An Interview with Virginia Euwer Wolff

Virginia Euwer Wolff's novel, "The Mozart Season," is about a talented 12-year-old violinist named Allegra Shapiro, who lives in Portland, Ore. In the book, Allegra prepares for a violin competition that will include the region's most impressive young musicians.  It is one of the rare young adult books that portrays, with grace and an insider's knowledge, the world of a young musician who must navigate the pressures of performance and the sometimes difficult process of growing up.

Recently, four Stanley girl violinists interviewed Wolff, who lives near Portland, via e-mail about music and writing -- J.G, who is 13 and has been playing violin nearly four years; D.S., also 13, who has been playing since third grade; A.T., a violinist for the past four years; and E .F., who's nearly 13, and who has played for five years. Three of the girls sit in the first violin section of the Stanley orchestra, one takes her chair in the second section.

While none of the girls has played Mozart's "Fourth Violin Concerto," the piece Allegra Shapiro chooses to perform in "The Mozart Season," they've played other pieces by Mozart, including "Divertimento No.13" and "K. 253."

Virginia Euwer Wolff has earned numerous awards for her five novels, including School Library Journal's "Best Book" for "Probably Still Nick Swanson," ALA Notable Book for "The Mozart Season ," Booklist's "Top of the List" for "Make Lemonade" and School Library Journal's "Best Book" for "Bat 6." Her most recent novel, "True Believer," is a sequel to "Make Lemonade" and has received a notable total of six starred reviews from major children's books publications.

A passionate fan of classical music, Wolff has played the violin since she was 8 years old.

"I'm a second violinist by choice," she said. "I happen to love the harmony we can make with the first violins, and I just love playing the 'inner voices' (along with the violas, for instance). Actually, when I was a kid sitting in the back of the seconds, I longed for the day when I'd get to play first. Later, I did play in first violin sections for years. About four years ago I realized I really like playing second. So it's been a very long trip from chair to chair to chair to chair. I hope I continue to play second for the rest of my life."

Q: What inspired you to write "The Mozart Season"? Was it based on your own experiences?

A: No, the book wasn't based very much on my own personal experiences, except those of playing in orchestras.

I think every orchestra thing in the book comes from my own experience--except the player who had the repeat section memorized and didn't turn the page back for the stand partner. I thought that one up as a really mean thing someone might do.

I've played in orchestras most of my life, beginning when I was 10 or 11. But the real story, Allegra's, isn't mine at all. She's a much better violinist than I am, has a different kind of family, everything. I was motivated to write it because in the early 1980s I saw some page turners for a string quartet one breezy evening in Portland, Ore., and began to wonder if one might be a 12-year-old girl, turning pages for one of her parents in a string quartet.

When I saw a dancing man--in fact, more than one of them--a story began to feel its way around in my mind--something in which this girl I was imagining might meet this man I was watching. It was all very vague, but it was such a strong idea that I held tight to it in my mind. And once I got hold of the story, in little bits at a time, I realized this girl had lived inside my mind for years and years.

Q: Does Allegra's piece (Mozart Violin Concerto No. 4) have any personal significance to you ?

A: Oh, yes. It was one I left unfinished, I mean not learned very well, in high school. I've always felt guilty about it. So that was unfinished business for me, personally. While I was writing "The Mozart Season," I decided to work on Mozart's 3rd Concerto, though, so it wouldn't be the same one Allegra was working on. I thought the 4th might make me feel so bad, not being able to play it nearly as well as Allegra can, that I might get depressed or too sad to finish the book or something. But later I've gone back and worked some on the 4th one, Allegra's concerto. (I'm now working on a movement of a Bach sonata, mostly.)

Q: Why did you make Allegra so musically advanced at age 12?

A: Allegra is very advanced musically because I've known many kids who were/are. They begin lessons very early, are very gifted and they practice diligently. They're unusual, but not all that unusual.

