Bow (music)
In music, a bow is a tensioned stick which has hair coated in rosin affixed to it. It is moved across some part of a musical instrument to cause vibration, which the instrument emits as sound. The vast majority of bows are used with string instruments, such as the violin, viola, cello, and bass, although some bows are used with musical saws and other bowed idiophones.
Materials and manufacture
A bow consists of a specially shaped stick with other material forming a ribbon stretched between its ends, which is used to stroke the string and create sound. Different musical cultures have adopted various designs for the bow. For instance, in some bows a single cord is stretched between the ends of the stick. In the Western tradition of bow making—bows for the instruments of the violin and viol families—a hank of horsehair is normally employed.The manufacture of bows is considered a demanding craft, and well-made bows command high prices. Part of the bow maker's skill is the ability to choose high quality material for the stick. Historically, Western bows have been made of pernambuco wood from Brazil. However, pernambuco is now an endangered species whose export is regulated by international treaty, so makers are currently adopting other materials: woods such as Ipê and synthetic materials, such as carbon fiber epoxy composite and fiberglass.
For the frog, which holds and adjusts the near end of the horsehair, ebony is most often used, but other materials, often decorative, were used as well, such as ivory and tortoiseshell. Materials such as mother of pearl or abalone shell are often used on the slide that covers the mortise, as well as in round decorative "eyes" inlaid on the side surfaces. Sometimes "Parisian eyes" are used, with the circle of shell surrounded by a metal ring. The metal parts of the frog, or mountings, may be used by the maker to mark various grades of bow, ordinary bows being mounted with nickel silver, better bows with silver, and the finest being gold-mounted. 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. There is a widely held belief among string players, neither proven nor disproven scientifically, that white hair produces a "smoother" sound and black hair is coarser and thus produces a "rougher" sound. Lower quality bows often use nylon or synthetic hair, and some use bleached horse hair to give the appearance of higher quality. Rosin, or colophony, a hard, sticky substance made from resin, is regularly applied to the bow hair to increase friction.
In making a wooden bow, the greater part of the woodworking is done on a straight stick. According to James McKean, "the bow maker graduates the stick in precise gradations so that it is evenly flexible throughout". These gradations were originally calculated by François Tourte, discussed below. 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—using a metal or wooden template to get the model's exact curve and shape.
The art of making wooden bows has changed little since the 19th century. Most modern composite sticks roughly resemble the Tourte design. Various inventors have explored new ways of bow-making. The Incredibow, for example, has a straight stick cambered only by the fixed tension of the synthetic hair.
Types
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, bassists use two distinct forms of the double bass bow. The "French" overhand bow is constructed like the bow used with other bowed orchestral instruments, and the bassist holds the stick from opposite the frog. The "German" underhand bow is broader and longer than the French bow, with a larger frog curved to fit the palm of the hand. The bassist holds the German stick with the hand loosely encompassing the frog. The German bow is the older of the two designs, having superseded the earlier arched bow. The French bow became popular with its adoption in the 19th century by virtuoso Giovanni Bottesini. Both are found in the orchestra, though typically an individual bass player prefers to perform using one or the other type of bow.
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.The term used for playing with a bow is "arco", from the Latin word "arcus", meaning bow. Therefore, to play arco is to play with a bow.
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, it is called a down-bow; pushing the bow so the frog moves toward the instrument is an up-bow. Two consecutive notes played in the same bow direction are referred to as a hooked bow; a down-bow following a whole down-bow is called a retake.
Generally, the player uses down-bow for strong musical beats and up-bow for weak beats. However, this is reversed in the viola da gamba—players of violin family instruments look like they are "pulling" on the strong beats, where gamba players look like they are "stabbing" on the strong beats. The difference may result from the different ways player hold the bow 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 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, or reducing them, and so emphasizing the fundamental frequency, by playing sul tasto.
Occasionally, 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. Coll'arco 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 technique of using it to produce sound on a stringed instrument has led to many important historical and regional developments in music, as well as the variety of instruments used.Pictorial and sculptural evidence from early Egyptian, Indian, Hellenic, and Anatolian civilizations indicate that plucked stringed instruments existed long before the technique of bowing developed. In spite of the ancient origins of the bow and arrow, it would appear that bowed string instruments only developed during a comparatively recent period.
The Chinese yazheng is a zither played with a bow. The earliest Chinese source of the pipe zither yazheng, bowed with a stick, is from the 8th century. The use of rubbing sticks in Central Asia seems to be older. Presumably this playing technique was first used in lutes in Sogdiana around the 6th century, from where it reached China.
Eric Halfpenny, writing in the 1988 Encyclopædia 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 as having originated with the "barbarians" of Central Asia.
The Central Asian theory is endorsed by Werner Bachmann, writing in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Bachmann notes evidence from a 10th-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, 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 to protect the finish of the bow.
However the bow was invented, it spread quickly and widely. The Central Asian horse peoples occupied a territory that included the Silk Road, along which merchants and travelers transported goods and innovations rapidly for thousands of miles. This would account for the near-simultaneous appearance of the musical bow in the many locations cited by Halfpenny.