By Monica Johnstone, PhD

Cellist Pablo Mahave-Veglia is an associate professor for whom performance practice is at the core of his research. While a score might seem static to many of us, he knows that context is critically important.  It seemed fitting to talk to him during this pandemic, a strange context for music performance.

“I spent my Winter of 2020 Sabbatical in Chile,” Pablo begins.  When the pandemic changed his performance and research plan, he “customized”.  He was able to spend time with his father and explains, “I turned to Bach because the world-wide Fútbol ban left me empty afternoons, or perhaps because I have adored the music since I was seven and it is my comfort food…”

“Bach is all subtext and context—I’ve known the notes for a long time now.” 

Pablo played for his father.  “I had to play music that you could play by yourself—a symphony for one player.  This lasted for several months during my sabbatical.”  As wonderful as it was to play for his father, he wanted to share it with a community.

This desire to play for a community, this customization of his sabbatical work, was to benefit the GVSU community and beyond this fall when Pablo performed the Complete Bach Cello Suites in six concerts, first outdoors and later by increasingly remote means as restrictions tightened.

“When Bach tells you to play ‘with elegance’, what did that mean then?  In the last 40-45 years, I studied with pioneers who went back to the way the instruments were made then.”

I asked Pablo about his instruments.  I’d read in his online bio that, “Professor Mahave-Veglia performs on a baroque cello made by Chilean Luthier Marcelo Cigna in 1986. His modern instrument is a 1790 William Forster on loan to him by an anonymous private collector.”  I wondered that his baroque instrument was less than 40 years old and his modern one was made in the 18^th Century.  

He explained, “An instrument from the Baroque period may not have all the original parts.  So few survive in original condition.”  His instrument was constructed to have those ‘original’ parts.  And a ‘modern’ cello is a somewhat relative term.

He understands that a social or physical scientist might wonder about his research into performance.  After all, one could say that the music is “done” and one has only to play it well as written.  But Pablo argues that his research into the music comes alive in the act of performance.  It is an ongoing experience for the performer.  In fact, every so often Pablo makes a discovery and regrets previous performances of that particular element. 

“There are abstract directions in music—they’re vague (such as ‘not too slow’). Composers are purposefully abstract. What does it mean to you or as the tools of time allow?  They had a highly stylized idea of what a courante[i] is.  A modern performer has to work hard to get a handle on the style.”  Pablo provides a contemporary illustration of the point, “We know what ‘business casual’ is but there’s a lot of cultural capital to understand that.”

I don’t mention that I wonder what the pandemic is doing to our idea of business casual.

“’Minuet’ was a loaded word for them.  I’ve accumulated an amount of research that I can then express through the act of performance.”

Pablo was able to include students earlier in the Bach series as audience members. The series became a teaching tool.  “I asked them to write a paper on maximizing the resources of this pandemic situation.”  Pablo was modelling the behavior and getting his students to think about their response to the circumstances. 

“I got great responses to the assignment.  One student played a duet with themselves on split screen.  Another proposed meeting with the teacher 2-3 times in 15-minute lessons on Zoom.”  

When performance dried up, there is the physical, athletic aspect to consider.  “You can’t just take the year off.  You’d cease being a professional musician.  Playing a full concert in front of a camera is really weird.  I love to talk and explain at concerts and that felt too weird without the nods and smiles.  I’m really glad I did the Bach series.  I received emails—people were listening.  It reminds me to be thankful for the difficulties in my life.  The served me well.”   

Pablo wishes he had a lot coming up now that the Bach series has finished.  “I’m a very social creature and love collaborations.”  He lists Dale Schriemer, Karen Libman, Rebeca Castellanos, and others with whom he has collaborated.  “It’s hard now when the collaboration avenue has been cut.  I love theatre folk; their rehearsal process is so different—not alone!—I spend so many hours on my own beforehand, but theatre folk learn their script collectively .  They get off book much later, I’m off book on day one.  They learn their book from context, not just a narrow view.  Actors don’t just see their own part.  They work from the score all the time. They know the context; everything is injected with subtext.”

He’s currently exploring the work of composer and church musician Leo Sowerby who grew up in Grand Rapids.  “I learned about him when going to a performance and seeing a plaque on the wall.  It turns out he was highly regarded for the style that was in vogue at the time.  His 1946 Pulitzer Prize was awarded the year before Aaron Copeland received it for Appalachian Spring[ii].   Sowerby’s style was soon considered dated. 

Pablo is also interested in the work of an American cellist Alfred Wallenstein (October 7, 1898 – February 8, 1983) whose music he found in a library in Chicago and hopes to perform later this semester.  “The music required some surgery.    Only one score remains, and it was only performed once.  There are few editorial marks and few reviews—none especially positive.  The work didn’t flatter the soloists.  There were problems, and the work needed more performances to have a better trajectory.  I’ve made some changes based on the remaining markings and done some reconstruction.” Pablo notes that, “You have to think like him, not yourself.”

As we close down our discussion on Zoom, it strikes me that Pablo’s performance research, enthusiasm for the working styles of other disciplines, channeling of greats from the Baroque and more contemporary--even beleaguered—composers, and desire to make the most of adversity are all important higher-order skills for our time.  His students have seen these in action and have been invited to devise their own strategies of adaptation.

I imagine Pablo’s 92-year-old father, listening to his son play Bach, with all the nuance he has gleaned from years of performing and seeking original conditions, to him alone, but trusting in the promise of the students his son will teach and the many concerts yet to come for audiences at GVSU and around the world. 

This is somehow a metaphor for gathering all that life has provided up to this point and girding ourselves to do even better in the future and to help others to do so.  Not a bad thought as we enter a new year.

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[i] A lively French Baroque dance in triple meter.

 

[ii] The Martha Graham mounting of this ballet was performed at GVSU as part of the Fall Arts Program in 2010.