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Anke & Thomas M. Gerbeth
The French and Italian Bow Holds
Bow Strokes in the Seventeenth Century
Arcangelo Corelli
The Influence of Giuseppe Tartini
Leopold Mozart’s Violin Method
The Violinists Wilhelm Cramer and Giovanni B. Viotti
The Paris Conservatoire
Louis Spohr
Niccolò Paganini
Joseph Joachim
The Turn of the Century
The Bow in the Modern Russian School of Violin Playing
Outlook
Abridged version without illustrations
Unfortunately, detailed scholarly references for individual passages can only be provided in the original edition, owing to space limitations on the website. The publisher and publication date will be announced here in due course.
The French and Italian Bow Holds
In France, records of court life contain numerous references to the use of violins around and after 1550. Distinguishing the violin from the viol, Jambe de Fer (c. 1508 or c. 1515–1566) writes: “The violin is very different from the viol. Its body is smaller and flatter, and its tone is rougher […] and the French and Italians do not differ in the way they play the instrument […]. We call those instruments viols with which gentlemen, merchants, and other respectable people pass the time […]. The other kind of instrument is called the violin; it is generally used for dancing, and with good reason, since it is easier to tune in fifths than in fourths. It is also easier to carry, which matters when leading wedding processions or taking part in masquerades […]. Moreover, few people use it except those who earn their living with it.” The earliest violins, and thus the earliest violin bows, were used mainly for dance music or to double vocal parts colla parte. The first printed violin music dates from 1581 and was written for a wedding. Composed by Lambert de Beaulieu and Jacques Salmon—the latter probably a violinist—it was published in “Circe ou le ballet comique de la Reine” and performed for the marriage of the Duc de Joyeuse to Mme de Vaudemont. “French dance music for ensembles was printed on a considerable scale in the sixteenth century, but no dance music before 1581 […] can be associated specifically with the violin.” This wedding music could, however, also have been played on other instruments. It places no special technical demands on either the violinist or the bow. As the titles of such dance collections often indicate, they were intended “for all kinds of instruments,” or even for voices. “These danceries were probably intended for amateurs rather than typical working musicians such as violinists playing for dancing. Significantly, dance musicians in pictures of the period play without written music.” The bows used at the time were very short and offered little scope for shaping the tone. Holding the violin low against the chest also placed the bowing arm low, allowing sufficient weight to bear on the bow despite the low weight of the bow and arm. Most players held the bow with the thumb beneath the hair. This hold, later known as the “French grip,” made the accents required for dance music easy to execute. Despite its name, probably acquired later, it was not confined to France; it was also widespread in Italy and elsewhere. It survived longest in France, into the eighteenth century. On articulation in sixteenth-century violin music, Boyden writes: “Because of the nature of the bow and the fact that the violinist usually played for dancing, most violin music was probably performed in a more articulated non-legato style than today. As explained above, the yielding hair of all these convex bows produces a much more natural articulation than a modern bow. The old bow’s center of gravity generally lies closer to the frog, making its tip lighter. Consequently, strokes in the upper third of an old bow have less power than comparable strokes with a modern bow. This quality, combined with the old bow’s inherent flexibility, naturally produces clearer articulation or separation between notes or phrases. As a rule, the old bow, though not standardized, was substantially shorter than the modern one. Because bows were generally shorter, the strokes were also shorter than in modern playing. Musically, dance music required a precise rhythm; clear non-legato articulation between strokes met that need better than the emphatically legato bow changes popular today. Sixteenth-century violin music must therefore have conveyed a greater sense of light and air, with more breathing space between phrases: a non-legato style suited to a lively rhythm. Clear phrasing corresponding to a singer’s breathing was natural to early violinists, whose tone production imitated the singer’s art. They were not obsessed with the modern mania for the ‘endless bow’—the smooth, seamless bow change that has increasingly preoccupied violinists since the nineteenth century.” Very little is known about the use of the violin in sixteenth-century Germany. An account of the wedding festivities for Wilhelm V, Duke of Bavaria, and Renée of Lorraine, held from February 22 to March 9, 1568, records that Orlando di Lasso was responsible for the music. Hans Mielich, the court painter and Lasso’s son-in-law, painted the Munich court ensemble that played and sang under Lasso at the time. Unfortunately, its bows are barely visible, if at all. The few surviving sixteenth-century pieces suggest