String players have the most fragile instruments, needing to worry about all kinds of issues: snapping strings, seams coming unglued (from humidity changes), bridges falling down, pegs slipping, bow hairs breaking, and of course, accidentally dropping their bows and instruments. I was in a rehearsal a few years ago and the violist dropped their bow, tip down, onto the floor. Often this wouldn't have been an issue, like any of the hundreds of times we drop our cellphone and nothing happens, but this time the head of the bow sheared straight off. Bows are made out of pernambuco, which is one of the densest woods on the planet, so it feels like it should be impervious to that kind of fall, but bows are designed to be stressed in one direction and one direction only — so hit it on the tip and it will often break. 

 

Bassists have such large instruments that they worry less about things breaking and more about the noise it creates when they thwack their instrument into another bass or a music stand. Especially during performances, this is loud enough for everyone in the building to hear. 

 

We cellists worry that our endpins -- the long metal spike that stabs the floor -- will slip out of the little notch it has made. This tends to happen more when we shift back up the cello, so if we're tense and clamping the instrument, we’ll actually be picking the instrument up a tiny bit, and that's when the endpin loses its grip and the cello goes flying. It’s incredibly frustrating!

 

As a luthier, I'm used to fielding questions about violin soloists breaking so many bow hairs during a performance. "Was it just a bad rehair?" they ask. Sometimes, it actually is! (Therefore, it couldn't have been my rehair.) However, it usually isn't from a batch of brittle hair, rather it's because some bows are more flexible than others. When a player puts the bow on the string, the hair is sandwiched between the wood of the bow and the string, so if the stick is on the flexible side, it'll grind the hair into the string with more force. Anyone playing a concerto on a bow like that is going to break a lot of hairs simply because they have to play so loudly. On the other hand, a symphony musician blending into the section will rarely be playing with that much force, so they just don't break as many hairs.

   

There's an amazing story of someone using the fragility of string instruments to their advantage: The renowned violinist Niccolo Paganini was said to put a little notch in the E string before a performance, making it very likely to snap at a dramatic moment. He would then dazzle the audience by finishing the concert on the lower three strings. The set up of this story actually happened last Christmas when CSO violinist Susan Bloomberg watched helplessly as her E string slipped from its peg during a performance of the Messiah. It made a loud "bang" as it lost tension, and the rest of her instrument went out of tune with it. Needless to say, she didn't walk to the edge of the stage and play the orchestra part on the G string.

 

While strings can snap and instruments can come unglued, the main thing string musicians actually worry about during performances is dropping their bows. This is especially easy to do when alternating between bowing and plucking, though I’ve seen all kinds of things happen on stage. While I was a student at Peabody, a violinist lost control of their violin before the last few bars of a loud piece, and they somehow threw it over their head where it landed in the violinist's lap behind them. As the final chords were played, the latter violinist triumphantly held up two violins and one bow, making it the most epic ending of any performance of my career. 

   

One easy way to top that story is to ask a percussionist if they've ever heard of anyone dropping a cymbal or triangle during a performance. Fortunately this hasn't happened in the Charlotte Symphony to anyone’s knowledge (but feel free to query YouTube!). However, Jacob Lipham, our beloved timpanist, once flung a mallet off stage in the middle of a concerto competition. “Here’s to say I did not win that competition!” he wrote.

 

Wind players just worry that their reeds will misbehave: dry out, warp, swell from moisture — all of the things that wood will do. Otherwise it's just general maintenance, mostly of the rubber pads that seal the keys onto the instrument. Brass players have the most durable instruments of all. The only thing they might lose sleep over are sticky valves — not exactly a Hollywood movie plot waiting to happen. Rotor valve instruments, like the horn, trombone, and sometimes tuba, have strings inside that can break or come loose, but nothing can happen that is visible even to the musicians playing them. 

 

Fortunately none of these problems are life threatening, with one exception: the opera pit. No, not from the million tempo changes in a standard opera, but from singers accidentally — very accidentally — flinging props off the stage and into the pit. Once, again at Peabody, a fully functional and very sharp sword was hurled into the pit where it landed inside a viola as it was being played. The violist was unharmed, save for the near heart attack that followed. This is one reason why you'll often see nets over the pit. 

 

And there you have it! During the next concert you attend, keep your fingers crossed that the music is beautiful and uninterrupted by any of these costly, disruptive, and sometimes epic failures.