#60: Lightening without lifting
Section 7: Antonin Dvořák – String Quartet Op.51, ii: Dumka
The Czech Quartet’s players often lightened the bow’s contact without lifting it entirely off the string. In b.14-26, we found it hard to replicate the Czech Quartet’s distinctive unevenness without breaking the tone a little between the pairs. When developing a more habituated sense of inégale, we often found ourselves lifting the second note of a pair too comprehensively, as can be heard on the (early) experimental take below. Much more than listening, experimenting with instruments suggested that the ability to lift out of the core of the contact, yet not entirely ‘out’ of the string was a pervasive aspect of the Czech Quartet’s melodic surface. This was an important tool for us in creating more sophisticated patterns of accentuation: we were effectively able to transcend binary categories of ‘emphasised’ and ‘de-emphasised’, in favour of a more three-dimensional concept. This principle could also be applied to larger phrase groupings, as well as individual couplets. The lighter second note thus needed to retain the potential for variety, and not to follow the same kind of ‘lift’ on every occasion. Nor did their pairs necessarily consist of an active first component followed by a passive second one. Sometimes we felt that the second note had a much more ‘active’ character than the first, even if the ‘strong-weak’ relationship was retained rhythmically.
