Down in the Valley by Laurie Lee

Author:Laurie Lee [Lee, Laurie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241411728
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd

I first learned to play the violin as a young child at home. In the kitchen there was a violin hanging on the wall, it always intrigued me, this shape. I didn’t really know what it was to begin with, it was one of the first symbols of exotic interest. You had bed warmers in those days and you had pictures of the family hanging on the wall but this shape fascinated me. I asked my mother what it was and she said, ‘It belongs to your father.’ Well, dad had already left home, left us and gone, but it belonged to him. And she said, ‘You play it, it’s a musical instrument.’ So I got it down and we dusted it up and we got it into running order, and that’s when this chap used to come round giving lessons. Instead of buying the Czechoslovakian mass-produced one, I had this one. It was a copy of a ‘Strad’, it had a wonderful tone. I kept this first violin for years, I took it to Spain with me. It got crushed by a passing bull in Malaga. It was partly that, partly the heat, the heat melted the gum, but I like to say it was crushed by a passing bull who had a very bad ear for music.

And I thought, I’ve come to the end now, I’m not going to be able to live. But just at that time I met a German student who’d fallen in love with a Spanish girl and they were going to run away together and they had to travel light. And he said:

‘Oh, by the way, do you want a violin? I’ve got one and I can’t be bothered with all this stuff. We’re going over the sierras tomorrow.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘funny you should say that.’

‘Come round tonight and we’ll meet in the tavern and you can have it. I’ll be glad to get rid of it.’

So I moved into that one and it was even better than my imitation Stradivarius. And that’s the one I’ve got now.

And from then on when I got back to England I played seriously. But having no sense of coordination I can only play one note at a time. I can play the Women’s Institute recorder, no trouble at all, but I can’t play a piano because I can’t do with my left hand something that is separate from my right hand. But the violin was made for me. It’s portable and I can follow the line with my left hand on the strings and by this time I could read music, and I discovered other musicians, pianists, cellists, and we moved into this world of cosmic music, I’m going to be pompous now, but it is a world starting in Gloucestershire. I only realized when I got back here that this was a country of memorable composers: Elgar and Gustav Holst, Vaughan Williams. I was going to say Rimsky-Korsakov but he was only here as a refugee briefly and he didn’t like the country, it wasn’t cold enough for him.

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