I recently played a concert in which our orchestra accompanied a middle school boy who played a hugely complicated piano piece by Mendelssohn ("Capriccio Brillante"), and he played it wonderfully. He's advanced, just as Allegra is. Those kids are out there, and I see them quite often. Allegra had to be that advanced for the story to make sense. Or, I mean, to tell THIS story and not some other one.

When I was a kid, just an ordinary kid trying to get her bow to behave and trying to shift without sounding like a frightened rat, I knew so MANY gifted kids, people who could play circles around me. I was always fascinated by what appeared to be their in-group, and I think I probably still am.

Q: When did you decide who would win the competition, and what made you decide the winner ?

A: When I began working on the book I had no idea who would win. It didn't even occur to me that the reader would have to meet the other competitors. I just thought preparing for the competition would be interesting.

As it began to dawn on me that we have to get to know the other violinists in the competition, I felt overwhelmed, discouraged, and knew I couldn't finish the book. (I felt that way several times during the 5+ years that the book took to write.) I had to decide who would win the competition on the basis of the most mature musicianship, and so that was what decided me. It was hard. But I think I made the right decision.

Q: Have you ever played in a competition, such as the Ernest Bloch Competition that you describe in the book?

A: Nope. I played in one adjudication thing in high school and it was terrifying. None of those things ever again for me. I'm not nearly as much of a scaredy-cat now as I was then, but I still have stage-fright problems. I do admire kids who can go through those experiences without crumbling. It's attitude, of course. The darned ego that keeps obstructing the music. It's easy to understand, MUCH harder to get rid of.

Q: Why did you choose to have Deirdre (a classical soprano and Allegra's mother's longtime friend) as such an influential character in the book?

A: I wanted to surround Allegra with people who might serve as role models for her in her growing up. I feel that that's the way the world is: When we're young we have all different kinds of people around us, and we could end up being like any of them. It's one reason why our parents are so super-careful to know who our teachers, coaches, bus drivers, etc., are.

Deirdre has wonderful qualities and she's also very weird. It's good for Allegra to see the whole picture of Deirdre; many creative artists have such weirdnesses, and there's of course a very good reason why she's weird. She's lost a child, and that would make any mother get weird. Sadly, Deirdre hasn't gotten over the loss, and it may in some ways enrich her singing. So much great art is the result of profound sorrow.

Another reason is that I was working with a repeating pattern of mothers and daughters. And another reason for Deirdre's strong influence is that I kept seeing her in a pattern with Mr. Trouble: both extreme cases of people who love music and give their hearts to it. I don't know how many times I drew the triangle on paper: Deirdre, Mr. Trouble, and Allegra. There was something about those three in relation to each other that I KNEW could make a substantial story, if only I could find out what it was, so I just kept drawing the triangle and trying to brainstorm, just using words. Like "passion," "memory," "loneliness," etc.

Q: What is the significance of Mr. Trouble and his lost song, "Waltz Tree?"

A: Mr. Trouble and his lost song. I think we all have a lost song somewhere, and Mr. Trouble's is just a happier case of getting to find his, after all these years. I think that growing up is in some ways a case of losing our song. Sad, but true. And I think so much great art comes from loss. And I also wanted to show how music crosses all boundaries, all borders, all walls between people; it's universal. Mr. Trouble and Deirdre would never meet if we obeyed all rules all the time. But they do, and the result is a fruitful one for Allegra and everybody, I hope.

I chose the particularly haunting "Valse Triste," ("sad waltz") for Mr. Trouble to show how classical music can reach out to anybody, anywhere. I feel very strongly about the need to get classical music out to everybody.

Q: Do your two careers, author and musician, ever affect each other?

A: My two lives, writing and making music, do balance each other. As a writer I'd be LOST without music. Just now on the radio I'm hearing Mozart's "Sinfonia Concertante." Yesterday afternoon I got one of my best ideas in years while I was listening to a CD of the violinist Hillary Hahn playing Bach's unaccompanied sonatas and partitas.

