#4: Mapping ‘felt logic’ onto historical expressivity

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

When combined with listening, the process described in #3 helped us to re-orient our expressive gestures around a more physical impression of particular intervals and harmonies. Could our experience of that ‘felt logic’ be brought somewhere close to the Czech Quartet’s manner? The role of judgement was crucial here, for we were keen to go beyond simply ‘thinking in the right categories’, and actually develop the capacity to evaluate our playing according to plausibly similar priorities.

Initially, rewiring our instincts meant actively ‘introducing’ more unevenness; and with it, a greater sense of emotional (and ensemble) fragility. Interestingly, this yielded gestures which were considerably more localised than those of the original recording. Our playing could sometimes be described as ‘moment-to-moment’, but it was importantly unlike the Czech Quartet’s shaping: it was more fragmented, and had a halting quality that was conspicuously absent from the original. Nonetheless, we made some progress in acknowledging the pivotal relationship between collective timing and tonal variation.