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Looking back over the last 100 years of bow making, one can make much the same observation as in violin making: the most striking advances that established themselves permanently occurred earlier. Nevertheless, the last century also brought several innovations.
By the early twentieth century, a number of broadly defined standard models had emerged in bow making, following the great examples of François Xavier Tourte, Dominique Peccatte, François Nicolas Voirin, and, later, Eugène Sartory. Bows were increasingly produced on a large scale, especially around Markneukirchen in Germany, but also in Mirecourt, France.
Requirements for stiffness, weight, balance, depth of camber, and model differ according to the school of violin playing and each musician’s preferences. To this day, for example, the Russian school favors bows with very stiff, resilient sticks because players use higher hair tension. In Vienna, to give a contrasting example, bows are generally played with lower hair tension. This is achieved partly with less stiff sticks, but chiefly through shallower camber. The lower hair tension produces the character so typical of the Viennese sound. Overall, however, the influence of the Russian school remains apparent in almost every modern teaching approach and continues to shape bow making. It is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish clearly between particular schools and influences, since many instrument makers—and even more musicians—receive training in several countries.
Nevertheless, here is an attempt to outline some recognizable developments in bow making since the beginning of the twentieth century:
At the beginning of the twentieth century, players generally used the new, very slender and light bow type that had become common from 1860 onward. Strongly influenced by François Nicolas Voirin and Alfred Lamy, this style featured a narrow head, a more slender stick and neck than Tourte’s, and a preference for a very light type of pernambuco. The ideal weight for this bow type was between 50 g and a maximum of 56 g. Its emergence and use probably reflected the playing technique of the time, which called for pronounced wrist movement without use of the upper arm. This approach can be traced to a text by the violin teacher F. Louis Schubert, who explained very clearly in his 1865 book “Die Violine” how the fingers of the right hand should surround the bow: “The thumb and middle finger are opposite one another at the frog. The bow lies at the first joint of both the index and middle fingers; the ring and little fingers rest only loosely on the stick. There must be no gap between the first fingers. The bow’s movement originates in the forearm. The upper arm has almost nothing to do while bowing, but must not be stiff either. The space in which bowing is permitted is limited toward the back. The right arm must not move behind the plane of the back. Sawing movements are also undesirable.” Schubert gives no specific exercises for learning the bow’s dynamic possibilities, trusting instead in his students’ musical aptitude: “The use of the bow with respect to loud and soft tones is learned naturally once one has discovered that the bow’s power diminishes toward the tip.”
Violin methods continued to insist on a rigid, passive right upper arm until 1903, even though outstanding violinists of the period, such as Eugène Ysaÿe, who produced a powerful tone, also used their upper arms. With the upper arm fixed, producing a strong, resonant tone is almost impossible. No nineteenth-century violin method shows opposition to the overemphasis on the wrist or the frequently explicit prohibition on using the upper arm. In 1929, Ferdinand Küchler expressed astonishment at the blindness of violin-method authors: “Many years ago, any violin teacher who had seen an eminent violinist play should have recognized the great discrepancy between the bowing of the great virtuosos and the printed teachings of the violin methods. […] Out of misplaced reverence for this or that famous author of a method whose musical value was beyond dispute, the false teachings on bowing, passed down traditionally from one method to another, went unchallenged for a long time. The expansive upper-arm movements of outstanding virtuosos were excused as the extravagances of gifted geniuses. Respect for the printed word was so great that no one dared alter the old teachings inherited from their grandfathers. Teachers hesitated to draw practical lessons from the playing of the great violinists, or to derive a general principle from what they were willing to accept only as a whim of genius.”
In his 1903 book “Die Physiologie der Bogenführung,” Dr. F. A. Steinhausen criticized contemporary violin teachers, saying that “they know nothing but the training of the wrist.” He pointed to the resulting health problems in players’ joints. Steinhausen’s teachings gained acceptance only very slowly in German-speaking countries.
In 1905, Carl Flesch became the first violin teacher to point out the rotational movement of the upper arm and forearm during bowing. In his “Urstudien,” he assigned specific tasks to the shoulder and finger joints while reducing the importance of the mechanically limited wrist. He rejected any suggestion of influence from the “nonmusician” Steinhausen.
Over time, violinists increasingly sought a more powerful tone. Yet firm, continuously forceful bowing without any yielding can produce only a large sound, so they tried to find another means of emotional expression. They sought it in left-hand vibrato, with the result that almost every note was given an oscillation. The instrument’s true breath—a varied, nuanced use of the bow—was neglected.
From about 1910, newly made bows also began to reflect the demands of the violin schools. The standard violin bow weight of 59–62 g, still accepted today, emerged. This was achieved through denser wood, a larger head, and the introduction of silver-wire windings, which increasingly replaced the lighter silk-thread or silver-tinsel windings previously used. Existing bows were often adapted to the new ideal by fitting heavier windings.
One of the most celebrated representatives of the Russian school was Leopold von Auer (1845–1930). It is still often called the “Auer school” after him. Its famous violinists included Efrem Zimbalist, Mischa Elman, Jascha Heifetz, and Nathan Milstein. Since Auer was among those teachers who sought to develop their students’ whole personalities rather than mold them into copies of themselves, the term “Auer school” is difficult to define too narrowly.
The plane of bowing now came to be understood less as up-bow and down-bow than as a back-and-forth motion. In this way, the arm’s own weight can be transferred to the bow, which is entirely sufficient to produce the fullest tone. The aim should be the least possible muscular tension, since excessive tension or cramping reduces the weight of the arm.
