The Short

268 STRING BOWING
Dictionary of Musical Terms in the fourth decade of the nineteenth century, J. A. Hamilton wrote: Pointedly, distinctly. In
violin music, this term implies that the notes are to be played with the point of the bow.' 470 And as late as the 1870s the
anonymous author of The Violin: How to Master it. By a Professional Player, discussing the use of the upper half of the bow,
remarked: ‘All rapid music, which is bowed and not slurred, ought to be played with this part; all that is fine and
delicate in violin playing is found in the upper half of the bow’; he only allowed the use of the lower half when ‘the
short stroke is wanted crisp, loud and noisy’. 471
The latter type of bowing in the lower half would scarcely have been envisaged by most eighteenth-and early
nineteenth-century players except as a special effect or in connection with chords and other strongly emphasized
separate notes. The use of such strokes in succession, however, is described by Baillot and Charles de Bériot, and was
certainly used by a few virtuosi in the first half of the nineteenth century, including Molique, Lafont, and Louis Maurer.
Its widespread use by certain schools of players is implied in a review of Spohr's Violinschule in 1833, which criticized
his failure to discuss it; the reviewer observed that the French described the bowing in question as: ‘very dry (with the
heel of the bow)’. 472 It is significant, however, that this painstaking reviewer, who praised the precision of Spohr's
bowing instructions as a whole, did not identify any other important omission in his treatment of the subject; for
Spohr's extensive catalogue of bowstrokes does not mention anything resembling thrown or springing bowings except
the fouetté stroke (a special effect produced by throwing the bow forcibly onto the string at the point), though it deals
with various circumstances in which there is time to produce articulation by a lifting and replacing action of the bow.
Bowings in nineteenth-century editions of the standard German chamber music repertoire frequently imply the use of
the upper half of the bow in places where modern players almost always use sprung or thrown strokes in the middle
or, more frequently, the lower half. Bowed editions by Ferdinand David, Joseph Joachim, Andreas Moser, and other
nineteenth-century German editors clearly show that many passages that are now generally played off the string were
then intended to be played in the upper half with a détaché, martelé, or slurred staccato bowstroke. How little this
accords with the modern way of playing such passages will be well known to chamber music players who, when sightreading
works by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann, and others from these editions, have found
themselves caught at the ‘wrong end’ of the bow by the editor's bowing. None of the above-mentioned violinist-editors
rejected springing and thrown strokes entirely, though David (b. 1810)
470 Art. ‘Spiccato’.
471 (Edinburgh, c. 1880), 55.
472 Caecilia, 15 (1833), 277–80. There are two printing errors in the French at this point, for it reads: ‘tresrec [?sec] (du telon [?talon] de l'archet)’.