>Date:    Tue, 8 Aug 2000 20:23:13 -0400
>From:    Niles & Debbie Hokkanen <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Bowing Terminology

>Instead of playing 2 or more successive notes on the same pitch with
>separate bowstrokes, what is the technique called when you play them all on
>the same bow and defining each note with a "pulse"  by using a momentary
>increased bow pressure and/or speed?   I hear it all the time in the playing
>of Kaustinen style Finnish players.  I think of it as "pulsing the notes",
>but if there's a term that's widely used to decribe this, can someone fill
>me in?

>Thanks

>Niles Hokkanen



"AHEM!"


(That's me clearing my throat, and donning my tasseled mortarboard, as this
question strays into my area of geeky classical expertise)


In classical performance, this stroke is referred to as "portato".This isn't
to be confused with the glissando-like "portamento", as in the
"tremolo/tremolando" equivalency. The term was neatly defined, almost as
well as Niles described it,  by Leopold Mozart, Wolfgang's pop, who, if you
didn't know, authored one of the most important documents on bowed stringed
instrument technique ever. He said:

"A portato is taken in one bow stroke with the notes separated by a slight
pressure of the bow.".

This stroke, by the way, shares a certain distinction with the "martele"
(Fr.).The "martele" (apart from the immortal and interminable
'Mississippi-Hot-Dog' Suzuki "Twinkle" Variation) finds its appropriate
application in approximately three instances in the entire classical
repertory, notably in four bars of the "Eroica "symphony of Beethoven, and
damned little else, when you get right down to it, trust me, I've been
there. It's a nice idea, though....

 Similarly, the most celebrated example of the portato stroke  might be the
W. A. Mozart String Quartet in C, K. 465 The "Dissonance," where the 'cello
begins the piece with it, often without a tolerable measure of clarity,
pitch, or rhythmic accuracy. It's frequently indicated elsewhere by
wishy-washy composers who aren't sure exactly what articulation they want,
but appears elsewhere too, notably in the second violin parts of bel canto
opera repertoire, but it's damned ineffective cuz it's hard to do with a
section together, cuz nobody ever agrees intuitively on just how much pulse
and detachment of the notes there wants to be, unless you are lucky enough
to be a member of the Emerson String Quartet. In that case, your brain would
be linked by supernatural means to the other three members of your group and
you would always play everything precisely as one  organism anyway.

All in all, the Finnish fiddlers have put the portato to much more
widespread and infinitely more effective usage than anyone else, except
certain Italianate virtuosi like, say, Zino Francescatti or Salvatore
Accardo, god bless 'em, and the danged Finns probably don't even have their
own unpronouncable name for it, they're too busy dancing, the bastards, when
they ought to be naming this stuff and writing detailed treatises about it
like the real musicians do.

Questions?

Paul Woodiel [log in to unmask]

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