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Bow (music)
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In music, a bow is moved across some part of a musical instrument, causing vibration which the instrument emits as sound. The vast majority of bows are used with string instruments, although some bows are used with musical saws and other bowed idiophones.
Materials and manufacture
A bow consists of a carefully chosen stick (usually wood) with some other material stretched between its ends.
Discussion
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Encyclopedia
In music, a bow is moved across some part of a musical instrument, causing vibration which the instrument emits as sound. The vast majority of bows are used with string instruments, although some bows are used with musical saws and other bowed idiophones.
Materials and manufacture
A bow consists of a carefully chosen stick (usually wood) with some other material stretched between its ends. The type of bow used to play instruments of the violin family has many hairs stretched between its ends, but bows used in other cultures often stretch a single piece of string between the ends of the wood.
Fine modern bows used to play string instruments of the violin family (the violin, viola, cello and double bass) are usually made of pernambuco wood from Brazil and are strung with horsehair. When choosing wood to make bows, a violin or a bow maker must choose sound quality above all. A common practice is to reserve the best and most beautiful wood for a maker's most expensive work. Some bows are made nowadays from synthetic materials, such as a carbon fiber epoxy composite, or fiberglass. Carbon fiber bows have become very popular, and some of the better carbon fiber bows are now comparable to the finer pernambuco sticks. Lower quality bows can also be made of synthetic materials and less suitable types of wood.
For the frog (which holds and adjusts the near end of the horsehair), ebony is most often used, but other materials, often decorative, are used as well; these include ivory and tortoiseshell. Near the frog is the grip, which is made of a wire, silk, or "whalebone" wrap and a thumb cushion made of leather or snakeskin. The tip plate of the bow may be made of bone, ivory, mammoth ivory, or metal, such as silver.
A bow maker or Archetier typically uses between 150 and 200 hairs from the tail of a horse for a violin bow. Bows for other members of the violin family typically have a wider ribbon, using more hairs. White hair generally produces a smoother sound and black hair (used mainly for double bass bows) is coarser, producing a rougher sound. Lower quality (inexpensive) bows often use nylon or synthetic hair. Rosin, a hard, sticky substance made from resin (sometimes mixed with wax), is regularly applied to the bow hair to increase friction.
In making a bow, the greater part of the woodworking is done on a straight stick. According to James McKean (reference below), "the bow maker graduates the stick in precise gradations so that it is evenly flexible throughout." These gradations were calculated by François Tourte, discussed below.
In order to shape the curve or "camber" of the bow stick, the maker carefully heats the stick in an alcohol flame, a few inches at a time, bending the heated stick gradually to the proper shape. A metal or wooden template is used to get the exact model's curve and shape while heating.
The art of making wooden bows has changed little since the 19th century; most modern composite sticks roughly resemble the Tourte design, although the marks a serious departure from it, having a "straight" stick cambered only by the fixed tension of the synthetic hair.
Types of bow
Slightly different bows, varying in weight and length, are used for the violin, viola, cello, and double bass.
These are generally variations on the same basic design. However, the bow used for the double bass comes in two distinct forms. The "French" or "overhand" bow is similar in shape and implementation to the bow used on the other members of the orchestral string instrument family, while the "German" or "Butler" bow is broader and shorter, and held with the right hand grasping the frog in a loose fist. The German bow is the older of the two designs. The French bow, often chosen by soloists due to its greater maneuverability, was not widely popular until its adoption by 19th-century virtuoso Giovanni Bottesini. Both bows are used by modern players, and the choice between the two is a matter of personal preference.
Bowing
The characteristic long, sustained, and singing sound produced by the violin, viola, violoncello, and double bass is due to the drawing of the bow against their strings. This sustaining of musical sound with a bow is comparable to a singer using breath to sustain sounds and sing long, smooth, or legato melodies. Without the bow the violin family could only be played pizzicato.
In modern practice, the bow is almost always held in the right hand while the left is used for fingering. When the player pulls the bow across the strings (such that the frog moves away from the instrument), it is called a downbow; pushing the bow so the frog moves toward the instrument is an upbow (the directions "down" and "up" are literally descriptive for violins and violas, and are employed in analogous fashion for the cello and double bass). Harnoncourt (1988) noted that the symbols for down-bow and up-bow are likely derived from early notation of "n" and "v" respectively, standing for nobile and vile (noble and ignoble, roughly), as the down-bow is usually utilized for the strong (more noble) beats.
Generally, the downbow stroke is used for the strong musical beats, the upbow for weak beats. However, in the viola da gamba, it is the reverse; thus violinists, violists, and cellists look like they are "pulling" on the strong beats when they play, whereas gamba players look like they are "stabbing" on the strong beats. The difference almost certainly results from the different ways in which the bow is held in these instrument families: violin/viola/cello players hold the wood part of the bow closer to the palm, whereas gamba players use the opposite orientation, with the horsehair closer. The orientation appropriate to each instrument family permits the stronger wrist muscles (flexors) to reinforce the strong beat.
