Cello

Books

Just Play Naturally by Vivien Mackie and Joe Armstrong. An account of studying with Pablo Casals in the 1950s and the similarity with the principles of the Alexander Technique.[1]

Cello, Bow and You by Evangeline Benedetti.[2]

Articles

‘Applying chairwork to cello playing’ by Eckhart Richter lists nine typical misuses among cellists and suggestions for addressing these.[3]

‘Butterfly Soup’ by Vivien Mackie; on receptivity, to ‘surrender’ after all the rehearsal, in performance.[4]

‘The physicality of string playing’ by Alun Thomas; on a number of games and explorations – balance games, exploring gravity, exploring the connections between the arms and the back – for physical and psychological development of string playing.[5]

Research

‘Bowstroke analysis of professional cellists’ by W. Kenton Bales; on a pilot study involving three cellists from the Omaha Symphony Association, being filmed on high-speed film before and after a 20-minute lesson in the Alexander Technique, showing a change of velocity (which is a rough indicator of how smoothly the bow was pulled across the string).[6]

See also String Playing.

References

[1] Just Play Naturally by Vivien Mackie and Joe Armstrong (Duende Editions, 2002).

[2] Cello, Bow and You by Evangeline Benedetti (Oxford University Press, 2016).

[3] ‘Applying chairwork to cello playing’ by Eckhart Richter in The Congress Papers 1988: Towards Unity edited by Jeremy Chance (Direction, 1994), pp. 112–23.

[4] ‘Butterfly Soup’ by Vivien Mackie in Direction vol. 1, no. 8 edited by Jeremy Chance (Fyncot Pty Ltd., 1991), pp. 306–07.

[5] ‘The physicality of string playing’ by Alun Thomas in The Congress Papers 2015, Empowering Humanity, Inspiring Science edited by Rachel Gering-Hasthorpe (STAT Books, 2016), pp. 169–73.