that the violin’s particular possibilities were little exploited, especially in folk music. Looking again at the bows of this period, it becomes clear that their simple, imperfect construction was adequate for the music. Two conditions intersect here: either the music could demand only what the equipment could provide, or more refined bow construction was not yet necessary because the music demanded no more. As noted above, sixteenth-century French bows were very short and used chiefly for dance music. In Italy, however, where highly developed violins existed by the late sixteenth century and were used mainly to accompany singing and later for sonatas, longer bows are found. These were held with the thumb against the stick rather than beneath the hair. Over the next 150 years, this became known as the “Italian grip.” “The Italian bow hold is much more sensitive, since varying finger pressure gives greater influence over the stick. The tone becomes easier to shape and meets the desire for a singing, lyrical sound resembling the human voice […].” Here the two nations’ paths diverge: Italy moves toward solo violin literature, while France remains attached for some time to dance as its principal form, even as dance reaches the highest refinement in art music. As already mentioned, the French bow hold remained common in France into the eighteenth century. Michel Corrette (1707–1795) illustrates it in “L’École d’Orphée” (1738) and describes both holds: “The Italians hold the bow at three-quarters of its length, placing four fingers at A and the thumb underneath at B; the French hold it beside the frog (hausse), placing the first, second, and third fingers over the wood at C, D, and E, the thumb beneath the hair at F, and the little finger beside the stick at G. These two ways of holding the bow are equally good and depend on the teacher […] Eighth and sixteenth notes are played at the end of the bow at H and J.” The French violinist could not have recognized the backwardness now attributed to him, since he had only French music to play. It was only around 1700, when confronted with the Italian sonata and the music of Arcangelo Corelli and his contemporaries, that he became aware of the divergence in playing styles. After the emergence of the French sonatistes around 1720, the French hold gradually became old-fashioned. By about 1750, it was probably completely obsolete in art music, since it is mentioned neither by Abbé le fils in 1761 nor in Corrette’s violin method of 1782. In Italy, however, this hold must also have continued to be used for dance music well into the eighteenth century.
Bow Strokes in the Seventeenth Century
By this time, players knew more than the simplest separate bow stroke, which changes direction with each note, whether the notes are connected legato or separated staccato. Numerous slurred bowings were also in use, including those with staccato dots beneath a slur. The relative length of an individual stroke depended on context and, to some extent, national style. French music generally used a short stroke, probably in connection with the short bow. The organization of down-bows and up-bows, already discussed in the sixteenth century, was developed further in the seventeenth and later called the “down-bow rule.” Accented notes, such as those at the beginning of each measure, took a down-bow; weak beats took an up-bow. In 1636, Marin Mersenne described the rule as follows: “[…] il faut considerer que l’on doit tousiours tirer l’archet en bas sur la premiere note de la mesure, & qu’il faut le pousser en haut sur la note qui suit […] il se tire tousiours sur la premiere note de chaque mesure composée d’un nombre pair de notes, mais si elle est composée d’un nombre impair […] l’on tire l’archet en haut sur la premiere note de la mesure qui suit, afin de le tirer encore sur la premiere note de la 3. mesure […].” The old bow’s structure and the old hold, requiring a loose, supple wrist, produced a kind of non-legato stroke. Modern violin playing carefully cultivates strongly legato bow changes. This modern legato stroke is often called détaché, an extremely misleading name, since détaché actually means “detached” or “unconnected.” In early music, therefore, détaché probably refers instead to a non-legato stroke. When greater separation was required, terms such as staccato or spiccato were used; these appear to have been synonymous at the time. A short note was usually indicated by a dot (.) or vertical stroke (|) above or below it. “In the late seventeenth century, dots and strokes generally meant the same thing; if both appeared in the same piece, however, the stroke indicated stronger and more explicit separation than the dot.” A varied range of slurred bowings was also available. These included syncopated strokes, in which the bowing creates rhythmic syncopation. A wavy line beneath a slur indicates ondeggiando, or ondulé, bowing. The bowing arm makes an undulating movement, alternating between two adjacent strings. Ondulé can be played with slurred or separate strokes. The term ondeggiando may also indicate the undulating movement used in arpeggios. In our experience, and that of professional violinists such as Marianne Kubitschek-Rônez, most of these bowings are easier and more effective on a period-model bow than on the “modern” bow generally used today.
