They played Brahms’ String Sextet in G, Op.36 [Agathe] and Schoenberg’s Transfigured Night. For these pieces they were a sextet of 2 violins, 2 violas and 2 cellos. As best I could see, 1 violin, 1 cello and both violas had a small black object on the shorter section of strings, between the bridge and the base of each instrument. It seemed to cover the central strings but not the outside (highest and lowest) strings in each case. At various points in the night they slid these objects up to the bridge, or right down to the other end of those strings. One cellist took it off entirely and held it in his mouth for a while!
We sat in our normal seats only 4 rows back, so I’m confident I would have noticed if they usually used these things. My guess is they are something to do with damping vibrations, so kinda the opposite of a sustain pedal. Is this right? I wouldn’t have thought that part of the strings produced any of the sound, that’s all. And why on these two pieces in particular?
It’s a mute. It clips onto the bridge and dampens its vibration, reducing the volume of the instrument. They can play quietely by pressing lightly with the bow, but a mute provides the option of playing more normally. It gives a different quality to the tone as well.
They had them on the strings on the other side of the bridge or in the mouth to keep them close at hand since there often isn’t much time to grab and attach them.
Seconded on the mute. There are various types out there and I’m not familiar with ones that can sit on the strings and slide about; the only ones I use sit on the bridge itself and don’t move unless I take it off.
The bridge, BTW, is the little wooden doohickey that sits between the strings and the violin, and does two things: help sustain string tension and transmit the string’s vibrations to the sound box (aka the body of the violin). The mute does indeed dampen the vibrations of the bridge (not the strings themselves) thereby reducing the sound coming out of the body. And since most of the string vibrations are transferred at the point of contact between string and bridge, the section of string between the bridge and the tailpiece (the wooden thingumabob that anchors the strings near the violin player’s chin or the base of the cello) don’t vibrate all that much and are an ideal place for mutes to sit when not needed.
Why’d they use 'em? I can’t say - Either Brahms and Schoenberg called for them in the pieces or the conductor just liked it better that way.
Are you saying they had them on the playing parts of the strings at any point? I can’t say I noticed that, they only seemed to be on the dead part, and they just slid them up to the bridge or down to the other end. You can see why I’d be puzzled as to what effect that could have.
Plus they pretty much kill any lingering sound. Normally a stringed instrument has kind of a slow fade out after the bow leaves the string. But in some pieces of music that sounds a bit muddled and dirty, so the mute kills the sounds as soon as the bow is no longer being pulled across the string, and leaves a cleaner break.
Really? They’re pretty much ubiquitous here. (Mine’s one with a magnet in the centre, and a matching clip-on magnet to mount on the tailpiece, so there’s no danger of it buzzing or rattling while loose.)
And to the OP - it’s mostly about the change of tone, rather than being for volume or damping. Rather like the way an off-stage trumpet can’t be recreated by playing one onstage quietly.
OK, thanks all. Having seen these guys several times a year for maybe 8 or 10 years, it puzzles me they’ve not used them before - or at least that I didn’t notice them before. Perhaps them playing as only a sextet made it more obvious.
I never have much call to use mutes in the first place, since I play more in the folk tradition (and thinking about expanding into jazz). When I was learning and more exposed to classical music I had a simple three-leg bridge mute. Never paid much attention to what other players used.