Samuel Applebaum and the "New Jersey" Violin School

Melanie Kupchynsky mentions Samuel Applebaum in the forthcoming memoir about her father, Jerry Kupchynsky, that she wrote with Joanne Lipman. (There will be an extensive forthcoming blogpost about the book closer to its release date of October 1.)  I never really associated Samuel Applebaum with any place in particular, but when I was in New Jersey this past weekend, I got a sense of violin-ness about the place.  I had my violin with me because Michael and I were there to play at a memorial service for a friend we always played with in New Jersey (every year for more years than I can count), and there was plenty of travel time for me to think about the book I had just read, and to think about Samuel Applebaum, and how much he meant to me.

My first encounter with Samuel Applebaum (who I never met in person) happened in the fourth grade when I started violin lessons with Clara Benson.  String Builder was the book we used.  It was the book everybody used, along with Wohlfahrt and Seitz.  We also used String Builder books for orchestral music.  When I stopped playing violin at the end of the sixth grade (I believe that the Seitz Concerto #5 was my "ultimate" piece), I tucked Mr. Applebaum's name fondly into my memory, and went on to other things.

My father had a volume of The Way They Play, a rather dowdy book of interviews and photographs of violinists.  He had that volume in his library because there was a photograph of one of the instruments he used to play in it.  The violinists and other string players in the books were photographed in dowdy houses sitting on dowdy sofas, and they talked about their bow strokes, the way they practiced, their teachers, their instruments, and about music in general.  There was no glamour, but I was fascinated. The books were inexpensively printed, and the covers were direct and to the point, like the String Builder books.  This was the same Samuel Applebaum.

I didn't think much about Samuel Applebaum until I read the whole 13-volume run of The Way They Play when I arrived at my nesting spot, flute in hand, in Charleston, Illinois.  The books were in the university library, and reading them had a great deal to do with my decision to re-claim my identity as a string player.  I also learned that Michael Tree, the violist of the Guarneri Quartet, was Samuel Applebaum's son (the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, right?).  Being partial to the dynamics of musical families, I found this relationship rather interesting.

When I first decided to try my hand at the violin again, I found a book in the String Builder series that discussed the bowstrokes that you can do on the violin.  I understood the importance of articulation on the flute.  There are a couple of ways you can vary tonguing on the flute, but most of the conscious articulation choices have to do with whether to slur or tongue, not in which way you slur or tongue. Applebaum explained in absolute and physical terms exactly what the bow could do, how you make the strokes, where you make the strokes, and, most of all, why you make the strokes.  Violin natives understand this stuff from observation and years and years of imitation, but since I was not really a violin native at the time (I was in my early 30s when I started playing again), I needed clarification.

I was happy to see that Jerry Kupchynsky had studied with Samuel Applebaum at Rutgers.  Melanie Kupchynsky refers to Samuel Applebaum as his mentor, which speaks volumes to me.

Applebaum's legacy lives on, but only in a small way.  In 1981 he founded the Society of Musical Arts in New Jersey, and their website reveals that they keep the dowdy values (i.e. non slick values) of their founder.  There is very little about Samuel Applebaum on line.  I found this discussion, but wasn't able to find anything else out about this man who gave so much to so many string players, including Jerry Kupchynsky.

Now volumes of The Way They Play are extremely expensive, and Michael Tree, Applebaum's son, is one of the patricians of the viola.  During the 1970s the Suzuki method of teaching (teaching very young children to play at a rather high technical level before they can read music) eclipsed Applebaum's no nonsense approach to learning to read music at the same time you learn to play (and perhaps at not so young an age).  Perhaps the success of Strings Attached (and it's sure to be successful because it is a great book), will lead people to value the dowdy world of string playing in New Jersey.

Update: you can listen to a recording of Samuel Applebaum explain how to make the various bow strokes used on the violin and the viola here.