I broke my arm. My left arm. The arm with which I hold the viola. The viola is not only my craft and my means of earning a living, it is my life. When I broke my arm, I was afraid I wouldn't exist at all – if I weren't playing the viola, I was not alive.

The particulars of the incident itself are not very exciting. I was walking in the woods, where it was moist and slippery, and I fell. I landed on my left arm, causing an angulated fracture of the radius just above the wrist. That is the objective report. What I felt as I lay there on the ground is something else again. I could not move my fingers, my grotesquely gnarled hand, or my wrist. The fear was so all encompassing, I was momentarily nonfunctional. The pain was nauseating, but the fear was the real problem. I knew instantly that it would be a long time, maybe never, before I would play the viola again. I walked out of the woods on my own power, reassuring everyone that I was all right, but in my mind I was already assessing the damage to my life and my career.

In the emergency room, the x-rays confirmed that I had, indeed, a most unpleasant break. The pictures in black and white were shocking enough, but when we pulled off my jacket and I saw for the first time what my arm actually looked like, I came close to hysteria. There was a big bend and drop in the ordinarily straight forearm, and the hand hung loosely , totally out of my control. Once the arm was set in the cast, all I could do was attempt to wiggle my fingers, which were, mercifully, left free from this nightmare incarceration. The cast, a heavy plaster pressing on me from just below my fingers all the way to above my elbow, was an incredible trial.

Every pain I felt during this period, from the enormous throbbing to each minor twinge, became magnified because of my great interest in what was going on beneath the plaster curtain. Each new x-ray was threatening and wondrous at the same time – imagine looking at a picture of the inside of your arm, and seeing a misshapen damaged bone. What I managed to accomplish during this time was to learn word processing on the computer and produce a written version of the lecture-demonstration I had recently presented at the Violin Society Convention titled "The Transition to the Tourte Bow and its Effect on Bowing Articulation". I dared not think of the possibility that there might be no more opportunities to grapple with the problems of bowing articulation, or any other problem of viola playing, for that matter. I had been playing for thirty-eight years; I could not conceive of doing anything else.

After six weeks, the cast came off, and the day I had looked forward to so greatly turned into yet another nightmare. As they peeled off my cocoon the pain hit; I was even distracted from the appearance of the atrophied tissue. The arm, supported by the heavy plaster for so long, could not support itself, and the hand hung down, flopping in the air. I could barely walk out of the hospital.

At home, the anticipated reunion with the viola was delayed a few days, until I could lift the arm somewhat. Finally, I unpacked the instrument and put it under my chin. I lifted up the arm, and discovered that I could not rotate it enough to get any finger down on any string – I could not reach the fingerboard at all. I put the viola away and went back to bed. After some time had passed, in which I floated in a dream-like state of horror, it occurred to me that something must be done. With the tears rolling down my face, I went back to the viola and tried again. Expending enormous effort, I wrenched my arm around and succeeding in getting my first finger down on the A string. The pain was excruciating. I could hold the position for only a few seconds, and then dropped my arm. I tried again, lifting my finger above the string and putting it down to alternate between A and B. I could play two notes, slowly. Very slowly. Everything I did with my left hand had to be done slowly. It was extremely weak and hurt all the time.

I could play my two notes for only a few repetitions at first. Gradually I increased the number of repetitions, then added the second, and then the third finger. The fourth finger was much more difficult. I was an absolute beginner. Eventually the D string loomed into view, and the rotation necessary seemed possible, if only momentarily. The correct word for the motion I was attempting is supination. I have learned this word well, and also its opposite, pronation. We use pronation of the right arm to add weight and power to the bow stroke–it is the turning of the hand down towards the floor and away from the body. Pronation of the left hand is still difficult for me, but supination, the turning of the hand toward the body, was the motion I needed to reach the fingerboard, and supination was next to impossible, or so it seemed.

I had no muscles. My pitiful arm and wrist were quite swollen, but as the swelling receded I saw how little of my formerly well-developed arm remained. What was prominent instead was a big bump where the break had occurred and another big bump on the outside of my wrist. I analyzed the pain: the muscles were screaming from being used after having been frozen for so long, the muscles and tendons were being stretched again after foreshortening, and the bones in the new position were pressing against each other. In retrospect, it was the weakness of the muscles which was my major problem – they just would not pull the hand around over the fingerboard, and exhaustion set in quickly. I could practice for only a few minutes at a time. I dared not think about how many hours I used to work in the recording industry, in any given day. As a free-lance musician, I accepted the work when it was available, even if it meant occasional 13 to 16 hour days. In fact, it was those days that built my strength and gave me great endurance. Now all that was gone.

