“When everyone else has finished playing, you should not play any notes you have left over. Please play those on the way home.” Anon.

Making music with other people is one of the best ways to enjoy playing the violin and an important part of developing your skills as a musician. The benefits of playing as part of a group or ensemble include improvement in every aspect of general musicianship, a better sense of pulse, rhythm and intonation, a heightened awareness and a chance to learn from each other’s strengths and weaknesses.

A chamber music ensemble plays without a conductor. This is a small group such as a string trio or quartet with one person playing each part. A larger ensemble where many people are playing the same part, normally guided by a conductor, is called an orchestra.

When you are learning to play in an ensemble of any size, there are important skills you must develop and practicalities to consider.

Say you’re playing your violin in an orchestra for the first time. What things do you need to know?

• Violinists in orchestra share music stands, one between every two players. This is called a desk, and the person you share with is called your desk partner. Space is important. Make sure you can both sit comfortably, that you both have space to bow and can both see the music and the conductor. Sometimes sharing a desk with someone who is much taller or shorter than you, or who has long arms or bad eyesight, can require careful arrangement of the music stand and chairs so you are both comfortable. Don’t compromise your posture just because you are sharing a stand, and don’t expect your desk partner to either.

• Watch the conductor. You will be able to see the conductor in your peripheral vision. Most of your visual work is done reading the music, but make sure you can see the conductor and the music at the same time. Sometimes you may need to look directly at the conductor for an important cue. Enjoy the communication and follow the conductor’s interpretation of the music.

• Don’t make a fuss if you make a mistake. It’s off-putting for everyone else and detracts from your own concentration. Play with confidence and don’t be ashamed if something goes wrong.

• Listen; not just to your own part but to everything else that is going on as well. There is truth in the adage that a right note at the wrong time is a wrong note. By listening you will find you can blend your sound and intonation with the other musicians and play with everyone else. It’s sometimes better to skip a note or two rather than play out of time or risk playing a solo in the rest. You should never be the loudest player in a group.

• Watch the leader of your section to see how to use your bow. Write any bowings in your part (but not too many fingerings – your desk partner may want to do a different fingering and there’s nothing worse than a part littered with someone else’s fingerings) and notice which part of the bow and how much bow the section leader is using. When all the players move their bows together and use the same bow stroke, the sound becomes unified.

• When the part divides into two separate lines, the outside player will take the top part, and the inside player takes the bottom part. If there are more than two lines the section leader will decide how to divide the parts, but often they are split by desk.

• Learn your part, turn up to rehearsals on time and warm up, but don’t show off playing your latest concerto or caprice. People might start to dislike you. Don’t practice when other people are trying to tune their instruments.

• The inside player will generally turn the pages, but take equal responsibility for putting bowings and other markings in the part. Bring a pencil and a rubber to the rehearsal. Bring a mute too. The chances are if you have to borrow a mute you will forget to give it back and someone will be annoyed with you about that.

• If you have any questions, ask your section leader. It’s not helpful to stick your hand up to ask the conductor a question during the rehearsal.

• And it seems obvious, but try not to give in to the temptation to surf the Internet on your phone, update Facebook, read a newspaper or gossip with your desk partner when the conductor is rehearsing another section of the orchestra. It’s really useful to be engaged in what the other musicians are doing. There are stories of conductors pompously exclaiming, “This is not a library,” to bored trombone players who were caught filling their three hundred bars rest by reading the paper.

Chamber music playing is different from orchestral playing. Communication is intensified because there is no conductor. To play one to a part gives more interpretive freedom but means you have to really communicate to form expressive unity. Playing in a small group is more individual and personal than playing in an orchestral section but still requires the musicians to merge their ideas. In some ways, chamber music is a solo activity because you are the only person playing your musical line. It’s also a social activity in which you are making music with friends and have to be perpetually responsive to what they are doing. It doesn’t work unless you are listening and responding to each other, not only when you are playing, but also in the discussions that inevitably arise during rehearsal.

Here are some tips and ideas for playing in a chamber ensemble:

• Make sure you have a good edition of the music and keep your music clean and in good condition. Mark in any bowings and fingerings you need and remedy any bad page turns with photocopies. It’s helpful in rehearsal to have bar numbers marked in your part too.

• Your bowings should be carefully thought out, where possible respecting the phrasing, musical line and dynamics. You may have different ideas from the other players but it’s good to know why you like a particular bowing when you may have to discuss which bowing to choose.

• In rehearsal, try anything the others suggest, even if you disagree with their ideas. Be flexible. You will want people to try your ideas too and may find that you learn something new.

