#11: Bowing, ‘betweenness’, and storytelling
Section 1: Josef Suk – Meditation on an Old Czech Hymn ‘St Wenceslas’ Op.35a
We were struck by the peculiar ‘thickness’ of the sound required at b.34 (beat 2), as the distinctive tone of the violin unison ‘peeled’ into separation. Similarly, we found that the intensity of the bowing in the cello and viola parts in b.36-38, far from being reduced by the hairpin, actually needed to increase, for it was the second harmony of each bar that took on the responsibility of ‘telling the story’ of those three parallel utterances.
The idea of ‘moment-to-moment’ playing, with its hands-on emphasis on imaginative contribution, can be misleading when faced with the specificity of real examples. In this case, for instance, the first violin actually repeats the statement three times not with rhetorical concern for variation, but with notable simplicity; it is as if he is content to let the mere force of the (compositional) repetition do the expressive work for him. The really telling narrative detail is left to the lower two parts, and the ‘betweenness’ of their three different resolutions. Each set of fifths here are imagined as contrasting and unique in their affect; we had to imagine each harmony as if it had a different kind of ‘spin’ in the tone.
Another detail here is that while the arrival on the resonant open fifth F-C generates a point of repose, the suspended G above it (in the first violin) means that the music is not allowed to ‘sit’ in that moment, but is gently propelled forwards. (b.39 has a sense of continuity ‘out of’ the previous bar which was easily missed in copying). The tranquillo marking is also deceptive, for the Czech Quartet treat it not as a relaxation in tempo but as a lightness that contrasts with the portentous, bass-led gestures of the preceding bars. In practice, this translated to continued momentum, rather than a ‘winding down’. In order to capture this effect, the first violin had to avoid the temptation to wait, and ‘start something new’ at the tranquillo marking. These gestures were underpinned by an improvisational quality, but they also had a function: simultaneously to ‘tie up' the previous section and move the narrative on seamlessly.
The bow’s contact in the linking gestures between b.39-b.40 (in second violin and viola) contributes to this sense of finishing and starting at the same time: the Czechs conjure a sense of ‘gliding’ here, not just in pitch, but in the way the bow never stops flowing. (They do not ‘draw’ the tone intensely, but simply let it ‘be there’). Here we had to make use of the performer’s foreknowledge – by contrast with an audience – to imagine that we were ‘aiming’ all the way to the modulation, instigated by the cello’s C# intrusion in b.40 (beat 3). Such ultimate destination points always need to be kept secret from a listener, as the narrative unfolds; but in this context we found that the rule also applied to us, insofar as every gesture had to be ‘permitted’ to follow every other without any sense of preordination.
