Messa di voce
Messa di voce — Italian, "the placing of the voice" — is a long crescendo followed by a long diminuendo on a single note, with nothing changing but the volume. Not the pitch, not the tone colour, not (for you, yet) any vibrato. It's the oldest tone exercise there is, and it's the graduation test of everything in this stage's first half.
What it is
A note starts soft, swells to full, and fades back to soft — a smooth arch of sound. On the
page it's a hairpin pair on one note: < >.
How to play it
One slow down-bow for the whole thing. Begin near the fingerboard, light and slow. Through the middle: add weight, slide toward the bridge, speed up a touch — that's the peak. Then reverse it all back. Then do the same on an up-bow.
How the controls move
On one note you can't crescendo with bow speed alone — a whole bow only lasts so long. So messa di voce is mostly weight and sounding point:
- Growing: add arm weight, slide toward the bridge, the bow speed rising only slightly toward the middle.
- The peak sits around the middle of the bow.
- Fading: release the weight, slide back toward the fingerboard, ease the speed.
Do it on a down-bow and an up-bow. Do it at the frog (harder — the bow is heavy there) and at the tip (harder — the bow is light there). A player who owns messa di voce is ready to shape any note, anywhere in the bow.
Try it
Try
One note — open A — one very slow down-bow. Four counts growing, four counts fading, the peak at the middle of the bow. Then the up-bow. Then move to the D string, the G string, the E string. Two minutes of this a day, alongside your son filé, and your control over a single note gets noticeably better within a week.
The usual mistake
Letting the pitch sag or the tone go rough at the loud peak — the crescendo is only volume; everything else stays put. And rushing: messa di voce is slow by nature, and the value is in sustaining evenly through the whole arch. The third mistake: making the swell with bow speed and running out of bow at the peak — use weight and lane.