Bow (music)

In music, a bow is a device pulled across the strings of a string instrument in order to make them vibrate and emit sound.

A bow typically consists of a length of wood with some other material stretched between its ends. The type of bow used to play the violin and related instruments has many hairs stretched between its ends, but bows used in other cultures often stretch a single piece of string between the ends of the wood.

Fine modern bows used to play orchestral string instruments of the violin family (the violin, viola, cello and double bass) are usually made of Pernambuco wood from Brazil, and strung with horse-hair. Other parts of a fine modern bow are traditionally made with silver or gold, ebony wood from Africa, ivory, pearl shell, leather, and sometimes tortoise shell. This would compose what is called the frog and the finger grip. Fine synthetic bows are also made of fiberglass and other man made materials. Cheaper bows can also be made of synthetic materials and less suitable types of wood.

The correct number of horse hairs a bow maker or luthier uses to hair and rehair bows for violin family instruments is 150 hairs for each bow. Inexpensive bows often use nylon or synthetic hair. Rosin, which is sticky and made from tree sap, needs to be regularly applied to the bow hair, so that the bow moving across the instrument's strings will cause the string to vibrate and produce a tone.

The kind of bow in use today was brought into its modern form largely by the bow-maker François Tourte in 19th century France. Pernambuco wood which was imported into France to make textile dye, was found by the early french bow masters to have just the right combination of strength, resiliency, weight, and beauty. Even so, a violin or a bow maker must choose sound quality above all, when choosing wood to make bows and instruments. A common practice even today, is to reserve the best and most beautiful tone wood for bows and instruments for a makers most expensive works.In order to shape the curve or “cambre” of the bow stick, a maker must first carve and then gradually heat the stick. A metal or wooden template is used to get the exact models curve and shape while heating. The art of bow making has changed little since the 19th century.

Playing an instrument with the wood of the bow rather than the hair or string is known by the Italian phrase col legno. Arco in Italian is the indication to use the bow hair to create the sound. The characteristic long, sustained, and singing sound produced by the violin, viola, violoncello, and double bass is due to the drawing of the bow against their strings. This sustaining of musical sound with a bow is comparable to a singer using breath to sustain sounds and sing long, smooth, or legato melodies. Without the bow the violin family would have a more percussive, plucked, or pizzicato character, like the guitar. See also: Sul ponticello, Sul tasto, Col legno.

Also called a fiddlestick.

The origin of the bow

The question of when and where the bow was invented is of interest because the bow made possible several of the most important instruments in music today. Authorities give different answers to this question, and this article will give only the predominant opinion.

Scholars are agreed that stringed instruments as a category existed long before the bow. There was a long period?possibly thousands of years?in which all stringed instruments were plucked.

In fact, it is likely that bowed instruments are not much more than a thousand years old. Eric Halfpenny, writing in the 1988 Encyclopedia Brittanica, says "bowing can be traced as far back as the Islamic civilization of the 10th century ... it seems likely that the principle of bowing originated among the horse cultures of Central Asia, whence it spread quickly through Islam and the East, so that by 1000 it had almost simultaneously reached China, Java, North Africa, the Near East and Balkans, and Europe." Halfpenny notes that in many Eurasian languages the word for ?bridge? etymologically means "horse," and that the Chinese regarded their own bowed instruments as having originated with the "barbarians" of Central Asia.

The Central Asian theory is endorsed by Werner Bachmann, writing in the New Grove. Bachmann notes evidence from a tenth century Central Asian wall painting for bowed instruments in what is now the city of Kurbanshaid in Tajikistan.

Circumstantial evidence also supports the Central Asian theory. All the elements that were necessary for the invention of the bow were probably present among the Central Asian horse peoples at the]] same time:

• In a society of horse-mounted warriors (the horse peoples included the Huns and the Mongols), horsehair obviously would have been available.
• Central Asian horse warriors specialized in the military bow, which could easily have served the inventor as a temporary way to hold horsehair at high tension.
• To this day, horsehair for bows is taken from horses in northern climates, since such hair provides more friction. The Web site specifically endorses Mongolian horsehair as superior for bows.
• Rosin, crucial for creating sound even with coarse horsehair, is used by traditional archers to maintain the integrity of the string and (mixed with beeswax) to protect the finish of the bow; for details, see these links: , , .

From all this it is tempting to imagine the invention of the bow: some Mongol warrior, having just used rosin on his equipment, idly stroked his harp or lyre with a rosin-dusted finger and produced a brief continuous sound, which caused him to have an inspiration; whereupon he seized his bow, restrung it with horsehair, and so on. Obviously, the degree to which this fantasy is true will never be known.

However the bow was invented, it soon spread very widely. The Central Asian horse peoples occupied a territory that included the famous Silk Road, along which goods and innovations were shipped rapidly for thousands of miles (including, via India, by sea to Java). This would account for the near-simultaneous appearance of the musical bow in the many locations cited by Halfpenny.