#14: Dynamic functions indirectly

Section 1: Josef Suk – Meditation on an Old Czech Hymn ‘St Wenceslas’ Op.35a

As with any music-making, the copying process involved an attitude towards dynamic that was frequently tangential to explicit description — i.e. anything from measured loudness (in dB) to the familiar incremental markings of p, mf, ff, and so on. We felt that the Czech Quartet regarded notated markings in an especially indirect manner, as if they were reading them as the feel of a shape or space — or even its ‘personality’ or ‘state’ — as much as its size (i.e. volume). On occasion it even seemed as though they were playing with reversing the procedural implications of the notation: the possibility for instance, that a ff might stimulate a narrow, tight, even inward form of expressiveness; or that a pp might yield a sound that was open, warm and generous, even if quiet in volume.

It is because the bow and string presents such a complex continuum that a player is able to ‘search for’ shifting timbral specificity. (See Chapter 4 of the thesis for detailed explanation). This is one of the few places in which equipment is crucial, because gut strings are vastly more responsive in this respect than strings with a steel or synthetic core). The quality of always being connected, and always in motion, means that tone is always experienced as a shimmering, ever-changing presence, and thus cannot have the qualities of a discrete, categorical, symbolic description. The performing musician always has to see things ‘this way up’, because it is the only way that one’s intentions are made manifest, both in time and in their context. It is not only that notation means different things to different generations, then, but that notation is never able to encode explicit meanings in the manner that is sometimes assumed – especially by analysis.