#70: Option to treat evenness as marked
Section 7: Antonin Dvořák – String Quartet Op.51, ii: Dumka
Admitting unevenness into the very foundations of one’s rhythm brought an unexpected benefit, in that it opened up expressive potential in the other direction. Playing very evenly, rather than being the de facto norm, could itself be much more ‘marked’, by comparison with more irregular surroundings. It is probably misguided to speculate about how the original players experienced the ‘affect’ of this, given the extent to which it was dependent on context – even for us. In b.47-48 of the Dumka, second violinist Josef Suk plays his undulating semiquaver figures considerably more evenly than in the surrounding bars, which are characterised by much greater tension — not just harmonically, but rhythmically, as a result of his much less predictable uneven inflections. The effect, for us, was to heighten the impact of the G major tonality as a brief oasis of calm. The ‘even’ bars were not neutral, as they might have been in our own style, but created a more obvious feeling of relaxation because of the contrast this ‘marked’ moment made with the more inégale surroundings. In copying this passage, it was useful to imagine the second violin as a pivot for these affective fluctuations. The way in which she varied the rhythmic profile here — indeed, of material that looks very similar on the page — essentially governed the intensity of what unfolded around her. As the viola passes the main melody to the first violin, the rhythmic character of the second violin’s semiquaver ‘innards’ could make a considerable contribution to the sense of harmonic ‘tightening’.
This observation does not suggest a general mapping: I certainly do not mean that one always associates harmonic stasis with evenness, and motion with unevenness. But it did give us a greater appreciation of the way in which rhythm was integrated with ‘affect’. Here, a brief moment of harmonic simplicity could be heightened by adopting an equivalent simplicity in rhythmic nuance. In other places, such as the Vivace of Op.96, evenness was associated with very different qualities, including a more mechanical idiom in b.146-150; or the angelic, hymnal, simple atmosphere b.155-171, which could hardly make a greater contrast with the fragile humanity of b.179-198.
