Divisi

What it means

Divisi instructs a string section to split up: instead of everyone playing the same line, one part takes the upper, another the lower voice. The first violins thus become two or more groups. The alternative would be to play multi-voiced passages as double stops; divisi avoids this and allows sonorities that a single hand could not grasp at all, as well as a more even vibrato and cleaner slurs.

In the notation

In the score the voices stand either as two noteheads on one staff with the marking div., or the staff is divided. Often the division is regulated by desks: the outside players on top, the inside players below. Divisi is cancelled by unisono or the German marking “vereinigt” (united). Without this cancelling, the division continues to apply, which is easily overlooked in long movements.

Musical use

Divided strings belong to the sound picture of orchestral music since the Romantic period and are raised in the twentieth century to multi-voiced writing in which every desk or even every player has a line of its own. The price is volume: ten divided players sound softer and thinner than ten playing in unison, and precisely this delicacy is often intended. For dense chordal surfaces, shimmering carpets of sound, and widely spread registers, division is indispensable.

Performance practice

Settle before rehearsal which desks take which voice, and write it in the part; unclear divisions cost the most time in the orchestra. Take care that the upper group does not automatically dominate — the balance has to be established deliberately; usually the lower voice needs more sound. With divisi a 3 on two desks, the division is often made by order in the section; ask the section leader when in doubt. On the return to “united,” everyone listens briefly to the intonation of the group before playing fully again.

Remember that with divided parts intonation demands special attention: two halves of the same section hear each other less well than a closed group, and thirds between them easily float. Practise such passages separately and listen deliberately to the respective other half. Settle the division in writing and enter it in the parts. With multiple division, the size of the forces decides the balance; talk to the conductor if a part is too weakly cast.