Life in a Major Key
Sarah Darling’s parents probably never thought she would grow up to be a professional musician. At four years old, Sarah was far from the model violin student. “I guess I would lie down and not play, and never practice,” she says. In fact until about the seventh grade, “music was just something to do.”
And then one afternoon everything changed. “I checked The Planets out of the library, and when I heard the first movement, my heart kind of flipped over backwards,” Sarah explains. It took one afternoon of getting acquainted with the piece to set Sarah on a music-centered path. Soon after the heart-flip, Sarah found that the viola suited her better than the violin, enabling her to play “gorgeous music” instead of soulless “show pieces.”
Today, she can be seen at a near run, cris-crossing the campus with a black viola case on her back trying to attend the myriad rehearsals for the myriad musical groups she is a part of. There’s HRO and BachSoc, Collegium, The Brattle Street Chamber Players, The Baroque Orchestra and performances for two Chamber Music classes, Music 180 and Music 93R. There are the theatrical performances (“about four or five a year”), HRCME (a group of undergraduate composers) and any number of spontaneuos groups that tend to pop up on a campus as driven as this one.
When choosing a college to attend, Sarah opted for the liberal arts track rather than attending a conservatory. Coping with the fact that Harvard doesn’t offer a performance degree, Sarah augments her musicology and music history concentration with a healthy dose of on-campus performing. “I was lucky to have parents who were supportive and not wanting their daughter to be a violin superstar,” says Sarah, who has on-campus stardom without having to deal with pressure to succeed.
Though she enjoys being in an atmosphere where different people are studying different things, Sarah took time off to study at Julliard after her sophomore year. “It was reasonably successful, but I had a pretty miserable time,” she says. Students there did not seem to have the love for music or interest in unique musical expression that Harvard musicians do. “There is also so much more collaboration, spirit of inventiveness and originality, and simple love for music.”
When thinking about the future, as seniors are often prone to do, Sarah has decided to reject the logical next step once again and will freelance instead of joining a symphony. She believes that it would be a good idea for for professional musicians to have experiences similar to her own that would enable them to actually enjoy the music they play. “There was a job satisfaction survey I saw a few years ago, and symphony orchestra musicians were less satisfied than janitors which is kind of crazy when you think about what a powerful tool music is,” Darling says, astounded.
Sarah’s musical commitment, while important, isn’t all consuming as some might think. “I don’t feel as though I have to do music,” she says. “If I woke up tomorrow morning and couldn’t play the viola for some reason, my life would go on.” Sarah believes that music is mostly about the communication betwwen differnt people, “ between the performers, the composer and the audience members.” Some people like to communicate through their writing and others through painting, for Sarah, communication comes in the form of a Bach sonata.