THE CELLO TYPE
posted by James Reel
Oboeinsight points the way to a blog I’ve managed to overlook: Daily Observations, the musings of Charles Noble, the Oregon Symphony’s assistant principal violist. According to his profile, “Charles enjoys cooking, hiking, cycling, reading, and blogging.” Sounds like my kind of guy, except for his adherence to the serial comma. (I’m AP; he’s apparently Chicago 15.) I’m adding his site to my blogroll today.
Anyway, what caught my eye, thanks to Patty, were a couple of tongue-in-cheek posts describing the characters of various types of instumentalists. First, Charles repeated someone else’s description of the various sections of the orchestra. Here’s the bit about cellists:
People who play the cello are simply not good looking. They have generally chosen their instrument because, while in use, the cello hides 80% of its player's considerable bulk. Most cellists are in analysis which won't end until they can play a scale in tune or, in other words, never. Cellists wear sensible shoes and always bring their own lunch.Now, wait a minute. I wear expensive shoes, by guy standards. You can read the rest of the aspersions here. But then our blogger makes amends with his own more temperate observations. Here’s what he has to say about cellists:
The cellos are an almost schizophrenic bunch. Since they have a comparable body of solo literature to the violin, they have a soloistic impulse almost from the get go. There can often be the element of the mysogenistic cello jock amongst the males, the inverse of which is almost unheard of in the females. On the other hand, they have a great love for the symphonic repertoire and are often very much into the historically informed peformance practice movement. They always seem to make each other birthday cakes, too. They have severe (and sometimes even legitimate) concerns about personal space for themselves and their instruments, which are often met with knowing looks and winks and smiles by the other string players, who wish that they could also just set their instruments on the floor rather than hold them up for several hours at a time.Here’s the full post.
