Legato

What it is

Legato means playing several notes smoothly within a single bow stroke. The bow moves in one direction while the left hand changes notes underneath it. In notation, this is shown by a slur: a curved line drawn over or under the group of notes to be played in one bow. Our free note identification helps with this between lessons. More of this kind of thing is in the bowing section.

The word is Italian for "tied" or "bound". The notes are bound together into a single continuous sound with no separation between them.

Legato is the opposite pole from detache. Where detache gives each note its own bow, legato gives a whole group one bow. Most music alternates between the two constantly, and reading which is which at speed is a core skill.

How it is produced

The bow arm does one thing: move steadily in one direction at a consistent speed. The left hand does everything else.

The difficulty is that the left hand must change notes without disturbing the bow. A finger that drops too hard onto the string produces a small accent. A finger that lifts too slowly leaves a smear between notes. A string crossing mid-slur produces an audible bump if the bow arm changes level abruptly.

Good legato sounds like one continuous line with pitches changing inside it. Poor legato sounds like separate notes that happen to share a bow.

Bow distribution

This is what separates legato that works from legato that runs out.

A slur containing four notes needs the bow divided across four notes. A slur containing sixteen notes needs the same bow divided sixteen ways, which means moving the bow far more slowly.

Students who do not plan this arrive at the tip halfway through a long slur and have nothing left. The remaining notes are played with the last two inches of bow, quiet and thin, and the phrase collapses.

The fix is arithmetic before it is technique. Look at the slur, count the notes, decide how much bow each gets, and check whether the stroke ends where the next one needs to start. Experienced players do this without thinking. Students have to do it deliberately for a long time first.

Note values complicate it. A slur of one long note and three short ones does not divide evenly. The long note takes proportionally more bow. Working this out is part of learning any piece.

String crossings inside a slur

The hardest legato is a slur crossing strings.

Each string sits at a different height, so the bow arm must change level to reach it. If that change happens abruptly, the listener hears a bump exactly where the crossing occurs, which defeats the point of the slur.

The solution is anticipation. The arm begins moving toward the new level slightly before the note changes, so the transition is gradual rather than sudden. On a slur crossing from the D string to the A string, the arm is already rising as the last D string note sounds.

Bariolage, which alternates rapidly between strings, is an extreme version of this problem and is treated as its own technique.

What goes wrong

Accented finger drops. The left hand lands hard and produces a bump inside the slur. The fix is dropping fingers from a relaxed hand rather than pressing.

Uneven bow. Covered above, and the most common problem by a wide margin.

Bumpy string crossings. The arm moves too late and too fast.

Fading tone. As the bow approaches the tip it naturally lightens, so the end of a long slur goes quiet unless the player adds weight to compensate. Most students do not think to do this until it is pointed out.

How it is notated

A slur is a curved line over or under the notes. It looks identical to a tie, which joins two notes of the same pitch into one longer sound. The difference is that a tie connects the same note and a slur connects different notes.

Composers also write dashes or dots under a slur, which means portato or staccato within a single bow. Those are separate techniques with their own entries.

Where you meet it

Slow movements are typically heavily slurred. Lyrical melodies are almost always legato. Any passage marked cantabile or dolce will be legato regardless of whether every slur is written in.

At the same time, fast passages are often slurred in groups of four or six to make them playable, so legato is not just for slow music.

How it is taught

We begin with two notes in one bow, then four, then eight, adding notes as bow control improves. Scales slurred in increasing groups are the standard exercise: two per bow, then four, then eight, then a whole octave.

String crossings inside slurs come later and are practised separately, usually on open strings first so the left hand is not a variable.

An instructor watching you play catches in one lesson what bow technique like Legato articles cannot describe. Private and group violin lessons in Lawrenceville, Suwanee and Peachtree Corners. 470-789-2422, or book a no-commitment evaluation lesson.