straight line, a defect often observed in cheap bows. The sticks are now of either cylindrical or octagonal section, and are lapped or covered with gold thread or leather for some inches beyond the nut in order to afford a firm grip. The length of the stick was definitely and finally fixed by François Tourte at 29.34 to 29.528 in.
The centre of gravity in a well-balanced violin bow should be at 19 cm. (712 to 734 in.) from the nut;[1] in the violoncello bow the hair measures from 60 to 62 cm. (24 to 25 in.), and the centre of gravity is at from 175 to 180 mm. (7 to 714 in.) from the nut. In consequence of the flexure given to the stick, Tourte found it necessary to readjust the proportions and relative height of head and nut, in order to keep the hair at a satisfactory distance from the stick, and at the necessary angle in attacking the strings so as to avoid contact between stick and strings in bowing. In order to counterbalance the consequent increased weight of the head and to keep the centre of gravity nearer the hand, Tourte loaded the nut with metal inlays or ornamental designs.
The screw or ferrule, at the cylindrical end of the stick held by the hand, provides the means of tightening or loosening the tension of the hair. This screw, about 314 in. long, hidden within the stick, runs through the eye of another little screw at right angles to it, which is firmly embedded in the nut.
The nut is a wooden block at the screw end of the stick, the original purpose of which was to keep the hair at a proper distance from the stick and to provide a secure attachment for the hair. The whole nut slides up and down the stick in a groove in answer to the screw, thus tightening or relaxing the tension of the hair. In the nut is a little cavity or chamber, into which the knotted end of the hair is firmly fixed by means of a little wedge, the hair being then brought out and flattened over the front of the nut like a ribbon by the pressure of a flat ferrule. The mother-of-pearl slide which runs along a mortised groove further protects the hair on the outside of the nut. Bows having these attachments of ferrule and slide, added by Tourte at the instigation of the violinist Giovanni Battista Viotti, were known as archets à recouvrements.
The hair is chosen from the best white horsehair, and each of the 150 to 200 hairs which compose the half-inch wide ribbon of the bow must be perfectly cylindrical and smooth. It is bought by the pound, and must be very carefully sorted, for not more than one hair in ten is perfectly cylindrical and fit for use on a high-grade bow. Experience determines the right number of hairs, for if the ribbon be too thick it hinders the vibration of the strings; if too thin the friction is not strong enough to produce a good tone. Fétis gives 175 to 250 as the number used in the modern bow,[2] and Julius Rühlmann 110 to 120.[3] Tourte attached the greatest importance to the hairing of the bow, and bestowed quite as much attention upon it as upon the stick. He subjected the hair to the following process of cleansing: first it was thoroughly scoured with soap and water to remove all grease, then steeped in bran-water, freed from all heterogeneous matter still adhering to it, and finally rinsed in pure water slightly blued. When passed between the fingers in the direction from root to tip, the hair glides smoothly and offers no resistance, but passed in the opposite direction it feels rough, suggesting a regular succession of minute projections. The outer epithelium or sheath of the hair is composed of minute scales which produce a succession of infinitesimal shocks when the hair is drawn across the strings; the force and uniformity of these shocks, which produce series of vibrations of equal persistency, is considerably heightened by the application of rosin to the hair. The particles of rosin cling to the scales of the epithelium, thus accentuating the projections and the energy of the attack or “bite” upon the strings. With use, the scales of the epithelium wear off, and then no matter how much rosin is applied, the bow fails to elicit musical sounds—it is then “played out” and must be re-haired. The organic construction of horsehair makes it necessary, in hairing the bow, to lay the hairs in opposite directions, so that the up and down strokes may be equal and a pure and even tone obtained. Waxed silk is wound round both ends of the hair to form a strong knot, which is afterwards covered with melted rosin and hardens with the hair into a solid mass.
The head, 1 in. long and 716 in. wide at the plate, is cut in one piece with the stick, an operation which requires delicate workmanship; otherwise the head is liable to snap at this point during a sforzando passage. The head has a chamber and wedge contrivance similar to that of the nut, in which the other end of the hair is immovably fixed. The hair on the face of the head is protected by a metal or ivory plate.
