{"id":231,"date":"2007-03-02T00:01:44","date_gmt":"2007-03-02T08:01:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2007\/03\/02\/the-end-of-an-era\/"},"modified":"2013-02-07T18:02:52","modified_gmt":"2013-02-08T02:02:52","slug":"the-end-of-an-era","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2007\/03\/02\/the-end-of-an-era\/","title":{"rendered":"the end of an era"},"content":{"rendered":"

I received word this afternoon that my old viola has found a new owner. Some people like to name their instruments, I never got into that. Now that I’ve learned of the sale of my first viola, I wish I had named her (for lack of a name, I’ll settle at least on the nautical convention of the female pronoun). We went through a lot together.<\/p>\n

She was my first – I started on the violin and went from 4th grade until my sophomore year of college as a violinist. The dusky-eyed beauty that is the viola seduced me the spring before I transferred to the University of Puget Sound (UPS). Up to this point I was intent on some sort of business-oriented degree, perhaps international relations\/business or something of that sort. I was taking part in a chamber music summer session at UPS and word came down that there was a shortage of violists, and there was need for one to play one of the Mozart flute quartets. I took up a borrowed instrument, and the rest was history.<\/p>\n

The crush hit hard, and I traded my violin in for a viola by the same maker, William Watson, who was also my private violin teacher through high school. She was a large instrument – a full 17 and 5\/8 inches length along the body (average is 16 to 16.5 inches), modeled on a great tenor viola made by the early Brescian maker Gasparo da Salo (1542-1609) and housed in the collection of the Ashmolean Museum<\/a> in Oxford. I did a lot with her, here are some highlights:<\/p>\n