, as did Papa’s mission. Showing me a photograph taken circa 1925 of the then 9-year-old Yehudi Menuhin, Papa conveyed his plans for me.

“I want you to be like this little boy. A great violinist since childhood, a ‘wunderkind’.” To me this picture of young Yehudi became an object of eternal mystery, intensified by peripheral stories Papa told about the terrible war he had experienced. Though he was never graphic about the details of the occupation of Holland and his own capture by the Germans, such details must have loomed vivid and horrible in his memory, the war having ended a little over a decade earlier. In my child’s mind, Yehudi, although an American, came to symbolize all the good people who had been forcibly taken out of Holland by the invader. I already guessed I would never be able to play the violin like the boy in the photo, but I studied his noble countenance for hours.

And began to practice, with Papa behind me counting assiduously and monitoring my budding talent. Soon I wanted to learn vibrato, the violinist’s unique emotional signature, but I was disappointed to be informed by my teacher that it wasn’t time yet. Papa promptly brought me to another teacher in the heart of Amsterdam to obtainr a more hopeful verdict about his daughter’s suspected precocity. A string quartet of adults was gathered, but I fixed my gaze on the vibrato of the violinist chosen to proffer this second opinion. Which, unfortunately, concurred with the first—learning vibrato was indeed premature. Impetuously, I decided I would have to teach myself. The wobbly, slightly nervous vibrato which I developed as an aid to my childhood self-expression was to torture and mock me for years to come.

For my seventh birthday I received a Poésie book, a “must have” gift for young Dutch girls. More than the American autograph book, it contains homilies by family, classmates, and teachers that are sometimes whimsical, sometimes didactic, sometimes original. My tattered brown Poésie book contains an entry from my violin teacher dated 17 December ’58, proof that my early lessons must have lasted for at least a year. “Were it not for music and dance, life would have no worth,” it begins and then praises the arts as the conquerors of grief, worry, and one’s enemies.

Our musical mission was temporarily eclipsed when Papa’s five-year plan to move to the United States finally came to fruition and we were offered sponsorship in America’s Heartland. The children began to study English feverishly, and during the summer of my tenth year, we crossed the Atlantic on the immigrant ship De Grote Beer.

Our family now numbered seven, and money was even tighter than in Amsterdam, but Papa’s hopes for my future as a violinist survived the stormy voyage. Among the many gifts from the kind people of Lawrence, Kansas arrived an offer from a faculty member at the nearby university-- himself of Dutch ancestry--for violin lessons (secretly, I suspect that Papa’s creative prompting may have had something to do with it). Instructional comments on my scores of the Vivaldi A minor and the Accolay Concertos survive to bear witness to this gentle musician’s generosity.

Virtuosity was an elusive beast, especially since my new home in the Midwest also catalyzed dreams of being a cowgirl. I spent innumerable early teenage hours pondering the folly of having two such all-consuming hobbies: ponies and the violin. A little later, the Beatles would arrive to offer additional and powerful distraction.

Eventually Papa began to feel inadequate surrounded as he was by so many distinguished professors in Lawrence, because despite his linguistic and literary brilliance, he was self-taught and could claim no degrees of any kind. The Golden West beckoned, and five years later we moved to California.

Further lessons would have to wait, but once Papa and then Mama obtained work, the search for a new violin teacher began in earnest. Mama gingerly advised Papa that perhaps it was time to consider buying a home, but Papa summarily axed this ludicrous notion to become, he was convinced, hopelessly indebted. For how then could the children ever have music lessons again?

Our new Southern California hometown boasted a prominent violin teacher, and somehow Papa persuaded her to take me on. This was sure testimony to his persuasive prowess, for I had arrived home in tears. The new teacher, a former child prodigy, had advised me after my proud and self-taught presentation of the first movement of the Mendelssohn Concerto (my obsession that first smoggy Pasadena summer), that not only was it much too late to become a concert violinist but that I should consider studying something else in college so that I might offer a genuine contribution to society.

This doubled my resolve to study music. My remaining high school years became centered around violin lessons and the orchestra, with additional inspiration from our dashing, somewhat Mephistophelean orchestra conductor, whom I both loved and feared. In frequent missives to this conductor, Papa would attempt to defend, if not my talents, my hard work and deep musical intentions. I usually found out about these letters after they had reached their destination, for Papa was prone to be secretive about his communications.

I encountered several more violin teachers during my college years. Papa had by now become worried about my future and would sometimes gently and sometimes less gently urge me to consider a double major, perhaps in Music and Astronomy or Music and Math. I did not have the heart to tell him that my non-prodigious and somewhat easily flustered brain might not be able to handle such an intellectual workload. Nor did subsequent suggestions to altogether change majors have any effect on my tenuous direction.

Post- graduation, student loans (which I imagined exorbitant) summoned. As did the world of studio apartments, belated driver’s licenses (Papa never learned to drive himself and did not encourage the acquisition of this mundane skill necessary for life in Southern California), and unglamorous job prospects. A music graduate from a liberal arts college was not an eagerly courted commodity in the workforce of the early 1970’s, but eventually, I became a technical editor. That’s how the music and my violin began to slip away.

How I must have disappointed Papa, but he had several younger children still at home he could now pin his aspirations on! I sought other creative avocations that seemed less exacting than the violin, including, to my own surprise, dance. Always extolling the intellect, Papa had made it a point of pride not to promote physical exercise, but he was eager to come to my gypsy dance revues and pleased to hear me play the recorder, an instrument I decided to learn without benefit of a teacher, for I had begun to fear what effect their prognosis of my talent or lack thereof might have on my enjoyment of music. My explorations of the mystical music of the Renaissance eventually led me back to my violin.

I last spoke with Papa a week before he died. I showed him promotional flyers for both my extracurricular music and dance endeavors. He seemed delighted. “At least you now have a plan,” he observed. His own plan was to undergo a new set of bypass operations and live ten more years, but that did not happen, for he died on the operating table. Before I was able to see him one last time, his body had been taken to a large university, for Papa, a long-time blood donor, had long ago decided to will his body to medicine.

We gave Papa a stirring memorial at the Nature Center, with as many of his children as could playing instruments or singing. Papa did not own much, but I inherited his hiking boots and his classical tapes, which he listened to on his daily 4-hour walks in the mountains. In a desperate bid to prolong his life, Papa had become interested in physical activity after his first bypass surgery.

How pleased might Papa be now to hear that my life has recently taken a turn toward the seriously musical! My husband Bert became a partner in music as well as in marriage, and three years ago, we moved to a place where I might take a sabbatical from the working world and again study the violin. From the demands of my new teacher, perhaps more intensely than ever. For while he accepts my peculiar musical history and advanced age, he has decided to cut me no slack.

This summer we will journey south several hundred miles to perform a concert in honor of Father’s Day. Our audience will include men of Papa’s age, had he lived to see a new millennium. The retirement home which will be our stage is located less than a mile from the hospital where Papa left this world. I hope Papa will be there to enjoy the music and to note my progress on the violin.