JAVS Spring 2011

Example 3. Brahms, Viola Sonata in F Minor, op. 120, no. 1, movt. I, mm. 21–22 with original phrase marking.

Harmonies provide the under-gird ing of musical and phrase structure. Try listening to the lute version of Bach’s Partita No. 3 in E Major (BWV 1006a), which provides a rich harmonic structure. Robert Schumann’s piano accompaniment of the violin sonatas and partitas fills out Bach’s harmonies. Listening to Bach’s great organ and choral works and the Hilliard Ensemble’s Morimur CD can give players a broader harmonic perspective. As mentioned above, Thomas will sometimes play the bass while we play the soprano. With this exercise in mind, separate the contrapuntal voices to discover where they come together for important cadences. Finding scales and arpeggios will link notes in harmonic context, even when decorative notes obfus cate their shape. Group separate scalar notes by using legato with direction: this creates the same arch and propulsion as we have worked on with multi-note slurs. Concentrate the bow in the first few notes especially, just as in the slur. We know that downbeats are heav iest, that the middle beat of a time signature in four deserves extra emphasis, and that the second beat of a sarabande will often overtake the first in importance. However, we still have to overcome some physical traps: for slurs beginning up-bow, start with a stress, and then release it. Avoid the tendency to begin weakly and swell in the middle of the bow. For separate notes that imitate slurs, condense the bow use and play them legato. Another problem for many is the three plus one articulation found throughout the cello suites.

Example 4. Brahms, Viola Sonata in F Minor, op. 120, no. 1, movt. I, mm. 21–22 with two possible bowing solutions.

Example 5. Brahms, Viola Sonata in F Minor, op. 120, no. 1, movt. I, mm. 21–22 with common, but problematic bowing solution.

without adding space between for words to form, the result is incom prehensible nonsense! How can we discover which notes belong together and where spaces between notes should go? Note-groupings are not fully shown in our parts through slur markings, as in the Brahms example above. Thomas Riebl has some compelling ways to group notes, to give each group relative importance, and to use them to build the rhetoric of play ing that gives our expression power to persuade.

note groupings by using primary source documents, by understand ing stylistic norms for each time period, and by distinguishing between bowing and phrasing markings. Our solutions to techni cal problems may be creative and varied, but they must express this new-found context. If a Satz , or sentence, consists of one large musical idea, perhaps the cadences are punctuation marks, each word is one note-grouping, and each note is one letter of the alphabet. If we read each letter

J OURNAL OF THE AMERICAN VIOLA SOCIETY 56