JAVS Spring 2023

From the Workshop

Evolution of the Viola Bow by Dr. Rayen Sakka

72 cm—and heavier—between 45 g and 56 g. Such a development is due to Tartini. At first, the long bow did not replace the short; great musicians like P.A. Locatelli (1695-1764) and G.B Somis (1686-1763) continued to use it. However, from the second half of the century the long bow came to dominate, and most musicians exploited it. Subsequently, the bow of the violin became longer than that of the viola and cello. As a result, the affinity between the length of the bows with their instruments has been discarded. 3

In this article, we will discuss the evolution of the bow from the 17th century. It is called the soul of the violin family; the bow stroke is the main means by which the musician brings life to his instrument: The bow stroke is undoubtedly the most important quality for the one who plays a bow instrument, because the strength, softness, intensity and duration of the sound, not only depend largely on the bow stroke, but it is also from it that everything that gives soul and expression to the execution derives. 1 What are the stages of the evolution of the bow and in which way does this manifest the contribution of the Tourte brothers? The Bow from the Seventeenth Century Through the iconography of the 17th century, one can experience an affinity between the length of the bows with their instruments. The violin bows had a size that varied from 58 cm to 64 cm, with their weight ranging between 37 g and 42 g. Their defect was the short distance between the horsehair and the wand at the spade. The luthiers, looking for a solution, increased this distance while bending the wand a few centimeters outwards. Therefore, this improvement made all parts of the bow more flexible and affective.

The table above illustrates approximately the weights and lengths of violin, viola and cello bows between the 1700s and 1780s. 4 Moreover, in his book on the famous luthier Antoine Stradivari, F.J. Fétis described the developments of the bow in a series of eight illustrations, ranging from Mersenne in 1620 to Viotti in 1790. One of them was imported from the violin method (1798) of Michel Woldemar (1750-1815), who had a collection of bows of great Italian violinists like Corelli, Vivaldi, Tartini, Locatelli and Pugani. 5 In addition, Louis Baillot (1771-1842) furnished his new violin method entitled “ L’art du violon, ”, with a figure that shows the progress of the bow in form and length over the 17th, 18th, and early 19th centuries. 7 Later, always in search of a better sound that meets the stylistic characteristics of the time, the convex bow lost ground to a bow quite straight and then concave. This flexible bow shape makes it possible to produce an

Let’s see the convex shape of the bow at Fétis:

... It was once believed that it could only be obtained a good performance by means of a very rigid bow, because the effects were little varied, the instrumentalist was only required to play a wide and frank game, where almost all the sounds were detached... It was imagined to give the bow a convex curve roughly similar to that of an arc . 2

In the 18th century, Italian luthiers modified the bow so that it became a little longer— between 69 cm and

Journal of the American Viola Society / Vol. 39, No. 1, Spring 2023

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