• Make suggestions gracefully. Phrase any criticisms carefully and have an idea of what can be done to remedy a problem before mentioning it. Be sensitive and positive. “This could sound so much better,” is much nicer than, “This sounds horrible!”

• Practice slowly and without vibrato for intonation.

• Find out about the composer and the music. Having a sense of the cultural and historical context of the composition, and perhaps a little about the composer as a human being, helps you to interpret the music.

• Know the whole piece; the score, the structures of movements, where important points such as recapitulations happen, what the principle themes are and what key each section is in. It’s good not only to know your own part, but to know who is playing the tune, what role your own part plays at any given moment, and which other musicians you are paired or juxtaposed with at any particular point. Know when it is your turn to lead a phrase and know which players will be following you.

• Discuss the tempo. The printed metronome markings should be tried but they are not always practical. It’s commonly believed that Beethoven’s metronome was wrong and if you can’t make musical sense at the written tempo, it’s not right for you. “I tried the written tempo marking but just can’t get it to work,” is a perfectly good way to begin a rehearsal.

• Don’t forget to acknowledge rests and silences. Rests; the absence of noise; are a scary prospect but they create suspense, drama and a chance to breathe. Try exaggerating the rests until you feel comfortable with them.

• Discuss phrasing and line. Where do the phrases begin and end? Is there long line or is the phrase made up of several shorter ideas? Where is the high point and where does the line culminate? Sing the phrase and notice where your voice shapes it and how the tone colour and dynamics rise and fall.

• Intonation in chamber music is really important. It only takes one person playing out of tune to undermine the whole ensemble. Tune your violin carefully. Check tuning against the open strings and make sure you have all tuned to the same A.

• Think about matching your vibrato in the group. Even if you are playing in tune, vibrato that is wider or slower than someone else’s will make you sound out of tune. Match bow speeds and point of contact to unify your sound.

• Try recording some of your rehearsals. When you are in the middle of playing it can be hard to keep a sense of the bigger picture, but by listening back to a recording you will easily catch what is and isn’t working.

• Video yourselves occasionally too. Music is about sound, but performance is also visual. It is important to be aware that how you look can detract from or enhance the audience’s understanding of the music and their enjoyment of the performance. It can also have a bearing on how the other players in the group respond to you. By watching yourselves back on a video you should get a clear idea of what you are projecting.

Enjoy the experience of playing with other musicians and discovering great music together. There is nothing better than the exhilaration of creating something that is greater than the sum of its musical parts, and of extending your own technique and creativity along the way. You will learn musicality, diplomacy, how your friends take their tea, and most of all, you will open yourself up to a world of great music.

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Stage fright is a state of nervousness or fear leading up to and during a performance. It is an exaggerated symptom of anxiety. The hands sweat or become icy cold, the body shakes, sometimes symptoms include nausea, an overwhelming sense of tiredness, a need to go to the toilet or shortness of breath, and there can be a frightening sense of disassociation; of playing your instrument from behind a curtain through which you simply cannot connect with what you’re doing.

Stage fright is a very common problem amongst performing musicians. In one recent survey 96% of the orchestra musicians questioned admitted to anxiety before performances. It’s common to see the backstage sign leading Stage Right enhanced with a cynical ‘F’, and this self-mocking comment is pertinent. To many performers stage fright represents a destructive personal shortcoming.

The physical symptoms are the result of a primal instinct known as Fight or Flight. This is the inborn physiological response to a threatening or dangerous situation.  It readies you either to resist the danger forcibly – Fight - or to run away from it – Flight. Hormones including adrenaline flood into the bloodstream, the heart rate, blood pressure and breathing rate all increase, the neck and back muscles contract, which means that if you try to maintain an upright posture your muscles shake violently, the digestive system shuts down.

It’s useful on a basic level to understand what is happening to cause the unpleasant physical symptoms of stage fright. It’s also worth knowing that everybody suffers from it to some degree or at some point in their life, no matter how successful or famous. Even Heifetz who was renowned for his perfect performances was apparently stricken with fear before he went on stage, convinced that two thousand nine hundred and ninety nine of the three thousand audience members had come to hear him play a wrong note.

It is useful to know these things but it is not, in reality, any help at all when you are in the grip of stage fright.

So what is the reason for stage fright?

The danger your body is reacting to is the performance. There’s a fear you won’t do yourself justice. The more important the outcome of the performance, the worse the anxiety will be. If the stakes are high, say you’re auditioning for an orchestra you’ve always wanted to play with, you’re broke and you need the money, you’re playing in a competitive situation where you know your performance is being judged in a critical way, even more adrenaline will release and the resultant anxiety can be paralysing.

