Speaking with the bow

How to use language, vowels, consonants and inflection to colour and shape every phrase

Teaching & Playing

• BORN Paris

• STUDIED WITH Christoph Coin, Philippe Muller, János Starker

• TEACHES Conservatoire students aged 18–28

String players’ approach to sound has changed dramatically since the 18th century. We have almost lost the singing bel canto lines of the old Italian School, when musicians ‘spoke’ with the bow to produce articulate consonants and vowels, using barely any vibrato. Nowadays many people create a luscious but uniform sound with the bow, while hiding technical faults with a constant, unvaried ‘wallpaper’ vibrato. It is exactly as described by the late-19th-century violinist Joseph Joachim:

‘Most virtuosos – though in possession of often astonishing left-hand technique – have not made use of that healthy and natural method of singing and phrasing which was founded in bel canto of the old Italians. Their bowing and tone production only aim at sensuousness of the sound; there is only a little trace of the characteristics of the various bowings which is inseparably bound up with interpreting, as there is of that richly modulated tone production, which has every nuance of expression on its palette.’

To cultivate a singing voice on your instrument you have to be precise about how you shape every sound and phrase. Used well, the bow can help you to express musicality perhaps even more than the left hand. There are three main aspects to this. The first is the relationship between the bow movement and the string, which is not a flat object and can be approached from many angles to create different effects. The second is the mobility of the arm, how you modulate the speed of the bow, and how that impacts on phrasing. The third is how you express colours. As with speech, you can focus on articulation, consonants and vowels to influence the start of each sound, and find your way inside each note to manipulate its colour and tone. You can do this by working on the following exercises.

EXERCISES

To begin, release your muscles while lightly holding your cello and bow. Imagine you are wearing a backpack, with its straps pulling your shoulder blades back and down, and pulling your chest wide open. Now try the following, to improve your bow control both in the air and on the string:

• Draw a large anticlockwise circle in the air with your bow. Meet the string at the frog without stopping, to sink smoothly into a down bow at the base of the circle. Continue the circle to lift the bow back off the string

• Repeat the exercise with a clockwise circle and a full-length up bow

• Now draw an infinity sign. In the clockwise half, play a short up bow at the heel; in the anti-clockwise half, play a short down bow at the tip

• Imagine that your arm is a train caboose gently pulling or pushing your fingers and bow. Sink deeply into the string to avoid any risk of ‘tremolo’

CAROLINE DOUTRE

You can practise these movements using Popper’s 40 etudes op.73, nos.5, 19, 31 and 35, which focus on right-hand technique and different ways of moving the bow both on and off the string. I also recommend practising scales and Ševčík’s 40 variations op.3 for cello, to improve your technical approach to the different consonant sounds that you can create using détaché, martélé and staccato. Ševčík writes exactly what he wants for each exercise, so cellists of any level can follow his instructions.

REPERTOIRE

Just like language, all the music we play comprises a mixture of syllables, vowels and consonants that come together to create a musical word, sentence or phrase. In classical music no two notes are ever identical in emphasis, just as no two syllables have the same inflection in a word. That is why it can be helpful to put words to any phrase that you are struggling to express musically. Just as you modulate every phrase as you speak, you can work out how to do the same thing on your instrument, using the weight and speed of the bow. When you do this, try to emulate great cellists of the past such as Julius Klengel and Alfredo Piatti, who played so expressively with so little vibrato. By putting yourself on a vibrato ‘diet’, you too will have to find other means of expression.

• Speak the text of example 1, focusing on the quality of your articulation and the colour of every vowel and consonant

• Now sing the text, articulating the phrase to match the words

• Repeat the phrase on your instrument, without vibrato. Manipulate each bow stroke to create the same sense of vocal line, always thinking about how to shape each different vowel and consonant by varying your bow attack, speed and weight

• To finish, repeat the phrase with vibrato, but only use it where it helps to bring across your musical intention. Think about the colours, textures and feelings that you are trying to convey, and find out how to bring those out of your instrument.

This exercise can also be done using the beautiful ‘Lensky’s Aria’ cello part from Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, if you can read Russian, or any songs by Schubert or Purcell, if you prefer German or English. Analyse how each word sounds when you speak it and how each language affects the flow of the phrase. Try taking a similar approach to the wordless example 2:

• Draw out the phrase with restful sighs and some careful portamento, but without vibrato

• Play each slur with a slight accent, diminuendo and lift, as was common during Brahms’s time

•Clearly differentiate the colour of the dolce from that of the espressivo, which was so important to Brahms, by modulating the speed of the bow and the depth that you sink into the string

• Now you can reintroduce vibrato, but again only in ways that really help to create the different colours and textures that you wish to bring across in your sound

Another interesting experiment to help bring out character in your playing is to try a 17th-century French bow position, with the thumb under the frog (figure 1). This makes the fingers less flexible, but it also creates a stronger sense of the arch inside the hand and will help you to feel the resistance and ‘life’ of the string. Play example 3 in this way, before returning to an ordinary hand position (figure 2) to play the same music again with greater expressivity.

FIGURE 1A 17th-century French bow hold

FIGURE 2A standard bow hold

IN YOUR PRACTICE

To develop the most splendid bow arm you can imagine, listen to actors speak and singers sing, and apply the same ideas to your playing. Dedicate time to work on ‘speaking’ with the bow every day: use Popper’s op.73 to improve your consonants, focus separately on vowels and tone colour, and practise Ševčík’s op.3 etudes to work on varied articulations. Explore each idea until it is ingrained in your memory. Then mix the consonants and vowels together in music, always singing inside your head as you do so. If you are confident of the musical message you would like to convey, your technique will improve as you strive to meet that objective.

Listening back to recordings of yourself can be a difficult mirror to look into, but it is really useful. Feedback from other people – even non-musicians – is important too, to find out if what you play really touches them. Can they understand what you are trying to say through music, even when you bow a phrase without words?

TIPS FOR TEACHERS

If you are finding it difficult to get a student to show musical expression, it can be useful to relate the music they are playing to language. Anyone can understand that stresses between syllables and words are never the same, because that inequality is something that we all create subconsciously in our speech. If you connect that idea to a musical phrase, it will help even six-year-olds and reluctant teenagers a long way towards their musical goals. For inspiration, you could use anything they like, whether it’s the lyrics to metal music or the script from Pulp Fiction. If they think about these things when they play, suddenly they will be able to produce all sorts of new sounds, colours and articulations with the bow. There is always a way to succeed, even if it’s only for a few minutes at a time to begin with.

INTERVIEW BY PAULINE HARDING

FURTHER MATERIALS

In his book Performing Brahms: Early Evidence of Performance Style, Michael Musgrave shows how approaching music from different schools of string playing can alter musical expression.

The new edition of Popper’s op.73 etudes for two cellos by Xavier Gagnepain, Éditions Buissonnières, is gorgeous and will help you to develop your hearing, spread your wings and fly.

NEXT MONTH Violist Martin Outram on sound production