When I started violin lessons, Mom and I would read the introductory material together, learning about chin rests, shoulder rests, f holes, the names of strings, practiced where to put each foot, each elbow, each finger. When I started playing actual music, the responsibility shifted to Dad, who was still Ricky at the time. His long-distant trombone experience in high school was enough to get him through those early days.
For Alan, Mom and Dad covered the majority of those responsibilities again, but as he became more advanced, my visits home from school included helping more and more with the technique of practicing -- when to take things slow, how to feel the music, how to adjust tempo and emphasis musically, not herky-jerky.
As Alan prepared for recitals and competitions, he had to play pieces from different periods, so there were a long string of modern pieces. One of the early ones was Bartók's Evening in the Country. Alan's first take was cutesy and light. I worked with him extensively to get the feeling that the country in question was rural Transylvania, where people were of Hungarian, Romanian and German heritage, not known for their lightness. I remember prancing around the living room like an idiot to get Alan to understand the paradox of spryness with heft.
It was an important moment in his musical development. His rendition of this piece was the first time I could really truly feel something in his music. He got it.
Maybe this was the precursor to the role of music later in his life. Maybe this is why he always had music playing -- the pensive dark music to match his mood, the light happy music to try to lift it, the songs he sang over and over again, the ones he wrote (always with lyrics full of despair). Maybe these moments paved the way for the soundtrack, the music that haunts me now that he is gone.
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