Ask her if Antonio Stradivari had a hand in her creation, and Bunny'd say, "Yup! And a bow too!"
Bunny Stringfellow couldn't remember a day in her life when she wasn't playing the violin. As far as she knew, she popped out of her ma's womb with the instrument in hand and the strings already tuned. And why not? Her father, Sydney Stringfellow, was a violin virtuoso.
Now her grandfather, that was always a bone of contention. The fact that Ulysses Stringfellow shared a first name with a certain Union general didn't provide much consolation. Ulysses, in his mid twenties when the Civil War broke out, enlisted in one of the volunteer regiments of New Jersey. In no time he lost his right arm (his bow arm!) at some obscure little battle in Virginia that didn't even make it into the history books. You think that stopped him? I'm telling you, something special was pumping through the veins of the Stringfellow line. To wit, within weeks of returning home, Ulee was devising a way to use his teeth as a substitute for his missing limb. Ultimately he made a wooden contraption with a copper clamp at the end of it and then trained his left arm to be his bow arm.
Ulee's father was Leopold Stringfellow of Bonn, Germany. Rumor had it that at the age of nineteen, the young Leo played Beethoven's Große Fuge, one of the deaf man's final string quartets, with the deaf man himself as conductor. With that notch on the ol' resume, Herr Stringfellow made a comfortable living as a violinist. Thanks to references, he was performing for aristocracy as far away as Berlin.
And then civil war broke out. The German states were sucked into a vortex of mindless bloodshed. Whether you were a civilian or a soldier had no bearing on your chances of survival. Like millions of his countrymen, Leo took his wife and son Ulee to the United States. This happened around the same time as Ireland's potato famine, which likewise precipitated its own exodus to the New World. Suffice it to say that the poor guy checking off names at Ellis Island was putting in overtime like it was nobody's business.
The Stringfellows eventually found their way to Northampton, New Jersey, 'bout twenty or so miles east of Philadelphia. As luck (or the lack thereof) would have it, the American Civil War broke out within a few years of their arrival. As I said above, Ulee volunteered at great cost to his musical future. Not that it would've made much difference in terms of career. The demand for classical violinists in South Jersey didn't come close to what it had been in the Old World. Indeed, Ulee didn't waste a minute after high school before pursuing a law degree at Rutgers College. He was working at a small firm on High Street in Northampton when the war started. Still, his being a working stiff didn't detract from his passion. He found time to play every day, even after losing his arm, and he didn't mind at all putting on free private concerts for his pals. And once in a while he'd put on professional (i.e. paying) concerts for folks around town who wanted to marvel at the one-armed violinist.
No one after Leo was able to make a steady living with the violin the way he did. You think that put a crimp in the family tradition, though? Not a chance. As soon as our dear little Bunny turned five, her parents enrolled her in the music school at 48 Broad Street in Northampton. Thanks to her parents' stern enforcement of practice practice practice, coupled with the rigorous curriculum at 48 Broad, not to speak of that magic flowing through her lineage, Bunny became a standout in no time. By age ten, her time at 48 Broad was split between her own lessons and tutoring the newbies. She named her violin Sissy to make up for the sister she never had. She did have an older brother. Named after his great-grandfather in the hopes that he'd at least make an effort to follow in those impossible footsteps, Leo II adamantly resisted his heritage. Mom and Dad suffocated him with the issue until he finally packed up and hopped on the brand new trolley to Burlington City, where he moved in with his aunt and uncle.
Trust me, naming her violin didn't make Bunny weird. Everyone named their instruments. And they'd talk to them too, usually in frustration when it wouldn't play the notes it was supposed to, or in sheer bliss when a recital went off without a hitch. And yes, Sissy really was a Stradivarius. She had the signature on the inside to prove it.
Bunny and Sissy became the stars of 48 Broad. On her eleventh birthday, riding that stringed high, Bunny started composing her own little violin concerto. She worked on it off and on until her death two years later.
