The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use Part 1

The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use.

by Henry Saint-George.

PREFACE.

It has always appeared to me a curious thing that the bow, without which the fiddle could have no being, should have received so scant attention, not alone from the community of fiddlers, but also from writers on the subject. I only know of one book in which the subject is adequately handled. Out of every twenty violinists who profess to some knowledge of the various types of Cremonese and other fiddles of repute and value, barely three will be met with who take a similar interest in the bow beyond knowing a good one, or rather one that suits their particular physique, when playing with it. They are all familiar with the names of Dodd and Tourte, but it is seldom that their knowledge extends beyond the names. As for a perception of the characteristics of bows as works of art, which is the standard of the fiddle connoisseur, it hardly has any existence outside the small circle of bow makers. Of the large number of undoubted fiddle experts now in London, but a small proportion profess to any similar knowledge of bows, and of these there are but few who can be credited with real authority in the matter.

It is, therefore, with the object of bringing the bow into more general notice that this little book has been written, and, to drop into the good old prefatory style, if I succeed in arousing the interest of but one violinist in the bow for itself, and apart from its work, my efforts will not have been in vain.

My most hearty thanks are due to those who have so kindly a.s.sisted me in my work. To _Messrs. W. E. Hill and Sons, Mr. E. Withers, Mr. F.

W. Chanot, Mr. J. Chanot, and Messrs. Beare, Goodwin and Co._, for the loan of valuable bows for the purpose of ill.u.s.tration, and _Mr.

A. Tubbs_, who, in addition to similar favours, most kindly placed much of his valuable time at my disposal, and very patiently helped me to a sufficient understanding of the bow maker's craft for the purpose of collecting materials for the second part of the book.

The third part, in which I treat of the use of the bow, I have purposely avoided making a systematic handbook of bowing technique, for to handle that subject as exhaustively as I should wish would require a separate volume. As stated in Chapter XIV., that portion of the book is addressed almost exclusively to teachers, and in the few cases where I have gone into questions of technique it has been limited to those points that appear to be most neglected or misunderstood by the generality of teachers.

"Anything that is worth doing is worth doing well" is a maxim that teachers should hold up to themselves and their pupils, and this reminds me of an exhortation to that effect in "Musick's Monument,"

that quaint and pathetic book of Thomas Mace (1676) with which I cannot do better than end my already too extensive preamble.

"Now being Thus far _ready_ for _Exercise_, attempt the _Striking of your Strings_; but before you do _That_, Arm yourself with Preparative _Resolutions to gain a Handsome--Smooth--Sweet--Smart--Clear--Stroak_; or else Play not at all."

THE BOW: Its History, Manufacture and Use.

PART I.

THE HISTORY OF THE BOW.

CHAPTER I.

ORIGIN OF INSTRUMENTS--FRICTIONAL VIBRATION--THE BOW DISTINCT FROM THE PLECTRUM--THE TRIGONON--BOWING WITH VARIOUS OBJECTS.

As has been observed by the most talented writer on this subject "the history of the bow is practically that of the violin." It will therefore be readily understood that in the earlier portions of this _opusculum_ it will be impossible to separate them to any great extent; also, I must crave my readers' indulgence for going over a considerable tract of already well trodden ground. My excuse must be my desire for completeness, for, as I propose to deal with the evolution of the modern bow, I find it difficult to arbitrarily select a starting point to the exclusion of all previous details, whether of ascertained fact or conjecture. Therefore I will follow the invariable custom of fiddle literature and go back to the regions of speculative history for a commencement.

Speculative history is, I fear, more fascinating to the writer than convincing to the reader, so I will be as brief as possible in this particular, nor will I, like one John Gunn who wrote a treatise on fingering the violoncello, fill up s.p.a.ce with irrelevant matter such as the modes and tunings of the ancient Greek lyres, etc., highly interesting as these subjects may be, although it is a very tempting method of getting over the "bald and unconvincing" nature of the bow's early history.

We of the present generation, having the bow in its most perfect form, are apt to take its existence for granted; we do not think that there must have been a period when no such thing was known, and, consequently, fail to appreciate the difficulties in the way of its discovery or invention. With some other instruments it is different.

For wind instruments we have a prototype in the human voice, and one may reasonably suppose that the trumpet cla.s.s were evolved by slow process from the simple action of placing the hands on either side of the mouth to augment a shout. The harp may have been suggested by the tw.a.n.ging of a bow-string as an arrow left the archer's hand, and a seventeenth century play writer fancifully attributed the invention of string instruments to the finding of a "dead horse head." Here, of course, would be found a complete resonance-chamber and possibly some dried and stretched sinews--quite sufficient to suggest lute-like instruments to men of genius such as must have formed a much larger proportion of the world's population in prehistoric times than is the case to-day; for brilliant as our great men of art and science are, there are few who can be called _originators_ in the simplest meaning of the word.

Thus, then, we have wind instruments, harps and lutes; but the bow eludes us. If we are determined to find a suggestion in nature we must turn to certain insects of the cricket and gra.s.shopper tribe.

Many of these, in particular the locusts, are thorough fiddlers, using their long hind-leg as a bow across the edge of the hollow wing-case to produce the familiar chirping sound.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 1.]