Influenced by Auer but now highly diverse, the Russian school favors bows with very stiff, resilient sticks because of the higher hair tension used. Even when the bow is tilted, the aim is to use all the hair whenever possible. The arm guides the bow, while the fingers remain relatively passive. They are neither spread apart nor pressed together, but rest on the stick at a natural, relaxed distance from one another.
Other violin methods had less positive, or even curious, effects on bow making and on the original condition of some bows made in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. One example is Emil Kross’s “Die Kunst der Bogenführung.” He called for modifications to the frog’s throat in order to change the bow’s shape and thus “improve” the maker’s work: “Scrape away the angular projection in the frog’s cutout, since it is quite unnecessary, so that the tip of the thumb can be placed not against but inside the frog. This makes the entire hold much more secure, and the arrangement also makes it easier to use the full length of the bow, right up to the frog.” Kross cannot have been alone in this view, since many bows from that period survive with “mutilated” frog noses.
In 1929, the Berlin violin teacher Jon Woiku applied for a patent for a bow with an angled frog. With this frog, the full width of the hair ribbon rests on the string when the bow is tilted in the physiologically natural way—toward the fingerboard—while playing in the lower half. The orientation of the head remains unchanged, since the stick is held relatively upright when playing from the middle to the tip.
In 1937, the Kassel concertmaster Rolph Schroeder presented his “Bach bow” to the public. It was developed to enable what was then thought to be a stylistically appropriate performance of Johann Sebastian Bach’s solo violin works. Its stick had a very pronounced convex curve, reaching a distance of 10–13 cm from the hair at its highest point. The frog also had a scissor mechanism that allowed the player to adjust hair tension with the thumb: with slack hair, all four strings could be sounded at once; with taut hair, only one or at most two strings were touched. For a long time, this bow was regarded as the ultimate solution for interpreting Bach, but the model has no historical basis. The “Bach bow” legend goes back to two articles by Arnold Schering from 1904. Schering referred to a passage in Georg Muffat’s Florilegium Secundum, which reads in translation: “In taking hold of the bow, most Germans, on the small and middle-sized violins, agree with the Lullists, placing the thumb on the hair and the other fingers on the back of the bow.” Unfortunately, Muffat included no illustration to clarify his observation. His reference to Jean Baptiste Lully, however, suggests that he meant the typical French bow and the associated “French bow hold,” with the thumb beneath the frog. Schering’s interpretation was probably mistaken. Today, historically informed performance increasingly favors precise copies of old Baroque bows, both in form and playing characteristics, in an effort to approach the original sound of each musical period as authentically as possible.
(Anke and Thomas Gerbeth)
Further Reading
Askenfelt, Anders: Über Bögen und Bogenführung. In: Das Orchester 10/95. Mainz, 1995, pp. 2–7.
Boyden, David D.: Die Geschichte des Violinspiels von seinen Anfängen bis 1761. Mainz, 1977.
Boyden, David D.: Bow. In: Sadie, Stanley (ed.): The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Vol. 3. London/New York, 1980, pp. 125–135.
Boyden, David D.: Der Geigenbogen von Corelli bis Tourte. In: Schwarz, Vera (ed.): Violinspiel und Violinmusik in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Vienna, 1975, pp. 295–310.
Buchner, Alexander: Handbuch der Musikinstrumente. Hanau am Main, 2nd ed., 1985.
Diestel, Hans: Violintechnik und Geigenbau. Die Violintechnik auf natürlicher Grundlage nebst den Problemen des Geigenbaus. Leipzig, 1912.
Grünke, Klaus: Die Entwicklung des Violinspiels und dessen Einfluß auf die Entwicklung des Bogenbaus vom 16. bis 20. Jahrhundert. In: Das Musikinstrument 2–3/95. Frankfurt am Main, 1995, pp. 68–76.
Guth, Peter: Die moderne russische Violinschule und ihre Methodik. In: Schwarz, Vera (ed.): Violinspiel und Violinmusik in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Vienna, 1975, pp. 154–172.
Kross, Emil: Die Kunst der Bogenführung. Praktisch-theoretische Anleitung zur Ausbildung der Bogentechnik und zur Erlangung eines schönen Tons. Op. 40. Heilbronn, 1892.
Küchler, Ferdinand: Lehrbuch der Bogenführung auf der Violine. Leipzig, 1929.
Milstein, Nathan; Volkov, Solomon: „Lassen Sie ihn doch Geige lernen“. Erinnerungen. Munich, 1993.
Schering, Arnold (ed.): Denkmäler deutscher Tonkunst. Series 1, vols. 29/30. Wiesbaden, 2nd ed., 1958.
Schröder, Hermann: Die Kunst des Violinspiels. Ein enzyklopädisches Handbuch für jeden Violinisten, insbesondere für Lehrer und Lernende. Leipzig, 2nd ed., 1902.
Schwarz, Boris: Viotti – eine Neubewertung seiner Werke. In: Schwarz, Vera (ed.): Violinspiel und Violinmusik in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Vienna, 1975, pp. 41–46.
Steinhausen, F. A.: Die Physiologie der Bogenführung. Leipzig, 1903.
Wunderlich, Friedrich: Der Geigenbogen. Eine Schrift für den Fachmann und alle Geiger. Wiesbaden, 2nd ed.,1952. |