Arcangelo Corelli
The Italian composer Arcangelo Corelli (1653–1713) is one of the principal representatives of the concerto grosso, which appears to be the ancestral form of the instrumental concerto still popular today. The concerto grosso arose from a fusion of the trio—usually two violins and bass, common in seventeenth-century Italy and France—with the orchestral sonata in several parts. In addition to the concerti grossi he published only in 1712, Corelli issued twelve violin sonatas, Op. 5, in 1700. These were to be of great importance to subsequent generations of violinists. By 1752, however, his concertos were already outdated, or at least not to German taste, if Johann Joachim Quantz’s words may be interpreted that way. He writes: “In the end, however, through excessive and daily composing, and especially when he began to write theatrical vocal music, he fell into carelessness and audacity in both composition and performance; for this reason, his later concertos no longer deserved as much applause as his earlier ones.” Giuseppe Torelli (1658–1709) presented the first fully developed solo concertos, though still somewhat modest in their concertante style, in his Concerti musicali, Op. 6, published in 1698. Corelli is credited with using a longer bow than his predecessors. The slightly longer stick facilitates cantabile playing and permits greater tonal variation. Interesting comments on Corelli and the technical demands of the time survive in the English publisher Robert Bremner’s (1713–1789) preface to J. G. C. Schetky’s “Six Quarttetos for two violin, a tenor, and violoncello […]” (Op. 6, London, 1777): “The use of the ‘swell’—messa di voce—is of the greatest importance to those wishing to produce a moving adagio or other melody. Slow movements written more for harmonic than melodic effect, however, as in the trios of Corelli and other modern composers, generally require a sustained bow stroke with even pressure. Daily practice of this stroke is as important as the ‘swell’ for those wishing to be useful in an ensemble, since it accustoms the student always to have some bow length in reserve, as every good player seeks to do. These two, swell and sostenuto, may be called the roots from which all further capabilities of the bow arise.” A brilliant solo-concerto style gradually emerged from the sonata style. Relatively few concertos appeared in the first decade of the eighteenth century, but Torelli’s six solo concertos, Op. 8, of 1708, were their crowning achievement. By 1712, Antonio Vivaldi dominated the market. He became as influential in the concerto as Arcangelo Corelli had been in the violin sonata. Many of Italy’s finest concerto players crossed the Alps to present their art in Central Europe. In Germany, the Italian concerto was immediately welcomed in both church and chamber styles and hailed as the representative of the “new gusto.”
The Influence of Giuseppe Tartini
The self-taught Giuseppe Tartini (1692–1770) found his model in Francesco Maria Veracini (1690–1750), whom he heard in Venice in 1716. He was evidently fascinated by Veracini’s expressive power. According to Charles Burney, Veracini’s tone was loud, clear, and exceptionally fine. After this decisive musical experience, Tartini withdrew to Ancona to devote himself entirely to practice and match Veracini’s art. His playing was subsequently admired everywhere, as many contemporaries attest. Giuseppe Tartini was one of the first violinists to assign particular importance to the bow. In a 1760 letter to his pupil Maddalena Lombardini, later Mme Sirmen, he briefly set out the principles of his teaching system and some pedagogical advice, including instructions for developing a controlled bow. He begins: “Your principal practice must concern the use of the bow: you must become its absolute master, both in passagework and in cantabile.” He also focuses on the beginning of the tone, which must be gentle at every point of the bow; only then may its fullness develop. “Primo studio dev’ essere l’appoggio dell’arco su la corda siffattamente leggiero, che il primo principio della voce, che si cava, sia come un fiato, e non come una percossa su la corda. Consiste in leggerezza di polso, e in proseguir subito l’arcata dopo l’appoggio, rinforzandola quanto si vuole, perchè dopo l’appoggio leggiero non vi è più pericolo di asprezza, e crudezza.” Free command of up-bow and down-bow movements at any point of the bow and in any dynamic shading is also important. According to the French music writer François Joseph Marie Fayolle (1774–1852), Tartini owned two practice bows, one for triple meter and one for quadruple meter. Marks divided one into three sections and the other into four. He used them to practice precise bow division so that he remained in control at all times. He mastered every exercise and passage beginning on either a down-bow or an up-bow. His music stand is said to have carried the maxim, in large letters, “Strength without stiffness and flexibility without slackness.” Tartini and his school seem to have been distinguished above all by adagio playing and the accompanying art of using the bow to shade the tone. As he developed, Tartini sought outward difficulty less and less—although his works remain technically demanding—and increasingly pursued balance and simplicity. In his final years, the hammer-headed Cramer-model bow was already known and popular. Since the so-called “Maestro delle nationi” was also in contact with many non-Italian violinists, he may have known and perhaps played such a bow. Unfortunately, no written accounts by him or contemporary witnesses survive on this point.