Many instrumentalists, particularly those playing an instrument as tactile and personal as the violin, relate very strongly with their instrument. “I am a violinist,” becomes more than a job description. In situations like this, the identity of the self as a musician can seem to rely on the outcome of the performance.

There is also a genetic aspect. Some people are simply more genetically predisposed to strong feelings of anxiety than others.

Another aspect behind performance anxiety is the level of task mastery. The more comfortable you feel with your playing, the more confident you will feel. Our fears of unreliable shifting, stiff left hand, bow shake or dropping the violin are all founded in an unreliable physical reaction.

What has really happened in stage fright is that the positive aspect of music making, an overriding desire to communicate, has somehow become lost as the ego distorts the relevance of the performance. Stage fright is ultimately a product of self-regard in which the performance has become more about the performer than the music or the audience. The idea of giving; that in performance you are transmitting something greater than yourself; has been supplanted by the fear that you will be exposed as not good enough.

So what can you do?

Stage fright is essentially a problem of expression and preparation and there are many creative solutions to nerves. Here are some ideas to try.

• See the nerves as a positive thing, as a burst of energy. If you fight the energy and try to contain it, of course it will make you shake. Embrace the energy you have created and pour it into your playing. Don’t be afraid to feel enormous. There’s no advantage for you or your audience, in playing small. Look at it another way; your body has gone into Fight or Flight. The natural reaction is to repress this feeling, to label it as bad. Don’t. Instead change your thinking. Your body is, in fact, pumped up, primed for quicker reactions and in an optimum condition for performance. Enjoy the sensation of being at the top of your game. The feelings can frighten us because they are unfamiliar, but notice that the shaking in your muscles is actually pent up energy. Can you find a way to release this energy into your performance? If your bow arm shakes, move the bow more and use more bow.

• Play to the audience. Don’t imagine they aren’t there or that they’re a field of cabbages. Communicate with them. You never know what you might be giving to someone who’s open to listen.

• You have something to say. There are no spare parts in the world. Each person who has the desire to play music has something to say.

• Practice being nervous. The more experience you have of performing, the more you find ways to channel the energy and communicate with your audience. The point is not to overcome your stage fright. The point is to learn to move through it.

• Acknowledge the problem. Acknowledge it without blame so that you can begin to address it, but don’t necessarily talk about it at length. Sometimes talking about something can make it feel bigger than it is. It can work you up into greater anxiety and provide a scenario where you set yourself up to fail.

• Don’t take Beta Blockers. In a 1986 survey of orchestral players, nearly 30% said they took Beta Blockers to manage the physical symptoms of nerves, and this figure is thought to have increased. Beta Blockers stop the shaking, but they also take off the edge that allows you to communicate with the audience. You’re zoned out. They also, eventually stop working. Imagine a situation where you have taken your Beta Blockers and go into your performance, physically appearing calm with no symptoms of nerves, and mentally terrified with no means of an outlet. Numbing the problem with drugs, even on prescription, is not the answer. Long-term use of Beta Blockers effectively causes the mental muscles necessary for a flow state of consciousness to atrophy.

• Meditation helps. People say it doesn’t, and in a direct way perhaps they are right if what you’re expecting is just to feel more relaxed. Learning to meditate helps because it improves the ability to get in flow, or in the zone. Performing in flow is the mental state of operation in which you are fully immersed in a feeling of energised focus, full involvement, and enjoyment. In essence, flow is characterised by complete absorption and a feeling of joy whilst performing. When we are caught up in anxiety, it is impossible to play in flow, so finding a way to access this deep state of concentration is a way to reengage with your reasons for performing.

• Use images when practising your piece. Creating a film inside your head whilst you play helps access the creative right side of your brain, which gives you a way to step out of critical left-brain thinking. One way to practice this when learning a piece is to create vivid visual stories to express what you want to say in the music. Create a movie as you learn the piece, and you can access these images in performance to get you back in your creative brain and away from the over analytical thinking which can trigger anxiety.

• Eat bananas. Or don’t. Some people believe that the potassium in bananas acts as a natural Beta Blocker. It may work, it may not, but what is important is to eat something that gives you the energy to perform without leaving you feeling sluggish. Egg sandwiches, doughnuts, whatever it is, you need blood sugar to counteract the burst of adrenaline.

• Prepare your performance. Practice musically, never mechanically and practice away from the violin too. Visualise yourself successfully delivering the performance. Imagine vividly how that feels.

• Notice your breathing. When you are playing sitting down, the breath sometimes gets trapped in the chest. Try to exhale fully and quickly, blowing out the tension.

• Most of all, approach your playing with joy. It is impossible to feel joyful and frightened at the same time.

Here is a short video from the Ted Talks about stage fright. It’s worth watching to consolidate what you know and ends with a helpful breathing exercise.