I left the viola out on the piano all day, and just kept returning. Getting down to the G and finally the C string was a major accomplishment in those first weeks. At first, I would lock my thumb over the neck and fingerboard and hang on for dear life. Any kind of chromatic alteration requiring lateral motion was extremely difficult, and the extension back of the first finger, which I had always relied on so heavily, came much later and with great effort.

I began to creep up the fingerboard: second position, and then third position. One day, to my amazement, I found myself in fourth position on the A string. I also found that I could play for a few more minutes before the pain set in so strongly that I had to stop. Sometimes I would break down in tears, but I always went back later and tried again. I devised a warm-up exercise that was, at first, all I could manage to do. It was basically a trill preparation exercise on each finger, and then a patterning of the four fingers in different half step formulations. I was still a beginner, but my range was growing and my endurance improving.

I learned what it is to be compulsive. I went back again and again, trying to extend what I could do. I was driven to practice. My life depended on it.

It was after about two weeks that the doctor sent me to occupational therapy. What we did there was stretch the wrist. Increasing 'range of motion' was the goal, since I was severely impaired in the pronation and supination motions and somewhat impaired in the up and down motions as well.

If anything, the severe stretching exacerbated the pain, but after about two weeks of daily stretching, I discovered something wonderful. My vibrato was coming back. Slow sustained playing was still my most difficult task, requiring the greatest strength and endurance, but the freeing of my wrist made the vibrato motion possible. I gained 20 degrees of motion in each direction during this period. I was starting to sound like a violist again.

What did I practice? Everything I could find in the music cabinet. I was playing the viola at least four hours a day; when it hurt too much, I would stop and come back later. I don't remember when it occurred to me that I had made tremendous progress–I was so involved in the process of relearning and the task so great I had little perspective on what I was accomplishing.

Toward the end of the fifth week out of the cast, the pain changed from the demanding, shooting pains and muscle cramps to a deep ache. I was grateful. This meant I now could play longer at any given opportunity, I was able to increase my range on the C string, still my nemesis, and I could work on double stops at last. The more I was able to play, the stronger I got. The sound improved because the finger strength was gaining. I recorded myself and listened back with trepidation. Always my worst critic, I found the playing almost acceptable.

At the end of six weeks out of the cast, three months after I first broke my arm, I was ready to go back to work. I don't consider anything I did to be heroic–there are other string players I know who had much more to overcome than I to be back in the field of battle.

I learned a great deal from this experience. First, the importance of warming up. I will never again pull the viola out of the case and start playing. The exercises I devised, while not original, seem to be extremely helpful and I will probably begin each day with them for the rest of my life. It is also a good idea to do some large muscle movements such as general body stretching, shoulder and head rolls, and so forth, before one even approaches the viola. Because I was so stiff and sore , I found heat applied gently to my wrist and arm for five minutes before I began to practice to be of help, also. But apparently, heat must be used with care, because it draws fluids to the area, and if one is swollen, it can cause more swelling and hence less freedom of movement.

I had always thought that it was necessary to begin practicing with long, slow, sustained tones. But I found that this kind of viola playing is perhaps the most difficult, and requires the most strength and control. For me, it was impossible at first. It seemed better to begin with moving fingers, up and down on the fingerboard, gradually increasing speed. Three octave scales and arpeggios are a mainstay of our technical practice, but even these are quite athletic and should be preceded by more restrained motions.

I solidified some basic tenets of teaching, and found my concepts validated by my own experience. The most important is that practice must push at the edges of what is possible for the player, otherwise it is only maintenance. I am not discounting the value of maintenance practice for the professional–it is absolutely imperative to counteract the effects of overwork, underwork, and orchestral playing in general. But for students, progressive practice is the goal. Building all the time from what is possible to the next step, be it faster, higher, louder, softer, more sustained, more intense, etc., this is the way to progress. And measurable progress is the greatest motivator of all. Positive reinforcement is a powerful tool, and what you accomplish on the viola is your own personal victory; no one can do it for you, take the credit, or the blame.

Building physical prowess is not the only goal in progressive practice. Increasing mental awareness, gathering the information from the page of music faster and more accurately, is also a learned process. So is absorbing information from what you hear and correcting it instantly. Again, pushing at the edges, constant effort to do more, learn more, see more, hear more, and play more. It requires great energy to practice in this fashion, but the rewards are measurable. I can assure you that this is true.

I went back to work a few days ago. It is a pleasure to make music with my colleagues instead of solitary practice. I can feel myself gaining in strength each day – my latest purchase is a three-pound barbell, with which I exercise dutifully. Each of us can benefit from the development of muscular strength in the arms and hands – viola playing is a very physical activity. And being a violist is a privilege to which I have happily returned.