Leopold Mozart’s Violin Method
Leopold Mozart (1719–1787), born in Augsburg to a bookbinder of modest means, was originally intended for the clergy. After his father’s death, he went to Salzburg and supported himself as a valet. A child of the Enlightenment, he also acquired a broad education. In 1743, he joined the archbishop’s court orchestra as fourth violinist, eventually rising to court composer and deputy Kapellmeister. His most important work, “Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule,” appeared in print in 1756. It went through several editions and was translated into various languages. The first edition contains 264 pages of text illustrated with short musical examples and pictures, along with some longer examples but no complete compositions. Mozart also incorporated Tartini’s teaching methods and studies. All the bows illustrated in Leopold Mozart’s method can be identified as clip-in frog bows. He regards holding the stick some distance from the frog as a mistake: a “manly tone” is possible only with a hold at the frog. The index finger chiefly controls the bow, with pressure and contact between its second and third segments. In other methods, such as L’Abbé le fils’s “Principe du Violon” of 1761, contact is at the middle of the second segment or between the first and second. Joseph Barnabé Saint Sevin l’Abbé fils (1727–1803) assigns the bow an important role, calling it the “âme de l’instrument”—the soul of the instrument. Absolute command of the bow is required, not only in the many examples of staccato on one bow, upward and downward and starting with either stroke, but also in wide string crossings. His exercises, however, are not virtuoso in character. The previously mentioned problem of beginning a bow stroke is first discussed by Leopold Mozart in 1756 and shortly afterward by Giuseppe Tartini in 1760. Mozart writes: “Every tone, even one attacked most strongly, is preceded by a slight, barely perceptible softness; otherwise it would not be a tone but merely an unpleasant and incomprehensible noise. The same softness is heard at the end of the tone. One must therefore know how to divide the bow into soft and strong, and consequently how to perform the notes beautifully and movingly through emphasis and moderation.” In the following sections, Mozart describes different kinds of nuanced bow strokes, all to be practiced on both up-bows and down-bows. Section I describes messa di voce: swelling toward the middle of the stroke and diminishing toward its end. The bow is held back as much as possible “to make it possible to sustain a long note in an adagio purely and gracefully, to the listener’s great pleasure, just as it is extraordinarily moving when singers sustain a long note beautifully, with alternating softness and strength, without taking a breath.” Mozart’s aim was to give violin students a thorough musical education, rather than mere finger dexterity. Following Enlightenment ideals, the student should know what he was doing and understand everything required of him. The detailed text helps both student and teacher achieve successful instruction. To perform a piece appropriately and “with understanding,” Mozart required violinists not merely to play the notes but also to be versed in rhetoric and poetics. Another violin method appeared in the same period: Francesco Geminiani’s (1687–1762) “Art of Playing on the Violin,” published in England in 1751, was the first textbook for professional violinists. In it, Geminiani condemns the down-bow rule customary in the seventeenth century. Even eighteenth-century audiences seem to have considered the bow highly important to the sound of music. In Paris, a gentleman paid the Italian violinist Antonio Lolli, who also spent some time in the service of the Duke of Württemberg, 24 louis d’or for a violin bow. “Presumably the gentleman believed that the art resided only in the bow and that it was the talisman of playing.”