String players control their tone quality by touching the bow to the strings at varying distances from the bridge, emphasizing the higher harmonics by playing sul ponticello "on the bridge," or reducing them, and emphasizing the fundamental frequency by playing sul tasto "on the fingerboard".
Infrequently, composers ask the player to use the bow by touching the strings with the wood rather than the hair; this is known by the Italian phrase col legno, "with the wood". Col arco, "with the bow", is the indication to use the bow hair to create the sound in the normal way.
History
Origin
The question of when and where the bow was invented is of interest because the bow made possible several of the most important instruments in music today. Authorities give different answers to this question, and this article will give only the predominant opinion.
Scholars are agreed that stringed instruments as a category existed long before the bow. There was a long period—possibly thousands of years—in which all stringed instruments were plucked.
In fact, it is likely that bowed instruments are not much more than a thousand years old. Its appearance in western Europe seems to have coincided with the conquest of Spain by the Moors in the 8th century, and the consequent impetus their culture gave to arts and sciences in the south-west of Europe. There is, however, representation of the bow before the 9th century in Europe; the earliest is the bow illustrated along with the Byzantine lyra by Martin Gerbert, the representation being taken from a MS. at the monastery of St Blaise, dating in his opinion from the 9th century. On the other hand, Byzantine art of the 9th and 10th centuries reveals acquaintance with a bow far in advance of most of the crude contemporary specimens of western Europe. The bow undoubtedly came from the East, and was obviously borrowed by the Greeks of Asia Minor and the Arabs from a common source - probably India, by way of Persia. Eric Halfpenny, writing in the 1988 Encyclopaedia Britannica, says "bowing can be traced as far back as the Islamic civilization of the 10th century ... it seems likely that the principle of bowing originated among the nomadic horse riding cultures of Central Asia, whence it spread quickly through Islam and the East, so that by 1000 it had almost simultaneously reached China, Java, North Africa, the Near East and Balkans, and Europe." Halfpenny notes that in many Eurasian languages the word for "bridge" etymologically means "horse," and that the Chinese regarded their own bowed instruments (huqin) as having originated with the "barbarians" of Central Asia.
The Central Asian theory is endorsed by Werner Bachmann, writing in the New Grove. Bachmann notes evidence from a tenth century Central Asian wall painting for bowed instruments in what is now the city of Kurbanshaid in Tajikistan.
Circumstantial evidence also supports the Central Asian theory. All the elements that were necessary for the invention of the bow were probably present among the Central Asian horse riding peoples at the same time:
- In a society of horse-mounted warriors (the horse peoples included the Huns and the Mongols), horsehair obviously would have been available.
- Central Asian horse warriors specialized in the military bow, which could easily have served the inventor as a temporary way to hold horsehair at high tension.
- To this day, horsehair for bows is taken from places with harsh cold climates, including Mongolia , as such hair offers a better grip on the strings.
- Rosin, crucial for creating sound even with coarse horsehair, is used by traditional archers to maintain the integrity of the string and (mixed with beeswax) to protect the finish of the bow; for details, see these links: .
From all this it is tempting to imagine the invention of the bow: some Mongol warrior, having just used rosin on his equipment, idly stroked his harp or lyre with a rosin-dusted finger and produced a brief continuous sound, which caused him to have an inspiration; whereupon he seized his bow, restrung it with horsehair, and so on. Obviously, the degree to which this fantasy is true will never be known.
However the bow was invented, it soon spread very widely. The Central Asian horse peoples occupied a territory that included the Silk Road, along which goods and innovations were transported rapidly for thousands of miles (including, via India, by sea to Java). This would account for the near-simultaneous appearance of the musical bow in the many locations cited by Halfpenny.
The modern Western bow
The kind of bow in use today was brought into its modern form largely by the archetier / bow-maker François Tourte in 19th century France. Pernambuco wood which was imported into France to make textile dye, was found by the early French bow masters to have just the right combination of strength, resiliency, weight, and beauty. According to James McKean (reference below), Tourte's bows, "like the instruments of Stradivari, as still considered to be without equal."
Historical bows
The early 18th century bow referred to as the Corelli-Tartini model, is also referred to as the Italian 'sonata' bow.This basic Baroque bow supplanted by 1725 an earlier French dance bow which was quite short with a little point. The French dance bow was held with the thumb under the hair and played with short, quick strokes for rhythmic dance music. The Italian sonata bow was longer, from 24-28 inches (61-71 cm.), with a straight or slightly convex stick. The head is described as a pike's head, and the frog is either fixed (the clip-in bow) or has a screw mechanism.