Ah yes, the world before antibiotics. Poor Bunny had nothing more than the flu in the spring of 1913. That was enough to keep her bedridden for two weeks before she succumbed. And talk about an inopportune time, the prodigy was on her way to completing a capstone course, the grand finale of which would've seen her performing a violin concerto by one of the masters, and with symphony orchestra accompaniment to boot. She had five to choose from and had been considering each one quite carefully. Some days she'd wake up convinced it would be Beethoven. After all, she was probably the only person in the country whose great-grandfather had actually played with the wild-haired maestro. But then other times, say, after supper, she'd retire to her room convinced that Mendelssohn was the way to go. Even on her deathbed, God bless 'er, the poor thing kept Sissy at her side and maintained her practice regimen. She wanted to perfect her ability to play each of the five concertos before making her final decision.
You don't have to know much about violins to appreciate the gravity of this decision. Let's take each composer in turn, shall we? We'll start with Beethoven, friend of the family. The piece in question is Violin Concerto in D major (opus 61). Luddy wrote this in 1806 when he was thirty-five, and he premiered it in Vienna exactly one week after turning thirty-six. It's mainly characterized by a lot of high notes, which was sort of the style at the time. It was popular for a while but in the end didn't produce more than a few ripples before fading out, not to be revived until 1844, well after the man's death. Talk about an odd coincidence, the man who conducted the symphony at that revival was Felix Mendelssohn, who himself is the composer of another of the five concertos under discussion here. It's thanks in large part to that revival that Beethoven's Violin Concerto in D major was recognized for the vital piece it is. To this day it's considered one of the gold standards in the violin repertoire. Like all of these pieces, it's got three movements, in this case Allegro ma non troppo (D major), Larghetto (G major), and Rondo Allegro (D major).
Okay. That's Ludwig van. Now let's chat a bit about Felix Mendelssohn. Born in Hamburg, Felix did most of his growing up in Berlin. Like a certain Wolfgang Mozart (and Bunny for that matter), our man Felix was a child prodigy with the violin. Whereas the violin didn't really turn out to be Wolfie's thing, Felix stuck with it. Another parallel with Mozart is that he didn't live very long. Mozart kicked off a few weeks shy of thirty-six. Felix was thirty-eight when he went to the big violin in the sky. And Felix, like Mozart, was a workaholic. He overdid it and then some. What really bodyslammed him was his sister's death. It was only six months after her death that a series of strokes did him in.
He was thirty-six when he finished composing his incomparable Violin Concerto in E minor (opus 64). It took him six solid years to write this sucker. Labor of love? That doesn't come close to doing it justice. Its three movements are: Allegro molto appassionato (E minor), Andante (C Major), and Allegretto non troppo – Allegro molto vivace (E Major). That it contains the standard three movements is pretty much the only aspect of this piece that isn't forward thinking. It didn't just break new ground, it laid down a whole new bed of seeds. Right off the bat in that first movement, Felix bags the Classical convention with the establishment of the soloist (he also did this in his First Piano Concerto). See, in Classical music, right? You'd have the opening with the orchestra followed by the same stuff with the addition of the soloist. Not here. Plus, rather than having his three movements so rigidly delineated from each other, he had that first movement sort of flow into the second one. And then he threw in a bridging passage between the second and third movements. The second movement, as most second movements, is kind of slow. But it doesn't fade out. The bridge comes right away. And then we're off to the races with the fast third movement. You've got to understand that before Felix came along, there'd always be a pause after each and every movement, during which the audience would get to clap. Felix, though, composed this sucker so that all three movements could be performed sans pause (and sans clap). You can just picture the folks in the audience at that first performance sort of looking at each other, wondering if they should try to interrupt the bridging bassoon with some bravos or something. Another thing that made this piece innovative is that, in addition to highlighting the violinist as a soloist right away, it also requires the violinist to be an accompanist to the orchestra for certain extended periods. Perhaps this was to compensate for the poor violinist's never getting a chance to rest the ol' arms during the entire performance.