The Violinists Wilhelm Cramer and Giovanni Battista Viotti
Wilhelm Cramer, the foremost performing artist of the Mannheim school, was born in Mannheim in 1745. From 1757 to 1772, he was a solo violinist in the electoral court orchestra there. At Johann Christian Bach’s suggestion, he went to London in 1773, where he conducted court concerts and became, among other things, leader of the Italian opera orchestra. He also conducted the Concerts of Ancient Music and the annual concerts of the Musical Fund, later the Royal Society of Musicians. “When the Professional Concerts were founded, Cramer was appointed their leader and, in that capacity, was able to perform Haydn’s works before the composer himself during his visit to London.” In 1793, a German contributor to the Berliner Musikalische Zeitung wrote: “Cramer plays his own concertos very beautifully, has a good tone, performs very difficult passages with great neatness, and plays with excellent intonation and precision.” Daniel Schubart wrote of him: “Wilhelm Cramer is a violinist full of genius […]. The English call him the foremost violinist in the world. Even if this judgment may be exaggerated, one must concede that he has achieved an admirable degree of perfection on his instrument. His bow stroke is entirely original: unlike other violinists, he does not draw it broadly downward, but carries it over the top, keeping it short and exceedingly delicate. No one articulates the notes with such extraordinary precision as Cramer. He plays very rapidly, as if on wings, and all without strain; yet he is most successful in the adagio, or rather in tenderness and feeling. It may not be possible to perform a rondo more sweetly or with more heartfelt expression than Cramer does.” Just as Tartini is regarded as a defining influence on the first half of the eighteenth century, Giovan Battista Viotti (1755–1824) may be seen in the same light for the second half. He is also called the “father of modern violin playing.” Most of his violin concertos were written between 1780 and 1800. They form a bridge between Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s violin concertos of 1775 and Ludwig van Beethoven’s of 1806. Viotti already fulfilled all the requirements of a virtuoso-composer. His concertos, however, were not limited to daredevil acrobatics; they combined tone, technique, grace, and drama. His concert tours took him from Italy through Switzerland and the courts of Dresden and Berlin, then via Warsaw to St. Petersburg. At the end of 1781, he left the Russian metropolis and traveled through Berlin to Paris, where he made his debut at the Concert Spirituel on March 17, 1782, with unprecedented success. The effects of the French Revolution led him to leave Paris for London in 1792. There, Wilhelm Cramer suffered considerably from Viotti’s great success. Viotti’s happy period in London soon came to an end, however. Suspected of being a spy in French service, he was ordered to leave London immediately. Deeply hurt and convinced of his innocence, he went to Germany, where he lived for a time in Schenefeld near Hamburg. Among other works, he wrote a violin method there. His guiding principle was: Le violon, c’est l’archet. In 1801, he received permission to return to England. This time, however, London gave him a very cool reception, so he made a brief visit to Paris in 1802. “Baillot persuaded him to perform at the Conservatoire, where he inspired the greatest enthusiasm. Baillot described his playing at the time as follows: ‘Everything seemed to flow effortlessly, gentle yet energetic. With the greatest élan, he soared into the realms of inspiration. His tone was magnificent and sweet, yet at the same time as steely as if the delicate bow were wielded by the arm of Hercules!’” His influence on French violinists was immense. “Through his pupils Pierre Rode, Alday, and Labarre, a brilliant era of violin playing began in Paris. Rodolphe Kreutzer and Baillot also owed him a great deal.”
The Paris Conservatoire
Around 1800, shortly after the French Revolution and the resulting social restructuring of the musical profession, violin teaching also changed in its organization and methods. The earliest documented violin études written purely as practice pieces appear in F. Fiorillo’s 1793 publication. They address problems of bow technique. Such pieces, each isolating a technical difficulty or later deliberately combining several, also found a teaching role at the Paris Conservatoire, founded in 1795. Three important violin teachers worked at this exemplary institution: Rodolphe Kreutzer (1766–1831), Pierre Marie François Baillot (1771–1842), and Pierre Rode (1774–1830). All three were Viotti’s pupils and helped spread his new style. Until 1845, only Viotti concertos were prescribed at the Conservatoire. A special commission asked them to develop a violin method, whose written version was submitted on February 14, 1799. Baillot, who had done most of the drafting, later wrote a more mature method drawing on his years of experience at the Conservatoire. It appeared in 1834 as “L’art du violon.” Kreutzer and Rode, for their part, wrote well-known collections of études and caprices.