The screw is an early improvement, indicative of further changes to come.
As compared to a modern Tourte-style bow, the Corelli-Tartini model is shorter and lighter, especially at the tip, the balance point is lower down on the stick, the hair more yielding, and the ribbon of hair narrower about 6 mm wide.
In the early bow (the Baroque bow), the natural bow stroke is a non-legato norm, producing what Leopold Mozart called a "small softness" at the beginning and end of each stroke.
A lighter, clearer sound is produced, and quick notes are cleanly articulated without the hair leaving the string.
A truly great example of such a bow is described by David Boyden in The History of Violin Playing, p. 207, which is part of the Ansley Salz Collection at the University of California at Berkeley.
It was made around 1700, and is attributed to Stradivari.
Towards the middle of the century (18th century), there was a move into the Transitional period, the separation of hair from stick became greater, particularly at the head. This greater separation is necessary because the stick becomes longer and straighter, approaching a concave shape.
Up until the advent of the bow by Tourte, there was absolutely no standardization of bow features during this Transitional period, and every bow was different in weight, length and balance.
In particular, the heads varied enormously by any given maker.
Another transitional type of bow may be called the Cramer bow, after the violinist Wilhelm Cramer (1745-99) who lived the early part of his life in Mannheim (Germany) and, after 1772, in London. This bow and models comparable to it in Paris, generally prevailed between the gradual demise of the Corelli-Tartini model and the birth of the Tourte-that is, roughly 1750-85.
In the view of top experts, the Cramer bow represents a decisive step towards the modern bow.
The Cramer bow and others like it were gradually rendered obsolete by the advent of François Tourte's standardized bow. The hair (on the Cramer bow) is wider than the Corelli model but still narrower than a Tourte, the screw mechanism becomes standard, and more sticks are made from pernambuco, rather than the earlier snakewood, ironwood, and china wood, which were often fluted for a portion of the length of the stick.
Fine makers of these Transitional models were Duchaîne, La Fleur, Meauchand, Tourte père, and Edward Dodd.
The underlying reasons for the change from the old Corelli-Tartini model to the Cramer and, finally, to the Tourte were naturally related to musical demands on the part of composers and violinists.
Undoubtedly the emphasis on cantabile, especially the long drawn out and evenly sustained phrase, required a generally longer bow and also a somewhat wider ribbon of hair. - David Boyden
These new bows were ideal to fill the new, very large concert halls with sound and worked great with the late classical and the new romantic repertoire.
By this time (early 19th century) baroque music and early classical music ceased to appear in concerts.
Today, with the rise of the historically informed performance movement, string players have developed a revived interest in the lighter, pre-Tourte bow, as more suitable for playing stringed instruments made in pre-19th century style.
Quotes
"The dawn of the modern bow can be traced to around 1780 with bows of Francois Tourte, that were the culmination of apparent experimentation on the part of the maker. The precursor to the modern style of bow can be observed in the extant output from the Tourte atelier. The bows directly preceding the invention of the modern bow (sometimes known as Cramer Head bows) are shorter, far lighter and more flexible, by comparison with the modern style bows that follow them. The heads and frogs of these pre-modern bows are relatively tall, and as a result the clearance between the hair and the stick is much greater than with a modern bow. This larger clearance and increased flexibility, along with the lightness and shortness, all have a profound effect on the playing qualities of pre-modern bows. A range of color unheard of in a modern bow is accessible with a so-called “Cramer Head” Tourte". - Stefan Hersh 2003
"The fact that bows are ascribed not to makers but to famous violinists (who were often composers as well) underlines the point that, with rare exceptions, bow makers remained anonymous before 1750.
Quite probably the man who made the violin often made the bow or had it made in his shop: I have already indicated that Stradivari almost certainly made bows or had them made for him. After 1750, some makers began to identify themselves by stamping their names on bows-generally on the stick, sometimes on the frog, occasionally on both (as in some Dodd bows). Tourte pere, whom we now believe to be Louis Tourte, stamped a few bows c 1750 with the distinctive TOURTE-L but Francois Tourte (his more famous son), whose first standardized bows date from c 1785, rarely stamped his. Although Francois attained an enormous measure of fame in his own lifetime, the tradition of' the anonymous bow maker was still so strong that theorists like Woldemar and Fetis called Tourte's new-model bow not the Tourte bow but the Viotti bow, after his contemporary the violinist."
"What I have said is not intended to undervalue the superb qualities of' the Tourte bow or overlook the limitations of the old bow. The latter, for instance, will not produce a loud, evenly sustained sound as easily as the Tourte, nor can it produce effectively a hard, accented, martele bow stroke. The modern spiccato (spring bow) in the middle and the strong, lifted stroke at the frog are less natural to the old bow. But an effect similar to the modern spiccato is produced by the non legato of the old bow, which, in playing rapid individual notes, produces a clear articulation resembling spiccato, without actually leaving the string."
