Hands, Fingers, Strings, and Bows: Performance Technique and Analysis in JS Bach's Largo for Solo Violin

Abstract

In this article, I draw on public-facing sources and my violinistic experience to show how attention to performance technique illustrates three different relationships between performance and analysis. In the Largo from J.S. Bach’s Sonata No. 3 for Solo Violin (BWV 1005), multiple-stop chords, string-based affordances, and bowings in turn correspond with, contradict, and create new analytical perspectives. I first collate definitions of interpretation and technique as they relate to performance. Interpretation is non-instrument-specific and deals with decoding and expressing musical meaning; technique is instrument-specific and deals with the granular mechanics of sound production. A multiple-stop intensity model shows that changes in a violinist’s multiple-stop-based effort correspond with significant cadential markers. At the local level, the violinistic “feel” of each quadruple stop aligns with expressive aspects of harmony and form. Heinrich Schenker’s performance recommendations for the Largo’s cadences, by contrast, conflict with a violinist’s experience of how the cadences intersect with instrumental affordances. Although the two perspectives may be reconcilable, actual performances support the instrument-grounded perspective. Finally, I draw on basic bowing motions to create an analytical technique of bowing reduction. My reduction of the Largo reveals a recurring bowing-based motive, which in turn elucidates the source of a performative tension I have experienced when playing the movement. This final example reminds us that technique and interpretation—just like performance and analysis—are inevitably entangled.

Publisher

Society for Music Theory

Publication Date

9-1-2024

Publication Title

Music Theory Online

Department

Music Theory

Document Type

Article

DOI

https://doi.org/10.30535/mto.30.3.1

Keywords

Technique, Interpretation, Performance, Instrumental affordances, J.S. Bach, Public-facing sources

Language

English

Format

text

Link to Full Text

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