Louis Spohr
Louis Spohr (1784–1859) had a long right arm, enabling him to sustain tones at every dynamic level, and strong yet exceptionally supple joints, with which he executed his chosen bow strokes—especially staccato serioso—particularly well. He himself called this stroke, when well executed, one of the chief ornaments of solo playing. Yet he was skilled in more than the “new” strokes. “His ability to ‘spin a tone,’ learned from the bel canto of the old Italians, also made a great impression on his contemporaries: the art of beginning a note in a delicate pianissimo and gradually swelling it to ever greater strength with the aid of vibrato.” Despite the purity of his tone and his fully developed bow technique, however, his playing was not dazzling, at least not as dazzling as Niccolò Paganini’s, by whose standard every later violinist was judged. “Perhaps his pronounced aversion to frequent vibrato was one reason his playing did not sweep listeners away.” In his violin method of 1832, Spohr praises François Tourte’s bows highly, mentioning their “negligible weight with satisfactory elasticity of the stick,” “even camber, with the closest approach to the hair exactly halfway between head and frog,” and “extremely precise and clean workmanship.” Since Spohr, German violin methods have used G.B. for “ganzer Bogen,” or whole bow, and H.B. for “halber Bogen,” or half bow. Spohr was an exceptionally successful teacher, credited with training no fewer than 187 students by 1860. Many became teachers themselves and, as “Spohr pupils,” had no shortage of students. He trained good orchestral musicians more than virtuosos, however. His contribution is therefore not immediately obvious, but he helped lay the foundations for the standard of today’s orchestras.
Niccolò Paganini
Niccolò Paganini (1782–1840) had an unhappy youth. His father, a modest merchant, compelled him to practice with iron discipline from an early age. He was extraordinarily industrious and gave his first concert at twelve. Later, he specialized in his own compositions, in which he could shine. At first, he played works by other contemporary composers, such as Kreutzer and Rode, only moderately well and therefore removed them from his programs. From 1820, a revolution in violin technique erupted. Paganini’s caprices and the exploitation of their effects by the composer and other virtuosos, such as de Bériot and Vieuxtemps, now made Viotti seem entirely outdated. “In the history of violin playing, the name Paganini is synonymous with the zenith, or rather the very embodiment, of virtuosity on our instrument.” Yet strictly speaking, Paganini invented nothing truly new in virtuoso violin technique. Instead, he boldly developed and systematically expanded the possibilities he found. Moser characterizes him as follows: “[…] If Giornovicchi could produce runs of sixteen to twenty-four notes in a single thrown bow stroke, Paganini saw no reason not to outdo him with another dozen ricocheting notes. And if Durand astonished audiences by bowing short melodic phrases on the two upper strings while plucking an accompaniment with the left hand on the lower strings, that was reason enough for Paganini to present entire pieces using the same technique pushed to its limits, and so on. […]” The only invention that seems genuinely attributable to Paganini is a combination of bow strokes known among violinists as the “Paganini stroke.” After Paganini, however, virtually no further technical inventions were made for bow or fingerboard. By transferring a triplet-like three-note bowing pattern, somewhat unnaturally, to even groups of four notes, this stroke creates a more or less agitated effect. Fétis, otherwise an unreserved admirer of Paganini, nevertheless admitted that Paganini left him emotionally cold as a “singer on the violin”: “What I felt when he played was astonishment and boundless admiration, but only rarely did he move me or stir that inward feeling which seems to me inseparable from the true expression of music.” Several other knowledgeable listeners praised his security on the fingerboard, but reported that his tone, though free of impurities, was curiously thin and lacked inner warmth. F. L. Schubert describes Paganini’s rather unusual violin and bow hold in some detail; it was later adopted and spread by several teaching methods. “Paganini’s posture was more constrained: with his upper arm turned outward, he pressed the point of his elbow closely against his body. His right arm lay firmly against his body and scarcely ever moved. Only his bent wrist had free play; it moved with extreme ease and directed the bow’s elastic movements with the greatest speed. Only in forcefully plucked-out arpeggios, using the lower part of the bow close to the frog, did he raise his hand and forearm slightly and move his elbow away from his body.” This extreme bow hold had already been taught in Bartolomeo Campagnoli’s (1751–1827) Italian violin method of 1797. The method, also published in French and German in 1827, includes an illustration of a model violinist whose upper arm is strapped to his torso. Augusto Casorti, a pupil of the Belgian violinist J. L. Meerts (1800–1863), who had studied with C. Lafont and Pierre Baillot in Paris, and also a pupil of Charles de Bériot (1802–1870) in Brussels, writes in the introduction to his “Bow Technique,” Op. 50: “Tous les coups d’archet se fondent du poignet et de l’avantbras, jamais de l’arrière bras ni de l’èpaule.”
