#77: Physicality in bowing as shared basis

Section 8: Antonin Dvořák – String Quartet Op.96, iv. Vivace, ma non troppo

Staying with b.179-198, we found it helpful to unify our physicality in the bow, and to find a shared character of contact that would underpin our individual variation. This approach to the archaeology of recordings lies a long way from painstakingly identifying the timing of notes. This more ‘already whole’, embodied perspective on their playing offers an alternative ‘way in’ to the Czech Quartet’s sometimes peculiar trajectories.

As in #1, we met with more success in ‘feeling’ their rhythm when our contact was a little firmer than one might assume from listening alone. But as before, they guard against the tendency for this greater contact to yield rhythmic stolidity. This fractional adjustment allowed us to ‘play with the vowels’ of the resonances; we could then feel our timing as a product of that tonal palette. This is not possible if the bow speed is too fast – for us, ‘whooshy’ – and inclined to release automatically. (This feeling is a favourite for many string players: the bow is in the string, quite close to the bridge, and feels delicate, contained, and poised). The basic state is not easy to find; but once the feeling has been located it makes for effective manipulation, in that the tone can fluctuate either by increasing the depth of the contact, or by ‘opening’ the sound through greater motion. We struggled to combine this insight with copying the details of the Czech Quartet’s rubato precisely. Yet this matching of physicality allowed us to get much closer to the character of their variation. It was crucial, indeed, that it tapped into the immediacy and responsiveness of collective embodied sensation, and was considerably less abstract than ideas like ‘phrase arching’ or ‘strategies for the navigation of structure’.