Beauty.

This is an essay I wrote for my English Gerak Gempur paper. It came to me naturally when I saw the one-word topic that I could choose. Enjoy, chumps.

***

I had never wanted to be in an orchestra.

In fact, when I received my acceptance letter, I wasn’t really happy. I had reserved my fears, which now seem so nonsensical to me. Plus, as a string player, one would usually be more into music for soloists, not orchestras. But that wasn’t the point. At that time about more than a year ago, I was worried about the people there, and how they would be crazy over the type of music I couldn’t say I was too fond of - classical.

Yes, yes, it may be true that I had learned classical music all my life since I was four. But only in the last few years or so had I begun to explore into modern music. As a result, I disliked classical. During piano and violin lessons, I didn’t really mean what I was playing at times.

Alright, maybe I’m exaggerating. Maybe there was a part of me that could appreciate classical. After all, I had everything going for me from the beginning - I had acquired pitch as they call it, my teachers mentioned I was very musical and on top of it all, I aced my exams. So, as I began to grow older, I began to think for myself and consider the fact that I did like classical after all.

Yet to be honest, my perception hardly changed after my first rehearsal with the new, upcoming orchestra. Perhaps I felt slightly out of place as most of the members seemed to already know each other, and to add insult to injury, I didn’t have a desk partner. As rehearsals are only barely a weekend long, the first one seemed to be over in a blink of an eye.

But it was the first camp that really changed me. Several days before camp, while packing, I was dreading the prospect of playing my violin everyday for several hours. And yet, when I arrived my whole world turned upside down, for the better. I made friends from various sections of the orchestras. By the first night, I had already ‘joined’ a group of friends and boy, what fun we had.

And at the same time, the music started to dwell into my feelings. Camp wasn’t just about break times, playing cards or simply hard-to-hard talks with newly made, yet solid pals. Camp was about the music as well. I began to understand the ways of an orchestra and the sense of the music we were making as a whole. As days passed, I could feel myself getting lost in enchantment.

By the end of the camp, my perception had totally changed. I concluded, I love music. Every aspect of it. I hadn’t only learned to accept and yearn for classical music, I also became more open-minded to other genres. My friend, a clarinetist spoke very often to us about jazz, something not new, yet still foreign to me.

And the great thing was, there were more camps to come. Personally, the next two camps helped enhance my knowledge and approach in playing with an orchestra, while strengthening my new perception. Bit by bit, I ‘felt’ the music more and more, day by day. Friendships, meanwhile were getting warmer, and as each camp got on, I got to know more and more people. Looks like not everyone knew each other after all.

After roughly a year of rehearsals and camps, the orchestra was ready to perform for its inaugural gala concert. The purpose of the third camp was to prepare intensively, leading up to concert at the end of the weekend. By now, each member of the orchestra knew his or her parts of each piece very well. It was only a matter of tightening the screws here and there.

Naturally, the concert was over and done with, just like that. As I recall it now, I miss it more than ever - the company of friends, the experience of chamber music, and everything in between. But it all boils down to the sheer magic of music and the wonder it brings. In the second half of the concert, as I played, I listened attentively at the same time. The intricate solos by instruments such as the bassoon and oboe, the intensity of the percussions, the almost singing-like melodies of the flute and the cello, all these aspects of the orchestra and more blended into one big family. I couldn’t help but shed a tear. The end was near. What we had been working so hard for was coming to a full stop. As the conductor acknowledged the soloists within the orchestra after the final piece, and as he signaled the strings to rise from their seats, the supportive crowd were going ballistic. I couldn’t help but smile. There was just so much more to the language of music I had ever imagined.

Now, that was true beauty.