Joseph Joachim
Joseph Joachim (1831–1907) attracted attention as a child prodigy at seven. As a child, he used the very stiff bowing still taught by many schools of the time. Only with Joseph Böhm, who taught him for three years and took him into his home as a foster son during that period, did he learn the free bowing for which he is still known. As a teacher, Joachim also placed the greatest emphasis on developing the right arm. He said: “The deepest understanding of musical prosody and the factors that constitute the art of phrasing can become entirely irrelevant if, for example, deficient bow technique spoils my conception—if I must continually accept things from the bow that are no part of my expressive intention, yet cannot prevent them because I am the bow’s slave instead of its master.” By ten, he was already delighting audiences and critics with his playing and technique. On January 31, 1842, the music critic J. N. Hofzinser wrote in the Wiener Theaterzeitung: “[…] Technically, Joachim handles the violin in a quite outstanding way. He possesses beautiful bowing, undisturbed even by the most varied strokes on the E and G strings, combined with exceedingly easy control of the right hand […].” Joachim’s rivals could not match his vivid shaping of the music because the bow often “spoiled their conception.” Many other violinists were slaves to their bows. Joachim was the first to perform Bach’s solo violin compositions publicly, bringing them to a wider audience. Over a teaching career lasting more than sixty years, he had the largest number of pupils in the nineteenth century who later became important artists themselves. Leopold Auer and Jenö Hubay, for example, could call him their teacher. Joachim did not, however, provide systematic instruction from the rudiments through complete training. He confined himself chiefly to advice and guidance for highly gifted students. It is therefore unsurprising that more than 400 violinists could eventually claim to have studied with him.
The Turn of the Century
In 1865, F. Louis Schubert described posture and bow hold in great detail. He valued a natural, unforced stance, which the player should assume “in front of the center of the music or music stand.” He clearly rejected Paganini’s posture. He placed great importance on bowing and bow strokes because they have “a great influence on tone production and performance in general, since the beauty of the tone, its dynamic nuances, and the close connection of phrases that gives them character depend on the bow’s movement.” In his book “Die Violine,” he explained precisely how the fingers of the right hand should surround the bow. The thumb and middle finger face one another at the frog. The bow rests at the first joint of both the index and middle fingers, while the ring and little fingers lie 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 during bowing, but must not be stiff. The space available for bowing is limited toward the back: the right arm must not move behind the plane of the back. Sawing movements are also undesirable. Schubert provides 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 such as Emil Kross’s “Die Kunst der Bogenführung” had an unfavorable effect on bow making and the original condition of bows made in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Kross calls for alterations to the frog’s throat 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 1902, Hermann Schröder mentioned a “bow guide” invented by Carl Gley in Berlin. This apparatus for guiding the bow on the violin was intended to force beginners to bow at right angles to the string. With the upper arm held immobile against the body, the forearm had to perform all movement and the wrist had to remain freely movable. Unfortunately, Schröder provided no illustration. He did, however, offer advice on caring for the bow, whose hair should be replaced several times a year because it wears out, as shown by increased breakage and small whitish patches. If the hair acquired a greasy spot, he recommended placing a pinch of salt on blotting paper, rubbing the spot with it, then applying rosin again—a substance prepared from spruce resin. “Dirty bow hair can be washed with warm water and soap by unscrewing the frog and rubbing the hair between the hands. Take care not to tangle it. After rinsing the hair with cold water, screw the frog back on, tension the hair loosely, and hang up the bow to dry. Once the hair is completely dry, rub it with powdered rosin and remove any excess by playing on a violin not currently in use before putting the bow properly back into service.” Violin methods continued to insist on a rigid, passive right upper arm until 1903, even though outstanding violinists of the time who produced a powerful tone also used their upper arms. With the upper arm fixed, producing a strong, resonant tone is almost impossible. No eighteenth- or nineteenth-century violin method shows opposition to the overemphasis on the wrist or the frequently explicit prohibition on using the upper arm. 