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Sep
4
How is a String Quartet Like a Bottle of Wine? (Or, indeed, a Lemon Drizzle Cake…)
Filed Under Mysterious Music |
When you next come across a violinist with an ego fit to burst, try this one on him:
"How is a string quartet like a bottle of wine?"
"The cello is the bottle, the violist and 2nd violinst are the wine, and the first violinist is the label!"
This old joke came to me whilst I was listening to the final edit of a new CD I recently contributed to. On a string quartet track, I started becoming aware of the way in which the first violin blends with the 2nd violin and viola, and the whole group is underpinned by the cello.
Contrary to the suggestion of the joke, this particular violinist - a wonderful player - had developed well the art of being soloistic as an individual, yet he knew how to blend and become part of the group at the same time. He wasn’t just alternating from phrase to phrase, firstly being soloistic, then a group member (although he did do this when the music required it). Instead, he had captured the essence of the ensemble’s personality in his playing, and projected that, whilst simultaneously highlighting the individual contours of his own line. Yet all the time he was reacting to the other voices too. He was not ‘just’ the label. He was part of the label, and part of the wine.
This kind of musical integration is not something that’s easy to describe, but I think possibly the best analogy is to say it’s like the icing of a cake.
Take a lemon drizzle cake.
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Mmm.
That delicious frosted topping is in a sense very different, texturally, visually, in fact in many ways, to the core of the cake below. On its own, it would be stupid to eat a spoonful of topping. It would be a sickly, unpleasant experience. Similarly, if you ate the cake without the topping it would be very boring - just a lone sponge, with no taste-excitement to offer. But put the two together, and you have a wonderful coalescence of topping and sponge.
It’s not that simple however. The topping and the sponge are not entirely different - they’re in fact exactly the same at core because the ingredients - lemon, sugar, flour, and whatever else goes into a cake - are mostly all the same. It’s the balance of those ingredients that is different. The baker has to know exactly how much of which ingredient to use, and how, in order to create the right overall effect.
It’s the same challenge to balance a good blend of whiskies, or a string quartet. It’s a quest to find a homogeneity that doesn’t suppress individuality… whilst conversely avoiding a blend full of ingredients so individual that there’s no unifying cohesiveness.
But there are different levels at which this can happen. I remember seeing the most recent final of the London String Quartet competition, when it was won by a Taiwanese-American quartet that was simply extraordinary because of the sheeny, metallic brilliance of the way it fitted together. It was almost like a German saloon car, or perhaps an Apple iPhone, in the way everything was so utterly, perfectly in place in a measured, perfectly proportioned way. To listen to it was an very moving experience simply because of the awe-inspiring nature of that togetherness.
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Another performance in the same final (coincidentally by the same quartet I was listening to on this recording) took an entirely different approach - I’d liken it more to a crafted piece of wooden furniture, where the homogeneity did not overwhelm. Individual expression, humour too perhaps, was apparent in their playing to a much greater extent. In a competitive situation, the iPhone-like performance will often have the edge (as it did here). Who after all wouldn’t be taken in by such overt - that’s not to say superficial - brilliance (in the shiniest sense of the word!)? But ’shiny’ is not for every occasion; different moods cause us to seek out different musical experiences, and that’s where personal taste can ultimately be our only guide as to what matters the most, and when.
Which brings us back to wine. Decisions and judgements we make about wine are of course based fundamentally on what it tastes like. But our emotional relationship with that taste cannot help but be shaped by the environment we’re in when we consume it - who we’re with, what we’re doing, why we’re there.
 South African winery Stormhoek is one of many wineries who use the label to pre-connect audience and music - or should that be drinker and wine? - in an emotionally relevant way |
Because of this, the label actually becomes very important, because it directly pre-associates or pre-prepares our emotive relationship with the product or piece of music, and can do so in a way that really reflects the true ‘blend’ of an ensemble, wine, or whatever else. It’s important, because preconceptions do matter. Where preconceptions become harmful, is at the point at which the pre-association caused by the label is not directly relevant to the actual product or experience on offer. Perhaps you could say that a dishonest connection is made. Manufactured pop is often a good example of how the ‘label’ (or pre-conception) can dictate the experience, rather than the music, and therefore the lasting memory of such an experience can seem hollow, because the experience itself is not resonant with emotional expectations.
For the most truthful association, shouldn’t there be an organic relationship between label and product? If the wine is piquant and spicy, so should the label be. If the sound of the quartet is brilliant and shiny and metallic and perfectly formed, then their ‘label’ - be that their reputation, projected personality, or whatever - should also have those qualities too. And so on.
The label won’t work alone. Its essence must be thoroughly integrated with that of the wine and the winemaker, in order to have full effect. To understand that nature, one must research the process - the process of blending, the process of mixing and shaping and integrating individual ingredients, and the combination of craftsmanship and artistry or artisan technique necessary to make that process happen. Only then can we truly begin to understand and project the true essence of the wine, the whisky, the lemon drizzle cake… or the string quartet.