Classmate Reponse: Yeeva Cheng

My viola lies in its blue zippered case, surrounded by green felt and tucked in with a green velvet cloth, shoved under my bed to gather dust.  The music is stuck in the side pocket, along with Bach’s Gigue, Suite Number Two in D.  That was the last piece I played at my last recital last spring.  It was by no means the perfect ending; I had botched the next-to-last chords, leaving a discordant cacophony that reverberated in the church’s sanctuary.  On most days, I probably would have been frustrated, thinking only about the hours of practicing and listening to recordings of the piece, trying to match it.  But for some reason, I was unfazed by it; I only pretended to look broken when my orchestra teacher past by and reassuringly patted me on the shoulder.  A pseudo-sad smile covered up the “sorry-my-give-a-damn’s-broken” attitude. 

It had been two years of not playing when I finally opened up the case last fall.  I shouldered it, balanced the bow across the strings and tediously practiced my scales, just as I had done over and over again two years before. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yeeva Cheng’s Musical Afterthoughts is a very interesting one. The detail that she used is very concise and to the point. My favorite line is “surrounded by green felt and tucked in with a green velvet cloth, shoved under my bed to gather dust”. With that line I have a clear picture in my head as to the way her viola looks surrounded by its case. Upon reading this piece a second time, I felt that I understood more as to what she is describing and the way that she is feeling. When I first read the line, “a pseudo-sad smile covered up the ‘sorry my-give-a-damn’s broken’ attitude”, I wasn’t quite sure whether she was referring to her mess up as not giving a damn or whether  that line was referring to her not giving a damn that her orchestra teacher tried to comfort her. I enjoyed reading about the separation she experienced with her viola and after two years coming back to the viola; it was almost as if, to her, time had not passed.  Her piece could be lengthened a little bit more, maybe by giving the piece more of a background or expanding upon what happened after she had started playing it again.