#58: Implications of gestural differentiation
Section 7: Antonin Dvořák – String Quartet Op.51, ii: Dumka
Attempting to copy (rather than simply describe) what happens in b.23-25 revealed some interesting limitations of the ‘decision-making’ paradigm, specifically as a way of understanding ensemble interaction.* As these similar gestures are passed around the group, the Czech Quartet subtly differentiate their ‘angles’, such that each utterance makes a unique contribution. Our initial difficulties in replicating these bars were probably a result of paying disproportionate attention to capturing the precise details of their shaping and articulation. The takes we recorded in this way — that is, aiming at exact copies — inevitably sounded like an elephant galumphing over a hill by comparison with the delicately imaginative original. It soon became clear, then, that focusing on details would always mean becoming blind to our surroundings. Even our bowstrokes could seem to take on the character of ‘re-presentations’: in this mode they felt self-conscious, ‘made’, and decontextualised. The take included here, then, is quite unlike the original; and yet we felt it captured its character, and especially its close responsiveness, much more accurately than any explicit copy could have done.
*The implications of this observation are potentially quite generally applicable to the analysis of ensemble performance, even in ‘modern styles’. Such conversational responses — unique, immediate, whole, and contextual — are more obvious in the Czech Quartet’s style than many others, but their example simply makes more audible something that is involved in all collective musical performance, at least to some extent.
