Beginner’s bow

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Thursday, June 19th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: Learning new things later in life.

The violin is one of the hardest instruments to master, especially as an adult. But for WORLD correspondent and late-blooming violin student Maria Baer, the lessons go well beyond the strings.

MARIA BAER: I grew up playing the piano. Theoretically, anyone can sit down, press a piano key, and a musical note will sound.

SOUND: [PIANO MUSIC]

The first thing I learned when I picked up a violin as a 30-something-year-old woman is that it is nothing like the piano.

A clear note on a stringed instrument requires several things: the right posture. Consistent pressure on the bow along the string, despite the changing angle of your elbow as you pull. You can’t press your left-hand fingers too hard onto the strings.

DEVIN COPFER: Hello, hello! What are we doing today?

I started taking violin lessons about four years ago, when my oldest daughter was starting hers. She was five years old. The Suzuki method recommends adults learn the basics alongside their children, so they can help with practice. But no one had to twist my arm. I’d always wanted to learn the violin.

Our teacher Devin Copfer has a degree in violin performance from Ohio State. She currently teaches 28 students from her home-based studio. The vast majority are elementary schoolers. Only two — including me — are grown-ups.

COPFER: Let’s just do a little bit of the B-flat sequence…

Copfer says the age of a student has little effect on her teaching method.

COPFER: Largely we’re doing the same exercise, you really can’t replace rote practice. There’s no way to speed up a bow hold exercise that has to happen a thousand times.

Even learning to hold the bow takes a daunting amount of time and repetition. Maybe this helps explain why the violin has a reputation for being the hardest instrument to learn.

COPFER: In a string instrument, it’s our entire body that moves.

That physical component is part of what makes learning as an adult particularly difficult.

COPFER: Fortunately or unfortunately there are muscles that develop when we’re children that stop developing when we reach a certain age. Like when people say ‘I feel like there are things that are easier for my kids than they are for me,’ that’s true. That’s physiologically true.

When my daughters pick up their violins, their shoulders are low and easy. They hold their bows lightly. The violin challenges them, too. But when they play, they look calm and graceful.

COPFER: That’s so lovely!

When I play, everything tends to tense up.

COPFER: It’s like the middle of the hand gets a little ambiguous… so it’s not quite clear all the time…

Another challenge with adult students: building trust. Sometimes we’re just less teachable.

COPFER: As an adult, you’re going to an expert and you’re paying your own money to go there, it’s not always a given that that person who’s paying the person is, like, open and trusting in the process.

Marie Baer, left, plays the violin during a lesson with her teacher Devin Copfer. Photo courtesy of Maria Baer

Still another challenge: gently managing adults’ expectations. Some of Copfer’s adult students have gone on to play in community orchestras, or with their church’s worship team. But aspirations of playing in a world-class symphony one day? That’s less realistic.

COPFER: It’s one of the trickier conversations I can have…I have no business telling you what’s possible for you. But what I do want to do is give you some realistic expectations about where we can be in three months, where we can be in six months or in a year…

The Suzuki practice books I share with my daughters work from the assumption that the students are kids. Warm-up songs are set to nursery rhymes. Bow exercises encourage students to play their “magic violin” in the air before bringing the bow to the strings. Vibrato practice means making the violin sound like a “spooky ghost.”

Copfer adjusts her own language accordingly.

COPFER: You know, I’m not saying “let’s swim the fish to the pond,” you know… I’m saying “let’s get our arm shape the way it needs to be…”

Indeed, the hardest part about learning the violin as an adult might be the threat to one’s pride.

In late May, Copfer rented an old Presbyterian church in downtown Columbus for a studio recital. Each student climbed the red-carpeted altar steps to play a piece for parents and friends in the pews.

COPFER: Hello everyone, welcome to the spring recital! I’m so excited, thank you so much for being here…

Adult students took the same stage as four- and nine- and sixteen-year-olds, and played from the same repertoire.

The whole experience of performing is a bit of a minefield. I want to model self-assurance and perseverance for my girls. I don’t want to sound bad. But I also don’t want to appear to take it too seriously. The straight-A student in me wants to give a disclaimer before my piece, something like: I promise, I really did practice. You don’t understand how hard this is.

Copfer is like a storybook music teacher: she loves music, and she’ll teach anyone who wants to learn to love it, too.

COPFER: But the process of starting a violinist, an instrumentalist, no matter what age they are, is fascinating to me.

It’s fascinating to me, too. I could say I’m doing it simply to help my daughters’ practice. And it’s true I want to shepherd them toward a love of music and a strong work ethic.

COPFER: Go ahead and play the second half …

But I also just love it—even despite the hits to my ego. To me, there is nothing so beautiful as the violin. And I think God wants us to delight in beauty for its own sake, just as He does.

Just as I do when Copfer plays.

SOUND: [Minuet]

For WORLD, I’m Maria Baer in Columbus, Ohio.

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