ladynyoblog

i have three cellos. a 4/4 king of my dead brothers, a wang zhiguo 7/8 and a gorgeous scala corta from stephannie voss who built this cello. it is based on a 1620 brescian cello made by maginni the student of de salo a historic cello maker.

cellos were big monsters then, but 4/4 fat ass and belly cellos that were hard to move so later cellos were downsized to more smaller instruments. stephannie voss is a friend and luthier here in atlanta. she is a master violin maker and my cello is one of her last cellos and now she is making violas. lol. the luthier was trained in germany and knows her stuff.

i got this scala corta from a 87 year old cellist who couldn’t play anymore but she played this cello in germany orchestras for years. her name is alice. i have talked to her every week and now she is very weak with heart issues so we don’t talk, in fact today she went into the hospital but we do email. she is in georgia now and not germany after many years there.

i have named this cello tosca. she has a fat belly as she is a 4/4 cello. a scala corta means literally short ladder and stephannie designed this powerful cello for cellists with small hands, women (and this is not a lady’s cello) and cellists who have arthritis, or can’t handle a full sized cello like me. lol.

the sound is large and powerful. the original brescian cellos were powerful projectors of sound as they bounced the sound off of catheral walls which were built out of thick granite stones. the brescian differs from the cremona/strad cellos where the sound is projecting not on stone but in concert halls. the a and d strings of a cremona cello is bright and rather sharp to my ears. my scala corta is full sound from the a/d/g/c strings. lol. tosca is powerful in projection.

it probably would bore most readers of this blog because they don’t care about the accoustical physics of a scala corta but to me, this is fascinating. tosca is a medium arched cello and because of the vibration from the top plate and bottom plate (top spruce and bottom maple) it has a superb vibration. I wake up my cellos with something i call “Scottish War Drums” which is just a hard drone sound on the g/c strings and then a marching rhythm on the d/g strings together. open strings only. but what is remarkable is that by changing the rhythm by my bowing action, there is a whole army in there of Highlanders who are going to battle at Culloden. this is a wake up for me, the cellos, the cats and my very deaf husband. lol. i play both the 7/8 cello the wang zhiguo studio workshop in china cello and tosca every morning with this piece of music. it makes the rooster crow and wonder what new rooster is trolling for his 6 hens. lol. both of my cellos and the rooster alarm the neighborhood. the ukrainan lawyer across the street knows when he hears the rooster to get up and get to court.

we are presently working on Karl Jenkins “Benedictus” the cello solo smack in the middle of this very loud mass. i hate the mass: it is like opera, which is controlled screaming. the cello solo is one of great piece and comfort.

i don’t have a teacher and i don’t need one at this point. i was a violinist years ago and a erhu and zhonghu player for 8 years. there are great similarities between cello and the zhonghus which are tuned from g/d which sound like cellos in a chinese orch. lol.

i am learning by sound, perfecting my fingering and letting tosca to teach me. she is a very wise old bird. and my intonation is corrected by my very good ear. lol. some of the positions in cello are rather hard, like the thumb position where you lay your left hand thumb across the strings so the 4 digits can move more easily and this is new for me. but i have been playing tosca only for around 4 months and i learn as i go.

many cellists don’t see the benefits of a scala corta and that is fine with me. owners of scala corta are not of the mass cellists crowd. lol. they are marvelous instruments with a fingerboard/string scale of 622mm instead of the usual 690mm scale. there is a particular economy in this: what is normal in a normal cello is abbreviated in the scala corta. full placings of the finger are actually half steps and you see this especially in the a string.

overall, i love this tosca and her strings are soft to the touch where with uncle eliz. the 7/8 colt in the pasture cello, they are harder and stiffer. i short changed uncle eliz. because i got tosca as a present from my husband only 2 months after he ordered the cello before i got tosca. short, soft, easier strings versus new and harder strings. you choose. i did. and i land with tosca every time. but uncle eliz is new and rather stiff and hasn’t opened fully, hasn’t bloomed in sound but the every morning sessions have in a couple of weeks started to loosen him up and the blooming of sound is happening.

i used to be a writer with 10 published books and also a painter. now? i spend every chance with my cellos. it is my passion and my future. no, i will never at 78 play in an orch. but i can cobble together a chamber group of cello, me, and some violins in the future. that is enough for me.