T
HE
DIVINE EARTHENWARE
Dedicated to all those who gave me a new heart.
M
otto:
Ezekiel 36:26 A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put
within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an
heart of flesh.
T
he Composers
T
he Violinmaker
The composers we know least about, only that they are the prophets, the angels,
the messengers, the mediators between the empyrean spirit and the mundane earthenware.
They live inside their earthenware temples, listening to the spirits whispering. And then
there are times when “...there is silence, and they hear a voice...” [Job 4:16]. Startled they
wake up, heart rumbling like a pair of kettledrums, snatch their pens and notebooks,
frantically trying to capture the divine that passed through their temple. Red-eyed they sit
at their ill-tuned piano or take out the battered childhood cello, and listen to the sounds
they heard in their earthenware temple. Often lonely and heart-broken, they drag their
earthenware temple to the waste pile, where their shards intermingle with those discarded
there before, into “sheol wa’avadon”, where answers are dearth and oblivion reigns.
[Proverbs 15:11. I do not agree to the King James Version translation of “Hell and
Destruction”].
Praise the violinmaker! One of this story’s main heroes. He constructs
instruments, made of humble materials, by which hearts living within earthenware
temples can touch other hearts. This was one of the Olympus paramount secrets, and he
stole it for us! Slyly, he played his violin for Zeus, lulling him into a slumber, and thus
escaped the fate of his cousin, the Titan Prometheus.
O
ur Violinmaker
Our violinmaker wanted to become a performing violinist. He grew up with this
passion. He tried to excel. He was already a young man when it dawned on him he is not
adequate for that. His heart was consumed in fires of envy. His parents were those who
pointed out to him that with his dexterity of making things work, he could become a
wonderful violinmaker. After a period of bereavement and listening to inner voices inside
his earthenware temple, he woke up one morning in Cremona, and made haste to his
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studies in the violinmakers school. Humbly he toiled away, and slowly picked up the
language, fully aware of being sometimes made the butt of some innocent jokes and puns.
The master liked him, his humility, his perseverance. The master was a perfectionist. He
told our violinmaker: “When you demonstrate and discuss your work, never sit down,
except when you talk to an equal or to a master. But do not stand up in the presence of the
unenlightened either”. “Forgive me master for speaking up, but why?”, he asked
innocently. In broken Hebrew the master quoted [Proverbs 22:29]: “khazita ish mahir
bimlachto, lifnei mlachim ityazav, bal ityazev lifnei khashucim”, and as it was clear he
does not understand the Hebrew, he followed up with the Latin: “vidisti virum velocem in
opere suo coram regibus stabit nec erit ante ignobiles”. Came the day when the master
looked at his work and sat down beside him. Our violinmaker, with a broken heart, asked:
“Master, am I that ignoble?” “No”, answered the master and seated himself lower on a
low footstool, “You are my equal and there is nothing more I can teach you”.
That night it was raining, with occasional moonlight appearing between the tattered
clouds. Our violinmaker stood across the street from the house in which Antonio
Stradivari lived, looking up at the roof workshop, as if Stradivari were still there.
“Forgive me master Stradivari for speaking up,” he whispered, “I just wished to say that I
am honestly trying to be a worthy disciple, even when I have the temerity to try to
improve on the old ways”. The master’s earthenware temple had been now for eons a pile
of shards on a hillside vineyard, slowly washed away by the rains into the valley below.
He got no answer to calm his aching heart.
T
he Violin
Our violinmaker brought home a set of old templates and calipers he bought from
a retiring master before leaving Cremona. They were wonderfully covered with the patina
added by generations of masters using them. His heart rejoiced every time he held them
and followed their contours with loving fingers. He was now creating a new violin. His
master in Cremona always said: “Listen, with all your heart, and the wood will talk to
you”. He spent many hours contemplating the grain of the aged wood, and planning the
angles for sawing it, like a diamond cutter who stakes everything on one tap of the mallet
on the chisel. When he finally decided, his hand was steady and he could see the finished
violin as he chipped the wood carefully away, every so often sighting the contours and
gauging with his calipers. When he started the violin, the earth was whirling down the
ecliptic close to the winter solstice. At the vernal equinox the main parts started to take
shape. The days grew now longer and our violinmaker hummed to himself happily.
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T
he Scroll, A Story With A Moral
T
he Soul Of The Violin, A Frightening Secret
Like the rest of the violin, the scroll at the end of the pegbox obviates
reverberations, especially in the part of the structure involving the pegbox, neck, and
fingerboard. Three nights and days our violinmaker worked on the scroll. It must be
perfect! He knew its shape can be arbitrary, it bears little significance regarding the
quality of the violin, like the tailpiece to which the strings are tied. He also knew that the
first thing any rival master violinmaker will do is to very closely examine the shape of the
scroll. Why? Because if something is worth doing, it is worth doing right. Because the
shape of this almost insignificant addition to the violin stands as testimony to his
devotion to perfection regarding the paramount details of the violin.
Come closer and listen. This is one of the darkest secrets of mankind. Nobody
knows how it was revealed. Sitting near the fireplace at winter, watching the flickering
flames, some say it was stolen from Zeus by the first violinmaker. Look at the f-shaped
sound holes. Peep into the violin. Under the bridge there is the Bass Bar, and on the Estring side there is a small innocent looking post clamped between the violin’s back and
belly. This is the sound post, or the soul, La âme, of the violin. It is not glued, just
clamped, like the spirit in your earthenware temple. It is positioned in place by clever
crooked tongs inserted through the f-hole. Its position is crucial to the character of the
violin. Move it half a millimeter, and the bright violin will sound somber. Take it away,
and even the best violin will sound like a two-bit trash guitar bought in a country fair. My
heart thumps so loudly, it feels like it is in my throat. The soul of the violin... La âme...
hush baby! hush!...
