Portato

What it is

Portato is a stroke that gently separates notes within a single continuous bow. The bow keeps moving in one direction, but a small pulse of pressure at the start of each note gives it its own gentle beginning without stopping the bow. The metronome on this site is worth having open while you practise this. The bowing section covers the rest of this group.

The result sits between legato and staccato. The notes are neither fully connected nor fully separated. Each has its own shape, but the line remains continuous underneath.

The French term loure means the same thing and is used interchangeably in many editions.

How it is produced

The bow moves steadily in one direction, as in a legato slur.

At the start of each note, the index finger applies a small increase in pressure, then releases it. The bow does not stop and does not change direction. The pressure pulse creates a small swell at the beginning of the note and a slight taper afterwards.

The pulse must be small. If it is too strong, the sound becomes accented and the effect turns into a heavy staccato. If it is too weak, the notes blend and it sounds like ordinary legato.

Bow speed usually stays constant, though some players slow slightly between pulses for a more pronounced separation.

How it is notated

Portato is written as a slur with dashes or dots under each note head.

A slur with dashes indicates portato with a fuller, more sustained pulse. This is the more common form.

A slur with dots is more ambiguous. Depending on the period and the composer, it can mean portato, or it can mean staccato notes played in one bow, which is a different stroke called slurred staccato or flying staccato. Context and tempo decide.

The word portato or loure sometimes appears written out.

What goes wrong

Too much pulse is the most common problem. Students hear "separate the notes" and produce accents, which turns a gentle swell into a hammered attack. The character of the passage is lost.

Stopping the bow. If the bow halts between notes, the stroke becomes slurred staccato, which is a different effect. In portato the bow never stops.

No pulse at all. Some students are so worried about accenting that the pulse disappears entirely and the passage sounds like plain legato. The separation must be audible, just gentle.

Uneven bow. As with any slurred stroke, the bow must be distributed across all the notes in the slur, and portato passages are often long.

The musical effect

Portato is used where a composer wants emphasis on individual notes without breaking the line. It is common in expressive slow movements, where each note of a melody is given weight and shape while the phrase remains connected.

It is also used in accompaniment figures, where a repeated note pattern needs definition without the harshness of separate bows.

The sound has a vocal quality. A singer sustaining a line while giving each syllable its own gentle emphasis is doing what portato does.

Where you meet it

Portato is common in the Classical and Romantic repertoire, especially in slow movements. It appears frequently in accompaniment writing where the string section supports a melody elsewhere.

Contemporary composers use it for the same reason: it is the gentlest way to separate notes without breaking the sound.

Students usually meet it in intermediate repertoire, after legato and staccato are established, because it depends on both.

How it is taught

We start on open strings with a slur of four notes and ask for the pulse without any left hand involvement.

The student learns the size of the pulse first, usually by exaggerating it and then reducing it until it is right. Most students need to hear both extremes before they can find the middle.

Then bow distribution across the slur, then the left hand, then repertoire.

Portato is one of the strokes where the difference between an intermediate and an advanced player is most audible, because it depends entirely on fine control of pressure rather than on any dramatic motion.

Portato in an ensemble

Portato is one of the strokes where a section either matches or does not, with nothing in between.

The pulse is small, so if one player pulses more strongly than the others, that player is heard individually rather than as part of the section. If players pulse at slightly different moments within the slur, the effect blurs into a general unevenness rather than reading as portato at all.

Section leaders often demonstrate the exact size and placement of the pulse for this reason. It is not something that can be described precisely enough in words, and every player's instinct about "gentle" differs.

Practising it

The most useful exercise is deliberately wrong. Play the passage with exaggerated accents, then with no separation at all, then find the point between them. Students who only ever aim for the correct version rarely find it, because they have no reference for how far is too far in either direction.

The second useful exercise is playing the passage on one pitch. Removing the left hand entirely lets the student hear the bow arm alone, and portato problems are almost always bow arm problems.

If this is the part of playing you are stuck on, that is worth a conversation. Private and group violin lessons in Johns Creek, Suwanee and Milton. book a no-commitment evaluation lesson, or call 470-789-2422.