This summer, Pia Liptak held the first “Complete Violinist” workshop series – which reprises this fall, starting on Wednesday, October 7 – intended for intermediate violin students age 10 and up. In addition to talking about violin techniques like harmonics and shifting, one whole session is dedicated to discussing the role of music in our lives.
“There’s not a moment when I don’t hear music,” said one of the participants. “If I don’t hear a record or am playing, I hear it in my head. I don’t know what I would do without it.”
“You don’t need it to survive, like food or water,” said another. “But it makes your life so much better and so much more enjoyable.”
The group also talked about the many different situations in which you can encounter music: weddings, funeral/memorial ceremonies, dancing, graduation, marching to war, sports events, prayer, meditation, mood music, restaurants, shopping/stores, tv commercials, movies, photo slide shows, background music for studying, and medical healing processes.
What are your experiences encountering music?
A fun section in the workshop covered some thoughts about how music originated, with the first humans – approx. 2-300,000, or more, years ago – including for purposes of survival, imitation of natural sounds, and games.
Pia says, “That topic led us to make funny sounds and we talked about what sounds our bodies could make without instruments: singing, whistling, clicking, clapping, coughing, clapping on our cheeks, throat sounds, hissing. We also listened to arctic throat singing performed by two young girls.”
Above all, the group agreed that music is a communication tool, a language, bringing people together across cultures and through all differences.
Watch a video of excerpts from the summer class here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COZT5SNz8_w
Find out more about the fall edition of The Complete Violinist here:
https://hochstein.org/Music/The-Complete-Violinist