[Leica] My Cello

[Peter Klein]

Barney:  This is a beautiful picture, and a lovely tribute to both your 
instrument and your friend John. I also have a friend who is a string 
repairman, and I've seen several instruments he's brought back from 
near-death. His wife, who you may have seen in many of my musician 
pictures, plays a cello that we call "The English Patient" because it 
originated in 1700s England and needed a lot of TLC to be brought up to 
good playing condition.  It turned out to be a gem with a lower register 
that has to be heard to be believed.

We are indeed the custodians of our instruments. Ideally, we develop 
some sort of symbiosis with them. I suspect that wood fibers align 
according to the resonances we draw out of the instrument. So each 
player contributes in some way to how the instrument sounds.

Keep playing.  It's part of the good fight to keep beauty in the world 
and keep barbarism at bay.  I know that sounds a bit precious, but I 
truly believe it.

--Peter

> This is a picture of my friend John Lemoine. He is an extremely talented
> violin maker who lives in Washington, DC. That is my cello he is 
working on.
> It is over three hundred years old. It was made in the Austrian Alps 
and it
> has a wonderful deep, dark, mellow tone.
>
> When you acquire an instrument like this it is made clear to you in a
> hundred different ways that you are not its owner, you are its 
custodian.
> Your job, along with playing it, is to make sure that it is preserved 
and
> maintained so that it can be handed off to the next generation to 
play and
> care for.
>
> I am the care giver for a special needs cello. Many years ago John 
found an
> antique cello case in the garbage in New York. He fished it out, 
opened it,
> and found the abused and broken last mortal remains of my cello. He knew
> exactly what he was looking at. He took the pieces home and spent the 
next
> two or three years restoring it. My wife?s health problems and my back
> issues have kept me from playing recently. But now that I am retired and
> doing better I am going to give going back to it a try.
>
> http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Barney/John+Lemoine.jpg.html
> <http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Barney/John+Lemoine.jpg.html>
>
> Comments and Criticisms Welcome!
>
> Thanks,
>
> Barney