 

 

 

 

Karl Jenkins is a Welsh composer and musician, born in 1944. He started his musical career as an oboist in the National Youth Orchestra of Wales and studied as a postgraduate at the Royal Academy of Music.  He went on to work mainly in jazz and jazz-rock bands, on baritone and soprano saxophone, keyboard, and oboe; an unusual instrument in jazz music.

Jenkins’ compositions are amongst some of the most popular around. His choral work The Armed Man was listed no.1 in Classic FM's Top 10 by Living Composers, 2008 and his work has featured in adverts for international companies including Levi Jeans, Renault and De Beers.

The Palladio Suite, one of Jenkins’ most famous works, is written in the Concerto Grosso style more commonly associated with Baroque music. It is made up of three movements; Allegretto, Largo and Vivace; and harks back to the writing of Venetian composers such as Vivaldi and Albinoni. It is conventional and unchallenging, its techniques and harmonies remaining firmly based in the 18^th Century, a feature which is unusual for Jenkins who often combines a mixture of modern and traditional musical styles in his work.

Palladio was inspired by the architect Andrea Palladio, who designed many beautiful villas and churches in the Venice region in the 16^th Century, and who gives his name to the London Palladium. The piece mirrors the idea of artistic beauty within a defined architectural framework.

This is not the only time Jenkins has found a connection between his music and visual aesthetics.  On the front page of his website he tells the following story:

“Very late one night in 1997, across a dark and deserted St. Mark’s Square, Venice, I saw a painting, lit like a beacon, drawing me inexorably to the window of Galleria Ravagnan. It made a deep impression on me and as my wife and fellow musician, Carol, remarked, it looked like my music sounded. I simply had to have it so I returned the next day, bought the painting and began a long friendship with gallery owner Luciano Ravagnan. On a return visit, a year or so later, I met and befriended the artist only for us both to discover that he, not knowing who had bought his painting, had been painting to my music!”

The first movement of the Palladio Suite, Allegretto, is the most frequently performed. It became well known initially as the music for the 1994 De Beers Diamond advert. It has been recorded by the electric string quartets, Bond and Escala, and has established a permanent position in Classic FM’s Hall of Fame.

The movement is constructed from rigid, repetitive string lines, which exist as building blocks over a staccato bass line, driving an ever-developing sense of drama and intensity.

It is important when playing this movement to subdivide the bars so as not to rush. You can hear how the parts interject and answer each other, but do so within a tight rhythmic framework. The rests are just as important as the notes and a combination of good counting, strong pulse and listening will help the ensemble. Try listening along with the score to see how the parts weave together and bounce off each other.

The bow-stroke in this movement should be clean, with plenty of contact, in the middle to lower-middle part of the bow. Each gesture of the main rhythmic figure works well from an up-bow. The tightly interwoven harmonies require clear intonation and a ringing tone to recreate the openness of the Venetian Baroque sound world.

The Suite has two further movements, both of which are immediately reminiscent of Vivaldi’s Violin Concerto, Winter from The Four Seasons.

The Largo features a pulsating accompaniment and a soaring, wistful violin solo, in which parallels with Vivaldi’s Largo are strongly apparent.

The Vivace is much lighter and more delicate than the Allegretto, with an immediately Baroque sound. Imagine how a lighter baroque bow would feel.  You can do this by holding your own bow higher up the stick away from the frog. This will give you an idea of the lightness and vivacity of bow stroke necessary to bring the Vivace to life.

Again, it is easy to recall the nervous energy of the third movement of Vivaldi’s Winter. The insistent quality in the staccato, accompanying figure, the use of ostinato, which Jenkins frequently favours, and the minor tonality are common to both the Vivaldi and the third movement of Palladio.

The popular first movement has been recorded countless times by a diverse spectrum of musicians, given thousands of minutes of airtime on Classic FM and even remixed as a Dubstep song, but which recording is the best?

Classic FM recommends The Smith Quartet: London Philharmonic Strings Conducted by Karl Jenkins – Sony SK62276, or if you fancy something more up-tempo, try the recording by electric string quartet Escala.

Interestingly, both versions only feature the first movement.  The complete suite is available on Jenkins’ 1996 album, the aptly named Diamond Music, featuring the Smith Quartet and the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

Recordings on YouTube are also mainly restricted to the famous first movement, neglecting the others, despite their rather delicate beauty. This echoes another phenomenon of popular Baroque music whereby one movement becomes favoured, perhaps due to exposure in television, film or advertising. The first movement of Vivaldi’s Spring has become more popular than its other movements, and everybody thinks Pachelbel only wrote one tune.