#16: Specificity and aural illusion
Section 1: Josef Suk – Meditation on an Old Czech Hymn ‘St Wenceslas’ Op.35a
An example of #15 is the markings in the violins b.33-35, which the Czech Quartet execute in a fashion that might have been predicted by our theoretical ‘Brahmsian hairpin’. The phrase does indeed seem subtly to ‘lead’ towards the middle in both volume and tempo. But reducing such a moment to its ability to ‘enact a general formula’ is surely the opposite of explanation, and the attempt to copy revealed dimensions of specificity that extended well beyond this basic category. This also suggests that the structure of such theories makes them susceptible to confirmation biases.
In particular, we were struck by a sort of aural illusion in which the integration of tone and timing conjured the impression of breadth – a sense of sitting back, as if surveying a landscape; yet the phrase also felt alive with (somewhat irregular) forward motion. We witnessed this moment more like a manner of holding oneself, than a performance practice: it required one to adopt a settled vantage point, from which momentum was not imposed, but which simply ‘occurred’ without effort. Copying often brought such fine judgements centre stage, because a player is particularly sensitive to the way in which two renditions of the same notes that are parametrically similar can have a profoundly different ‘feeling’. Such distinctions may even be thought of as the performer’s basic currency.