P
ernambuco
At the last moment Zeus woke up in a furor. Roaring and raging, he managed to
snatch away the bow from the first violinmaker. Since then, the bowmakers looked for
the bow to fit the violin. The violin needs the bow like an anvil needs the hammer. It took
them many centuries. They did not find it before conquistadores entered Brazil, and
instituted the state of Pernambuco and its capital Pernambuco, or Recife. In the 18th
century Francois Tourte was listening to the divine whispering within his earthenware
temple. He already knew how to mount the horse’s tail hairs onto a bow, and to rub resin
to produce the friction needed to pull the strings to produce the violin sound. The spirits
sent him to Brazil in search of the Pernambuco wood found in the vicinity of Recife.
Thinking was so hard. From time to time there was this rumbling, like the remote
laughter when the door of the wine tavern opens momentarily. Zeus is a sore loser.
Nonetheless he understood the bow must be concave upwards, and figured out the length
and the distribution of weight from the heel, or “frog”, to the bow’s tip. The alchemy of
bow making is known only to few, and the best bows are priceless. Oh, you did not know
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that? Excuse me, did you think the violinmaker also makes the bow? Ha ha, does he also
make the strings, and the case for the violin? Ha!
T
he New Violin Is Born
T
he Violinist
It is now close to the autumnal equinox. The new violin is practically completed,
ready to be born. Our violinmaker approaches the moment of truth. He thought he can
hear malicious whispering snickering and mocking him about the stillborn piece of junk
he produced. At last he ran out of excuses--the time has come! With trembling hands he
secured the sound post, strung the violin (oh, the dark secret of the strings, but let us skip
this story), and tuned it carefully. A great sigh of relief came even before he touched the
bow to the strings. He could hear the wood talking to him with balanced fundamentals
and gentle overtones. He knew it is not a failure. Out came the dog-eared scores of his
beloved pieces, as he started to play in his amateurish hesitant manner. It was time to call
in the violinist.
What a magic, beyond our comprehension. The violinist takes an instrument made
of dead wood, catgut, horsetail hair strands anointed with pinetree scented resin. He looks
at the score, then listens to the whispering within his earthenware temple, and as you
listen, the divine whispers in the long gone composer’s temple are conjured inside your
earthenware temple. Praise you, violinist. Priest. Bridge spanning time and space and
linking all earthenware temples. No wonder music is as ...truly the light is sweet, and a
pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun [Ecclesiastes 11:7].
O
ur Violinist
It was our violinist who commissioned the new violin. She is vivacious, almost
nervous, self-centered and very perceptive, completely oblivious of her earthenware
mortality. She is an actor at heart, always adjusting her mood to the music she plays.
Alas, this left her without a mood of her own. Her temple is a meeting place of the spirits
of composers long gone. She is the priestess. The barren heart priestess. And a great
performing artist nonetheless.
She appears like a whirlwind and homes in on the new violin. Our master stands there,
cradling in his arms the new violin. His bewildered eyes follow the violin as she takes it,
like a surrogate mother surrendering her newborn baby. She opens her old violin case and
takes out her bow, a prize possession given to her years ago by her teacher and mentor.
Slowly she tunes the violin, very carefully, and tries a few random passages, a few
memorized cadenzas with a lot of tricky bowing, fingering and difficult flageolets. Slowly
our violinist opens her eyes and breaks into a happy smile: “Let’s get to work”, she says
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happily. Our violinmaker knows what this means. For the next day all they did was to
string and re-string the new violin, move the sound post slightly to various adjacent
places, until our violinist was sure they achieved perfection. Or maybe she simply got
used to the instrument as it got used to her? She felt weak and tired, and had this crushing
pressure in her chest, accompanied by a sensation of suffocating...
D
awn In The Cardiac Ward
Through the pink translucent fingers of Eos, a fierce scorching sun is slowly
rising. Outside another stifling hot day starts. In the nearby construction site the
pneumatic hammer’s noise mingles with the smell of clay dust, slowly rising on the wings
of a dry breeze. In the cardiac ward the sighs and breathing of yesternight slowly
evaporate, as the ceiling fluorescent lights are turned on, and the new day is heralded by
the brisk nurses. The curtains between the beds, which provided a semblance of privacy,
are drawn open with the rings and rods supporting them rattling sinisterly. Temperature
and blood pressure are taken, drip infusions are refreshed, pills are swallowed, and
injections are administered. The earthenware vessels are tended to. Some are prepared to
be wheeled out into the operation theater. There the masters are going to fashion
refurbished earthenware hearts on their potter’s wheel. Their own hearts are filled with
awe. The divine spirit within their own earthenware temples whispered to them. Now
their earthenware, with the help of the divine within, will restore the ailing clay temple
entrusted to them. Clay mending clay. Fare well, divine earthenware!
(Dan Censor, Beer Sheva, April-May, 1998)
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Thanks to friends who commented on points of grammar.
The above material is in the public domain and may be distributed freely, provided it is
distributed in its entirety, without alterations.
You can contact me:
By E-Mail at:
CENSOR@EE.BGU.AC.IL
Or write to:
Dan Censor,
15/3 Nordau St.,
Beer Sheva 84897, ISRAEL.
Or write to:
Prof. Dan Censor,
Dept. Electrical & Computer Engineering,
Ben-Gurion Univ.Negev,
Beer Sheva, 84105, ISRAEL.
Or fax to:
+972-8-647-2949, 08-647-2949 in Israel, indicate FOR PROF. DAN CENSOR.
Or call:
+ 972-8-627-9097, 08- 627-9097 in Israel, [Home],
+972-8-646-1511, 08-646-1511 in Israel [Work].
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