And now for Johannes Brahms who, like Beethoven, is considered one of the three big Bs (the third being Bach). While originally from Germany, Johannes eventually relocated to Vienna. The piece that concerns our little Bunny is Violin Concerto in D major (opus 77). When Johannes wrote this in his mid forties, it was originally for a violinist pal of his named Joseph Joachim. It had its world premiere in Leipzig on New Year's Day, 1879. Joseph was the violinist, and Johannes did the conducting. Interestingly, this concert also included Beethoven's violin concerto. Joseph got Johannes to agree to start the concert with Beethoven, and then close it out with Johannes's brand new piece. Apparently Johannes belly-ached about how pairing his piece with Ludwig van's in the same evening was giving the audience too much D major. At any rate, he went through with it, and in no time it became one of the gold standards. The three movements in the ol' quick-slow-quick pattern are Allegro non troppo (D major), Adagio (F major), and Allegro giocoso, ma non troppo vivace - Poco più presto (D major).
Now let's take a break from the Germans and go pay a visit to Russia. Peter Tchaikovsky composed his Violin Concerto in D major (opus 35) when he was pushing forty. But he didn't compose it in Russia. Nah, Pete had just come out of a pretty horrible marriage and was feeling pretty shitty. So to get away from it all, he lived for a time in the Swiss resort of Clarens, on the shore of Lake Geneva. That's where he wrote the concerto. It had its premiere three years later, in December 1881. The three movements are Allegro moderato (D major), Canzonetta: Andante (G minor), and Finale: Allegro vivacissimo (D major). It's not the flashiest piece, but it is considered one the most technically difficult violin works to pull off. The second and third movements are played without a break. Whereas that was all new and cool when Felix did it, by now it wasn't a big deal, but it's still hard to do if you're the poor schmo who's gotta play it. When it first premiered, the critics were mixed. One thing's for sure, it was by no means lauded as the masterwork it is today. This one well-regarded critic, Eduard Hanslick, basically ripped Pete a new one. Ed said the piece was "long and pretentious" and "brought us face to face with the revolting thought that music can exist which stinks to the ear." Feeling on a roll, Ed also wrote that "the violin was not played but beaten black and blue," and that the last movement was "odorously Russian."
And now we go back to Germany with Max Bruch. Max was born about a decade after Beethoven died. He himself didn't die until 1920. In other words, he outlived Bunny. Among his two hundred or so works are three concertos for violin, but the standout is Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor (opus 26). He was all of twenty-eight when he wrote this, pretty impressive considering the fact that, of these five pieces for Bunny to consider, this one is generally regarded as the most beautiful. Scholars say this single concerto is basically when the Romantic era reached its peak. This piece has got a bunch of passages scattered throughout whereby a violinist can really strut their bow-driving stuff. Funnily, this opus is also considered the easiest of the five to play, but what exactly does that mean when you're comparing it to the likes of Beethoven and freakin' Tchaikovsky?
The first movement is sort of a prologue to the second, with the former flowing into the latter, another nod to Felix. Speaking of the three movements, they are Allegro moderato (called the Vorspiel, which is German for Prelude), Adagio, and Allegro energico (finale). Notice how that third movement has a word in it that looks like energetic? Right. That's because, well, it's a pretty intense and fast-paced bit. It's where the violinist starts to ooze those buckets of sweat. It takes its time getting there, though. The Prelude sounds like a slow and steady march, but a march that's steadily building in urgency. And then it repeats. The second movement is slow, but it's where we get to that gorgeous melody for which this piece is renowned. It's rich, it's expansive, and it just might make you cry. The third movement starts quietly before climaxing with some real fireworks, what they call the accelerando. Poor Bunny, to pull this off, would have had to make her little Stradivarius faster and louder and then whack the audience with a pair of grand chords at the very end. I can't tell you how many times she pulled this off so perfectly in her head. How it played out in reality never quite measured up. The teachers, however, marveled at her ability to punch out the third movement.
At any rate, I'm sure by now you can see just how tough a choice it was for dear Bunny. So tough that she died before she could decide. So tough that when the Roggebusch family moved into 48 Broad seventy years after her death, she still hadn't decided. Her ghost was still up on the third floor practicing each and every movement of each and every piece.
