You did what to a 300-year-old viola?

A lot of our audience members are under the impression that the instruments we play are unaltered originals that have somehow survived the centuries. If only that were true!

Some years back Susan had the chance to purchase an old English viola (via our daughter’s English teacher, of all people). At the time Susan was teaching the girls how to play viola on a borrowed instrument – she didn’t own one. The paperwork was legit and the price reasonable, so after some consideration, Susan decided to buy the instrument. At the time Susan could barely read alto clef, but she adored that soulful viola sound. Fast forward a couple of decades and Susan is playing viola quite a bit.

At the Telluride Festival a couple of summers ago Susan showed the viola to Toby Appel, the virtuoso violist. He saw the potential of the instrument, but he told Susan that the neck was the widest he’d ever seen and that the length of the strings made the viola play bigger than it was. (Violas come in a lot of different sizes, but the standard measurement is the length of the body, not the neck.) And it had this very thick nut (the place where the strings meet the scroll) that appeared to be a clumsy attempt to rectify the string length. Toby suggested replacing the neck to make it far easier to play. (My guess is that strange nut was itself an early alteration to the original instrument.)

It took a while for Susan to come around to making the significant investment in replacing the neck, and she worried as she waited for the “new” instrument. Would her Thomas Smith sound the same, or would the process be as dangerous to the tone as giving a great singer a nose job?!

After a month with the rejuvenated Mr. Smith (who went to Salt Lake City and not Washington) Susan is thrilled to report that her viola plays more naturally and vividly than ever before. And she is thrilled to introduce the her “new” instrument in this set of Ives Collective concerts!