Ponticello

I learn up bow and down bow, the golden mean, staccato and legato, sul tasto and sul ponticello. ❋ George, Elizabeth (2001)

Playing with the bow close to the bridge (sul ponticello), chiefly used tremolando, produces a metallic sound; playing on the finger-board (sul tasto, flautando) creates a dull, veiled effect. ❋ Unknown (1923)

The composer has endeavored to indicate the chill gray of dawn by the ending of this movement: a chord taken by two flutes and the strings shivering _sul ponticello_. ❋ Rupert Hughes (1914)

And then mother Russia sang and Nelsons dramatically lowered the temperature from hot and sultry to cold and frosty, sul ponticello strings glassily evoking the icy battlefield of Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky cantata. ❋ Unknown (2011)

In Bartok's Third Quartet it sang of an earthy folksiness and true grit with all manner of nocturnal scamperings, slides, and creepy sul ponticello. ❋ Unknown (2009)

For instance, Geoff Knorr's piece has a very interesting swelling effect using harmonics with sul ponticello. ❋ Unknown (2009)

Eugene Ormandy proves a most sympathetic accompanist here, even accommodating Rubinstein's rather questionable changes to Chopin's text: Rubinstein ordered a cut at the end of the first movement, and the violins in the mazurka episode of the finale play the passages with their bows, rather than sul ponticello (with the wood) as Chopin indicated. ❋ Unknown (2009)

By contrast, the Emersons again took a more subdued approach, applying a gentle insistence to the repeated-note counter-melody of the first movement and a buzzing, outer-space feel to the sul ponticello section. ❋ Unknown (2008)

_ponticello_ throughout, not the natural _ponticello_, but a quite special one, to produce an effect of a bag-pipe sounding at a distance. ❋ Frederick Herman Martens (1903)