Solo and Ensemble

Middle school is a time when most people feel unusually self-conscious, and I was no exception. Always a shy person, I became so timid during those two years that I could barely tolerate any attention at all; I would blush when I heard my name during roll call, nothing could induce me to participate in class discussions, and I actively avoided social interactions with all but a very few friends from elementary school. But the thing I dreaded above all else was practice tests in orchestra. Usually for practice tests, the teacher will make each student play a portion of a piece by his or herself. The goal is for the teacher to hear and correct mistakes, as well as to scare the students into practicing extra hard. Playing tests were the fulfillment of my two biggest fears—being the center of attention and being judged.

My worst playing test was in seventh grade. I don’t recall the events that led to my emotional state, but I was feeling especially vulnerable at the time. I waited and waited for the teacher to call on me to play, my nerves building the whole time. My turn came and it was disastrous. I had practiced and practiced, but I was so scared that I kept making false starts. Frustrated and humiliated, I put my instrument down in my lap and told my teacher that I would rather take a zero than play. I felt like a failure.

Yet that failure was my first tiny step toward triumph. I hated the feeling of being held down by fear. I hated the way that anxiety made me feel small and powerless and oppressed. And I decided that the only way to liberate myself would be to do the thing in life that scared me the most—which is how I wound up agreeing to play a violin solo at a competition the following year.

Every year the school district would hold Solo and Ensemble competition. It was exactly what it sounds like. Middle and high school students from the area would decide to play either alone or with a group, and then they would choose a piece to prepare. When competition time came, students would perform their pieces for a judge from outside our school district who would rate their performance on a scale of one (the highest score) to—well, no one really knows what the scale ended with because anyone who didn’t make at least a two instantly shriveled up and died of shame, or assumed an identity and fled the district, or spontaneously combusted. (We string people are a little perfectionistic.)

My director, knowing how afraid I was of performing, and being the masochist she was, required every student to attend competition during my eighth grade year. She helped me pick out a piece—“Hunter’s Chorus,” and I can still hear it with perfectly clarity—and set me to work practicing. And practice I did. I worked very hard. Our student teacher and I devised a theory that if I just knew the piece well enough, I’d enter the solo room, become paralyzed with fear, but automatically begin playing perfectly. (We developed this theory based on a story we had heard that Cher used to be terrified of performing and required someone—usually Sonny—to push her out on stage. Once under the lights, she was so nervous that she didn’t know what to do, so she started singing and became rich and famous.)

For weeks and weeks, that piece echoed through my mind during algebra, during soccer practice, during lunch, during my sleep. My fingers started doing that weird twitchy thing violinists experience where their fingers move unconsciously as though playing. (Ok, not quite, but I was close.)

I played in a soccer match the morning of my solo. It was a particularly physical match, but I remained uninjured until a few minutes before the game’s end. I was running behind the opponent’s forward when she stopped suddenly. I crashed into her back, jamming my finger on her spine. Within minutes it was swelling. Why today? Why oh why couldn’t I have just broken my leg? I wondered. But as my mom drove me up to Solo and Ensemble a few hours later, I began to wonder something else more practical—Why oh why didn’t I get fully paralyzed? Why?

By the time I found the solo room and set up my instrument, my finger was purple, and I was mad. Why was my teacher doing this to me? Why was she being so cruel? Why was everything in middle school so horrible? As the door opened and I entered the room, I was too mad to feel anything else at all. Who cares how I play? Forget this. I’m just gonna play it the way I want to. If I make a three, or a five, or a ten, who cares? Serves everyone right for making me suffer this way!

I began. I played like I didn’t care. All that anger in my little twelve-year-old body came out in my music. I finished the short piece and scowled at the judge as he scribbled notes on my score sheet. Then he looked up at me, adjusted his little round rims, and smiled.

“That was very, very good!” he said. “Your playing is so spirited!”

My anger vanished as my jaw hit the floor. What?

I wound up making a one, which was absolutely the worst thing in the world for everyone. It was bad for my director because she lorded that over me until sophomore year of high school, once even telling the story to my classmates. It was bad for my student teacher because she continued believing that Cher holds the answers to the universe. (Undoubtedly she went on to eventually tell her students the story of how she cured my stage fright by singing “Do You Believe in Love,” which was quite popular that year.) But mostly it was bad for me because it taught me that I’m at my best only when I absolutely don’t give a damn about anything—a lesson that was confirmed two years later in high school, when I attended Solo and Ensemble in a positive frame of mind and earned a two.

At least it wasn’t a three.