Training for a Marathon String Quartet at the Cloisters

Morton Feldman’s String Quartet No. 2 (1983) lasts roughly five hours, about as long as the average time taken to run a marathon. The Calder Quartet, who will perform this exceedingly quiet behemoth in the Fuentidueña Chapel at the Metropolitan Museum’s Cloisters on Saturday, is modeling its rehearsal schedule on the training program that the quartet’s violist, Jonathan Moerschel, follows to prepare to run marathons.

The musicians have been experimenting with a practice of making micro-adjustments to body position in order to avoid fatigue as they play the same gesture many, many, many times. Andrew Bulbrook, one of the quartet’s violinists, recently told me that the greatest challenge is going to be the fight against gravity: To play the violin quietly the bow arm must resist the pull of gravity. To relax the arm into a bow stroke produces a sound that is much too loud for most of this vast collection of miniatures that whispers to the audience.

(via)