The Short

262 STRING BOWING
were many accepted ways of achieving more or less pronounced degrees of separation and smoothness. The Cramer
and Tourte bows readily allowed a semi-springing stroke, using a tiny length of bow about the middle, and this became
popular with certain solo players for particular types of continuous passage-work during the last decades of the
eighteenth century; these bows, especially the Tourtes, were also capable of producing an effective martelé at the point,
which became a characteristic bowstroke for players influenced by the Viotti school. The staccato in a single bowstroke
(a series of rapid martelé-type strokes executed in the upper half of the bow), FrÄnzl's mastery of which Mozart
praised in 1777, was widely regarded as an indispensable resource of the best players. Other kinds of lifted and
rebounding strokes were certainly employed from time to time for special effects, but there is nothing in the literature
of the period to suggest that springing or thrown strokes in the middle or lower half of the bow were normally used
for faster-moving notes with staccato marks. In the vast majority of circumstances where this type of stroke is used
today, it seems highly probable that most players of the second half of the eighteenth century and first half of the
nineteenth century would have used the bow in a very different manner. In fact, although the modern bow is eminently
capable of these types of stroke, it seems probable that the principal factors in the bow's evolution were a search for
greater volume and power and the achievement of a more effective cantabile.
During the eighteenth century and to a considerable extent during the nineteenth century, with all these designs of bow,
the upper half was much more extensively used, especially for a succession of shorter strokes, than it is in modern
violin playing. Whenever the writers of string methods during the late Baroque, Galant, and Classical periods were
specific about which part of the bow would normally be employed for shorter strokes, they invariably referred to the
upper half, or indeed to the top quarter of the bow. Corrette in 1738 instructed that ‘quavers and semiquavers are
played at the tip of the bow’, 461 Robert Crome in the 1840s cautioned ‘take care you don't let your Bow Hand come too
near the Fiddle, but rather play with the small end of the Bow, unless it be to lengthen out a long note’. 462 Reichardt in
1776 succinctly categorized the types of strokes which he recommended for different lengths of notes as follows:
First long notes, and for these observe equal strength throughout the whole of the bow, [Ex. 7.1(a)] then faster
notes, for which one makes a stroke quickly through the whole bow; [Ex. 7.1(b)] then others, for which one only
uses half the bow, from the middle to the point, and then those which one staccatos with the top quarter of the bow.
[Ex. 7.1(c)] It is best if one
461
L'Ecole d'Orphée, méthode pour apprendre facilement à jouer du violon dans le goût franÇois et italien avec des principes de musique et beaucoup de leÇons, op. 18 (Paris, 1738), 7.
462
Fiddle, New Modell'd
(London, 1911), 204.
(London, [c.1750]), quoted in Edmund van der Straeten, The Romance of the Fiddle: The Origin of the Modern Virtuoso and the Adventures of his Ancestors