"Although I have spoken of the 'old' and 'modern' bow, there are, I believe, some four or five distinct types in the 18th century, this variety being related to function and musical need.
1. Already discussed in detail, the Corelli-Tartini model is generally appropriate to the style of music in the first half' of the 18th century, to composers likeCorelli, Vivaldi, Geminiani, Tartini and others.
This Italian bow was a constant in a field of 'variables.
2. Before 1725 or thereabouts there was a clear distinction between the 'sonata' Corelli-Tartini bow and the French dance bow used for dance music. The latter was a short bow, as shown in the Gerard Dou painting of 1665 (illus. 7), designed to produce short incisive bow strokes and well-suited to emphasizing the rhythms of dance music. Note the old thumb- under-hair grip which gives Dou's player a very secure hold on the bow, imperative for rhythmic accentuation. Illus. 8 shows a surviving example of a French dance bow, photographed with a genuine Tourte for comparison. This dance bow may be dated a little earlier than the Dou portrait, if only because it ends in
a point with a scarcely discernible head. About 1725 the sonata style became increasingly popular in France through the advocacy of French violinists, like Leclair who was trained in Italy. Consequently the French dance bow and the French dance style began to pass out of fashion as the sonata style and bow were taken up by the French.
3. One may recognize also the German bow. This type is rather heavily constructed, generally using a convex bow stick and a somewhat undeveloped, even clumsy head, as illustrated by the bows in Leopold Mozart's Violinschule, or by the massive bow of Franz Benda (1709-86) shown in Van der Straeten.15 But the German bow yielded to the Italian, and more especi- ally to a new French bow design, as exemplified by the Tourtes and others16-the main line of evolution after 1750. The modern bow and its development can be traced in a number of particulars to Paris and London especially (see below). Ironically, we do not know what kind of bow Bach had in mind for his sonatas and partitas for solo violin, except that it was not the so- called 'Bach' bow-an invention of the 20th century.
4. The fourth type may be called the Cramer bow, after the violinist Wilhelm Cramer (1745-99) who lived the early part of his life in Mannheim and, after 1772, in London. This bow and models comparable to it in Paris, generally prevailed between the gradual demise of the Corelli-Tartini model and the birth of the Tourte-that is, roughly 1750-85. In my view, the Cramer bow represents a decisive step towards the modern bow and I shall discuss it in detail below.
5. The fifth type is the Tourte ('modern' or 'Viotti') bow, perfected about 1785. It is the model of the bow still universally used today, and the most appropriate for music of the later 18th century: late Mozart and late Haydn, Viotti, and Beethoven. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the Tourte is used with a violin more strongly built and strung to produce a more intense and powerful tone. " - David Boyden
Other types of bow
The Chinese yazheng and yaqin, and Korean ajaeng zithers are generally played by "bowing" with a rosined stick, which creates friction against the strings without any horsehair. The hurdy-gurdy's strings are similarly set into vibration by means of a "rosin wheel," a wooden wheel which contacts the strings as it is rotated by means of a crank handle, creating a "bowed" tone.
Maintenance
Careful owners always loosen the hair on a bow before putting it away. James McKean (reference below) recommends that the owner "loosen the hair completely, then bring it back just a single turn of the button." The goal is to "keep the hair even but allow the bow to relax."
Bows must be periodically rehaired, an operation usually performed by professionals rather than by the instrument owner. Rehairing is done when too many of the hairs are broken, or the hair is dirty, or has lost its friction. Sometimes changing the whole bow can be easier and cheaper than rehairing the old bow, especially with small fractional sized bows.
One way to prolong the useful service life of the hair is to clean it with shampoo or alcohol. Alcohol can damage the finish of the stick if care is not taken to protect it. Contamination of the horsehair with oil, grease, wax, or soap will make it lose its friction, leading to an uneven sound, or no sound at all.
Bows sometimes lose their correct camber (see above), and are recambered using the same heating method as is used in the original manufacture.
Lastly, the grip or winding of the bow must occasionally be replaced to maintain a good grip and protect the wood.
These repairs are best left to professionals, as the head of the bow is extremely fragile, and a poor rehair, or a broken ivory plate on the tip can lead to ruining the bow.
Nomenclature
In vernacular speech the bow is occasionally called a fiddlestick. Bows for particular instruments are often designated as such: "violin bow", "cello bow", and so on.
See also
Further reading
- Templeton, David, , Strings magazine, October 2002, No. 105.
- Young, Diana. . PhD Thesis. M.I.T., 2007.
External links
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- article on the history and making of bows.
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