The model bow here described, elaborated by François Tourte as long ago as between 1775 and 1780 according to Fétis,[4] or between 1785 and 1790 according to Vidal,[5] has not since been surpassed.
That the violin and the bow form one inseparable whole becomes evident when we consider the history of the forerunners of the viol family: without the bow the ancestor of the violin would have remained a guitar; the bow would not have reached its present state of perfection had it been required only for instruments of the rebec and vielle type. As soon as the possibilities of the violin were realized, as a solo instrument capable, through the agency of the bow, of expressing the emotions of the performer, the perfecting of the bow was prosecuted in earnest until it was capable of responding to every shade of delicate thought and feeling. This accounts in a measure for the protracted development of the bow, which, although used long before the violin had been evolved, did not reach a state of perfection at the hands of Tourte until more than a century and a half after the Cremona master had given us the violin.
The question of the origin of the bow still remains a matter of conjecture. 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 superior culture gave to arts and sciences in the south-west of Europe. We have, however, no well-authenticated representation of the bow before the 9th century in Europe; the earliest is the bow illustrated along with the Lyra Teutonica by Martin Gerbert[6], 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 11th centuries[7] 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. The earliest representation of a bow yet discovered is to be found among the fine frescoes in one of the chapels of the monastery of Bawit[8] in Egypt. The mural paintings in question were the work of many artists, covering a considerable period of time. The only non-religious subject depicted is a picture of a youthful Orpheus, assigned by Jean Clédat to some date not later than the 8th century A.D., but more probably the work of a 6th-century artist. Orpheus is holding an instrument, which appears to be a rebab, against his chin, in the act of bowing and stopping the strings. The bow is similar in shape to one shown in the Psalter of Labeo Notker, Leipzig, 10th century, mentioned farther on. On Indian sculptures of the first centuries of our era, such as the Buddhist stupas of Amaravati, the risers of the topes of Jamal-Garhi, in the Yusafzai district of Afghanistan (both in the British Museum), on which stringed instruments abound, there is no bow. The bow has remained a primitive instrument in India to this day; a Hindu tradition assigns its invention to Ravanon, a king of Ceylon, and the instrument for which it was invented was called ravanastron; a primitive instrument of that name is still in use in Hindustan.[9] F. J. Fétis,[10] Antoine Vidal,[11] Edward Heron-Allen,[12] and others have given the question some consideration, and readers who wish to pursue the matter farther are referred to their works.
There is thus no absolute proof of the existence of the bow in primitive times. The earliest bow known in Europe was associated with the rebab (q.v.), the most widely used bowed instrument until the 12th century. The development of this
- ↑ See F. J. Fétis, Antoine Stradivari, pp. 120-121 (Paris, 1856).
- ↑ Fétis, op. cit. p. 123.
- ↑ J. Rühlmann, Die Geschichte der Bogeninstrumente (Brunswick, 1882), p. 143.
- ↑ Fétis, op. cit. p. 119.
- ↑ Antoine Vidal, Les Instruments à archet (Paris, 1876–1878), tome i. p. 269.
- ↑ De Cantu et Musica Sacra (1774), tome ii. pl. xxxii. No. 18; the MS. has since perished by fire.
- ↑ See, for an illustration of the bowed instrument on one of the sides of a Byzantine ivory casket, 9th century, in the Carrand Collection, Florence, A. Venturi, Gallerie Nazionali Italiane, iii. (Rome, 1897), plate, p. 263; and Add. MS. 19,352, British Museum, Greek Psalter, dated 1066.
- ↑ See Jean Clédat, “Le Monastère et la nécropole de Baouît,” in Mém. de l’Inst. franç. d’archéol. orient. du Caire, vol. xii. (1904), chap. xviii. pl. lxiv. (2); also Fernand Cabrol, Dict. d’archéol. chrétienne, s.v. “Baouît.”
- ↑ For an illustration, see Sonnerat, Voyage aux Indes orientales (Paris, 1806), vol. i. p. 182.
- ↑ Op. cit. pp. 4-10.
- ↑ Op. cit. vol. i. p. 3 and pl. ii.
- ↑ Edward Heron-Allen, Violin-making as it was and is (London, 1884), pp. 37-42, figs. 5-10.
