Remembrance of Concerts Past
“But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more immaterial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.”
I received the seven volumes of Marcel Proust’s À la Recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time) for Christmas nearly 9 years ago. Younger me was fascinated by this gargantuan novel, and the idea of reading it felt like the literary equivalent of climbing Mount Everest. When I started, it was certainly with a level of curiosity for what Proust had spent so much time putting to paper, but mostly I was thinking about what an amazing accomplishment it would be to get to the end.
I read the Recherche over the course of the following year. By the time I finished I was living in Paris, and read most of the last volume during dark winter afternoons sitting in one of the sculpture gardens of the Louvre. Like for so many people that have read the Recherche, the book had become a part of who I was. I was no longer reading it for the accomplishment, but to escape back into Proust’s imaginary world, now so familiar, that carried with it the experiences of my own life from that year.
As I write this, I have no concerts coming up anytime soon. At this point I’ve grown accustomed to it, and it doesn’t weigh as heavily on me as it once did. Maybe it’s the knowledge that it won’t be long until there are concerts again, and so I want to savour whatever remains of this rare time of repose. Or maybe it’s simply easier to forget the whole situation when not confronted with the difficult reality of social distanced and virtual performances.
But with no concerts to prepare for, what do I have to practice?
Well, pretty much every day, I’ve been sitting down to play for an hour or two, surrounded by sheet music from all different times and places. Some I’ve performed, some is new, some exists only in my head. Occasionally I decide to spend a couple days improving a particularly challenging passage of a piece. Other times, I spend an hour just playing Bach’s Solo Cello Suites.
I do make sporadic attempts to clean up the music on my floor, put scores I’m not looking at anymore back on the shelf. Inevitably though, it’s never more than a couple of days before they’ve been replaced by others
One of the themes of Proust’s Recherche is how our senses can trigger long forgotten memories. Music becomes one of those triggers, with a famous “little phrase” by the made-up composer Vinteuil becoming a recurring obsession throughout the story.
Perhaps in this way, I could describe my practicing these days as ever so slightly Proustian. More and more, I find myself taking music off the shelf to play because of the memories that come with it. I like how playing through a piece can remind me of times past, how it becomes embedded with the people and places from my prior experiences. For music I have yet to perform there’s an excitement of anticipation, of imagining what experiences might accompany it in the future.
After having my practice for so long be dictated by weekly lessons, competitions, and concert deadlines, it’s been eye opening to go over music just for my own pleasure, without any particular goal in mind. I’m no longer practicing for the accomplishment, but for the meaning it adds to my life. I’ve been enjoying playing cello, just for myself.
I can’t wait to be on a concert stage again, playing for a hall full of people. Until then, I’m going to cherish these moments all alone with my cello.