the first tune

After we have found our place in the market and all things were in order, I sat down on my old rug with my instrument. The noise still scare me, but I found some strenght to pluck the first course of strings, the highest. Against all my expectations it sounded and echoed through the noises and suddenly was my mind calm again, so that I could see far in the very deepness that every man believe his mind can reach. Quickly I made the second sound and began a short improvisation as I used to do in these occasions. Though some strange power seemed to touch me, and a very strange mode runned through my fingers and that music was different of all the others I just have played in this life. "I am in other land now", I thought that is the reason... It was half true...

i carried ever my own world in hands

Words of the author:

What Aladar means saying that? Some time ago, my father gave me a new musical instrument called viola caipira, or simply viola. It is a very typical instrument, besides guitar, of the country music of Brazil. For me it sounds like an old keyboard instrument like clavichord or harpsichord. It has five courses, the first two are only steel strings tuned in unison and the other courses have a nylon string and a steel string tuned an octave up. The instrument had no standard tuning, so that the performer can use it in his own way. There are some most commons ways of tuning and the most used is called "cebolão" ("big onion" - do not ask me why). Personally I use the natural tuning, similar to the guitar (ee bb Gg Dd Aa - the lowercase letters are the highest pitch and the upercase, the lowest), but with the Aa course tuned in Gg, so that I can have a similar range of the violin. I have chosen this tuning, because I already can play guitar and I want to play the works of J. S. Bach originally written for violin on the viola. But it all is only my personal history. What I want to mean is that with the viola I have discovered a new world of sounds and after a very long time I am able to compose again. It is like to have the world in the hands. It is what Aladar means when he said that.

The story is only beginning...