Sometimes music takes a whole lot of my time, as it did in February, when I spent many, many, many hours rehearsing and performing in the pit orchestra for a high school production of "West Side Story." At those times the writing doesn't get as much attention. (It turns out that in the month of February there were 11 days when I got no writing done at all, according to the work calendar that I force myself to keep. But I wouldn't have traded the "West Side Story" experience for anything.)

Sometimes it's more music, and usually it's more writing. I can't imagine what I'd do if I didn't have music. I think it's my mind that needs the balance.

For several years I was a schoolteacher. And one of the things I suffered from most during those years was classical music deprivation. My psyche needs a few hours of music every day. There was none at the high school where I taught.

I always have a book to work on and music to learn. Luckily, I work at home, and can go back and forth between them. I AM SO LUCKY!

Q: What orchestras have you played in and/or with?

A: Orchestras: one children's orchestra when I was little. Then a community orchestra of both kids and grownups. Then a college orchestra for four years. Then no music at all for nearly 15 years. (A HUGE MISTAKE! ONE OF THE WORST OF MY LIFE!) Then some more community orchestras, wherever I happened to be living at the time.

The total of community orchestras is probably seven or eight now. And some high school pit orchestras for musical shows when I was teaching high school. And now "West Side Story" this year. I've played in quartets and am now a member of a quintet (string quartet + piano), which is THE MOST FUN of all. Well, "West Side Story" was nearly the most musical fun of my life. The quintet is the top.

Q: What advice would you give to young violinists today?

1) Practice. Try to find some ways to make practicing fun.

2) Get the adults to help you form quartets and get the music for you, so you can begin playing the Mozart string quartets and then some Haydn ones, and then move to others. A man named David Stone has composed two beautiful, easy string quartets. I'd begin with those. Keep playing quartets; make it a regular part of your schedule.

3) When life gets too complicated and you have to give up something, DON'T GIVE UP YOUR MUSIC LESSONS. That's one of the reasons I wrote "The Mozart Season": to convince kids that staying with music lessons is worth it. I would suggest that you can give up being class vice president and chair of school committees but hang on to the music lessons.

4) (Maybe this is the most important.) Remember that excuse-making is one of the easiest things we do. It's much easier to make excuses than to practice and advance with our music. If the excuses win out over the self-discipline that music takes, we'll be really, really, really sorry.

I'm always meeting adults who quit their music lessons when they were kids. In their voices I can hear the excuse-making. I made those excuses myself, and so am especially aware of them.

5) I think it's best if we don't worry too much about where we sit in the orchestra, although that's really hard. Being in the first stand isn't the most important thing in life, although it may appear to be at the time .

6) Remember there will be Steve Landauers (a talented, disciplined violinist in the book who's one of Allegra's competitors) everywhere in life. We might as well meet them in music.

7) Remember that not every conductor will be nice to us. That's the way life is. Some will be wonderfully gentle and some will be nasty.

Over the years, I've decided to play with the nice ones. (And with ones whose beat I can find easily). We have to remember that when conductors get nasty they, too, have problems, and their nastiness can sometimes roll off our backs if we're strong enough.

8) I give myself rewards for practicing hard, especially when I've overcome bad habits (this can take months, even years) with my fingers or bowing arm. Then I think we can give ourselves rewards.

9) Replace our strings and have our bows rehaired when we need to.

10) We have to find ways to keep our love of music up at the top of our priorities. For me, it's often been a case of asking myself, "Well, what's most important to you? Feeling bad about that awful note you played, or loving music?"

Well, J, D, A and E, I wish you the greatest happiness in music. And, too, I wish that the misery you find in music (and you will, over and over again) will go inside the happiness, making the whole experience big, rich, full, and nutritious. We all have to remember that, like Deirdre, we can make music out of a broken heart.