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.” His teachings gained acceptance only very slowly in German-speaking countries. In 1905, Carl Flesch became the first 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. In his “Lehrbuch der Bogenführung auf der Violine,” Ferdinand Küchler describes the chief failing of older methods: their authors concentrate on bow hold rather than the movement of bowing. This leads to tension and stiff joints. In Küchler’s view, the fingers should form the ring grip but must above all allow relaxed movement. He also discusses tilting the bow when playing at the frog: “The player must strive to use as many hairs as possible. Using all the hair at all times is impossible, because this would require the bow to lose its acute inclination toward the fingerboard; it would no longer be ‘tilted’ toward it.” As late as 1921, methods such as Klingler’s “Über die Grundlagen des Violinspiels” still promoted the outdated hold under the motto “Fingers firm, wrist loose!” Andreas Moser partly agrees with this formula, but adds that correct bowing is possible only “if I am also aware of the nerve endings in the fingertips and their importance in conveying artistic intention. There must necessarily also be movement of the fingers on the stick within the ‘firm bow hold.’” 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.
The Bow in the Modern Russian School of Violin Playing
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. 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. The ring grip is taught here too, with thumb and middle finger opposite one another and the other fingers free to transfer weight and make balancing movements. The little finger rests on top of the stick to support the bow’s weight at the frog. Depending on the bow’s position, it is straight or bent. “When playing at the tip, except when placing the bow there initially, one need not deliberately try to keep the little finger on the stick, as many teachers demand.” The thumb touches the stick without leaning too heavily against the frog, bending and straightening with the other fingers. In the “St. Petersburg grip” introduced by Auer, the index finger’s base segment rests against the bow. “Compared with earlier holds, this grip produced far greater tonal results with minimal effort through direct pressure transfer, but also created obstacles at the frog, if only because it forced the upper arm to be raised. Later, the hold still used today was found, with contact at the joint between the middle and base segments. It still transfers weight directly with little effort, but gives greater agility in the lower half of the bow […] At the change from up-bow to down-bow at the frog, the middle and fingertip segments of the index finger usually leave the stick as the up-bow movement continues passively during and after the change, without the finger changing or lifting from its point of contact. This movement of the index finger, which is emphatically not deliberately active, is characteristic of many violinists’ bowing.” Since the arm guides the bow, it is already pulling in the new direction at the bow change while the old direction of movement runs its course in the fingers.
Outlook
It is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between schools, influences, and countries of origin. Today’s musicians train internationally, while the worldwide circulation of recordings of every kind further encourages these traditions to merge. “There is nothing unusual about being born in South America, trained in North America, continuing one’s studies in Moscow, entering the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels, finding a teaching position in London, giving courses in Japan, and performing around the world at the same time.” Overall, however, the influence of the Russian school remains apparent in almost every modern teaching approach. As noted above, the conceivable technical difficulties for bow and fingerboard had been exhausted by Paganini or Ernst. Moser describes modern composers with Hellmesberger’s quip: they write concertos not for the violin, but against it. “All too often, one observes that violinists who devote themselves to the newest compositions replace orderly position playing and so-called fingerboard culture with mere jumping back and forth of the left hand, relying on touch and spatial awareness. As for bow strokes, such a barbaric simplification of technique occurs that, faced with these demands, one almost regrets having acquired decent bowing in the first place.”
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