Naturally, the strings are absent, but here is to be found a perfect example of the excitation of frictional vibration. Whether this was actually what suggested the bow is another matter.

For my own part, while admitting that in close observation of nature our early forefathers were probably supreme, I prefer to think that the innate concept of the bow was latent in the human mind and only waited some fortunate accident of observation to start it into being.

I am aware, however, that this is a highly unscientific position to take up.

That there should be so little in the way of adequate record concerning the development of this indispensable adjunct of the violin is not a matter for great wonderment, for, as has elsewhere been shown, the earlier bowed instruments were of such primitive construction, and, consequently, so weak in tone that they were totally unsuited to the purposes of ceremonial or pageantry; two subjects which form prominent features in ancient pictorial representations. And if we come to what we fondly term "more civilized" times, we find such crude drawings of early viols and kindred instruments that we must not be surprised if such an apparently unimportant detail as the bow should receive still more perfunctory treatment at the hands of the artist.

We must also remember that the word "fiddlesticks" is still applied to anything that is beneath contempt in its utter lack of importance.

Undoubtedly the idea of exciting vibrations in a stretched string by means of friction is one of great antiquity; so much so, indeed, that the question of origin becomes merely one of conjecture. True, the majority of writers look upon the bow as a development of the _plectrum_, but this is a theory that I must confess does not strike me as being satisfactorily probable. To paraphrase a popular expression, "fingers were made before _plectra_," the latter being an "improvement" on nature's contrivance. And I see no reasonable objection to the supposition that friction may have been used as a means of tone-production prior to the introduction of the _plectrum_.

The great dissimilarity between the producing of sound by plucking, and that by friction is such that I see no occasion to evolve one from the other and consider their introduction most probably coeval.

When we come to the direct percussion of a string, as in the dulcimer, piano, etc., we at once perceive a possible connection between the hammer of the one and the rod or bow of the other: the accidental colliding of the bow with the strings of its accompanying instrument would soon suggest experiments ending in the forming of dulcimer-like instruments.[1] But if we grant that the art of plucking a string had first advanced as far as the subst.i.tution of a _plectrum_ for what Mace calls the "nibble end of the flesh," I fail to see how such an implement could suggest the friction of a string, as, if short enough for manipulation in its original use, it would not be long enough to excite the continuous vibrations characteristic of the bow.

[Footnote 1: The bow is frequently used now as a means of percussion for certain effects.]

I do not accept the theory of a long _plectrum_ used for pizzicato purposes, as I consider, with Engel, that such an implement would have been unmanageably clumsy even for the primitive music of the ancients. Whenever I see a rod, as in the accompanying drawing of the a.s.syrian Trigonon, I maintain that its purpose was to excite frictional vibrations.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 2.]

The method of performance readily suggests itself in this case as it will be seen that it would be quite possible and convenient for the player to pa.s.s his rod--probably a rough surfaced reed--_between_ the strings. I do not think it could have been used for percussion as, in that case, it would surely have had some hammer like projection at its end; a salient feature hardly to be missed by the artist as were the less obtrusive details of the true bow in later ages.

We are all familiar with the oft repeated anecdote of Paganini's playing with a light reed-stem, and I remember having seen at Christmas festivities in country homesteads, the village fiddler playing a brisk old-time tune with the long stem of his clay pipe; also, quite recently, I read an account of an "artiste" in the States who charmed his enlightened audiences with his performances on the violin by using a variety of heterogeneous objects in lieu of the conventional bow, including a stick of sealing-wax and a candle!

Now I do not wish to prove that the implement held by the benign a.s.syrian in Fig. 2, is either of the last named articles, but merely to draw attention to the fact that friction-tone is producible without the aid of a "bow" proper.

The use of plain reed stems or other suitable rods for the production of continuous sounds would naturally soon give place to more elaborately constructed implements; although Ruhlmann gives a drawing of a portion of the sculptured decorations that adorn the famous "Golden Porch" at Freiburg which represents a crwth and bow of the twelfth century, the bow being merely a straight rod ornamented at either end with a simple k.n.o.b (Fig. 3).

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 3.]

He also gives a drawing of a violist of the fourteenth century, sculptured on the cathedral at Cologne, where the bow is even simpler in form. It is, however, impossible to judge how far the sculptor's imagination, or lack of observation, may have been responsible for these representations, so that they can hardly be taken as reliable evidence of the use of such primitive contrivances at so late a period.

CHAPTER II.

ORIENTAL ORIGIN OF THE BOW--INDIAN, CHINESE AND OTHER EASTERN BOWED INSTRUMENTS.

In attempting to trace the use of the bow to its source we are obliged to content ourselves with the generalized statement that it is undoubtedly of oriental origin. Thus, that it _had_ an origin is proved beyond "all possible, probable shadow of doubt."

But whether the first form of bowed instrument became extinct prehistorically, or whether it still survives, as some suppose, in the Ravanastron of India, is not easily determined.

My own personal belief in the extreme antiquity of the bow is such as almost to justify the quaint statement of Jean Jacques Rousseau that Adam played the viol in Paradise.