[1] It is not likely that any remains of it now exist.
BOW (pronounced "bo"), a common Teutonic word for anything bent[1] (O.
Eng. _boezha_; cf. O. Sax. and O.H.G. _bogo_, M.H.G. _boge_, Mod. Ger.
_bogen_; from O. Teut. stem _bug_- of _beugan_, Mod. Ger. _biegen_, to
bend). Thus it is found in English compound words, e.g. "elbow,"
"rainbow," "bow-net," "bow-window," "bow-knot," "saddle-bow," and by
itself as the designation of a great variety of objects. The Old English
use of "bow," or stone-bow, for "arch," now obsolete, survives in
certain names of churches and places, e.g. Bow church (St
Mary-in-Arcubus) in Cheapside, and Stratford-le-Bow (the
"Stratford-atte-Bowe" of Chaucer). "Bow," however, is still the
designation of objects so various as an appliance for shooting arrows
(see ARCHERY), a necktie in the form of a bow-knot (i.e. a double-looped
knot), a ring or hoop forming a handle (e.g. the bow of a watch),
certain instruments or tools consisting of a bent piece of wood with the
ends drawn together by a string, used for drilling, turning, &c., in
various crafts, and the stick strung with horsehair by means of which
the strings of instruments of the violin family are set in vibration. It
is with this last that the present article is solely concerned.
_Bow in Music_.--The modern bow (Fr. _archet_; Ger. _Bogen_; Ital.
_arco_) consists of five parts, i.e. the "stick," the screw or
"ferrule," the "nut," the "hair" and the "head." The stick, in
high-grade bows, is made of Pernambuco wood (_Caesalpinia
brasiliensis_), which alone combines the requisite lightness, elasticity
and power of resistance; for the cheaper bows American oak is used, and
for the double-bass bow beech. A billet rich in colouring matter and
straight in the grain is selected, and the stick is usually cut from a
templet so as to obtain the accurate taper, which begins about 4-1/4 in.
from the nut, decreasing according to regular proportions from 3/8 in.
at the screw to 3/16 at the back of the head. The stick is cut
absolutely straight and parallel along its whole length with the fibre
of the wood; it is then bent by heat until it is slightly convex to the
hair and has assumed the elegant _cambrure_ first given to it by
Francois Tourte (1747-1835). This process requires the greatest care,
for if the fibres be not heated right through, they offer a continual
resistance to the curve, and return after a time to the rigid straight
line, a defect often observed in cheap bows. The sticks are now of
either cylindrical or octagonal section, and are lapped or covered with
gold thread or leather for some inches beyond the nut in order to afford
a firm grip. The length of the stick was definitely and finally fixed by
Francois Tourte at 29.34 to 29.528 in.
The centre of gravity in a well-balanced violin bow should be at 19
cm. (7-1/2 to 7-3/4 in.) from the nut;[2] in the violoncello bow the
hair measures from 60 to 62 cm. (24 to 25 in.), and the centre of
gravity is at from 175 to 180 mm. (7 to 7-1/4 in.) from the nut. In
consequence of the flexure given to the stick, Tourte found it
necessary to readjust the proportions and relative height of head and
nut, in order to keep the hair at a satisfactory distance from the
stick, and at the necessary angle in attacking the strings so as to
avoid contact between stick and strings in bowing. In order to
counterbalance the consequent increased weight of the head and to keep
the centre of gravity nearer the hand, Tourte loaded the nut with
metal inlays or ornamental designs.
The screw or ferrule, at the cylindrical end of the stick held by the
hand, provides the means of tightening or loosening the tension of the
hair. This screw, about 3-1/4 in. long, hidden within the stick, runs
through the eye of another little screw at right angles to it, which
is firmly embedded in the nut.
The nut is a wooden block at the screw end of the stick, the original
purpose of which was to keep the hair at a proper distance from the
stick and to provide a secure attachment for the hair. The whole nut
slides up and down the stick in a groove in answer to the screw, thus
tightening or relaxing the tension of the hair. In the nut is a little
cavity or chamber, into which the knotted end of the hair is firmly
fixed by means of a little wedge, the hair being then brought out and
flattened over the front of the nut like a ribbon by the pressure of a
flat ferrule. The mother-of-pearl slide which runs along a mortised
groove further protects the hair on the outside of the nut. Bows
having these attachments of ferrule and slide, added by Tourte at the
instigation of the violinist Giovanni Battista Viotti, were known as
_archets a recouvrements_.
The hair is chosen from the best white horsehair, and each of the 150
to 200 hairs which compose the half-inch wide ribbon of the bow must
be perfectly cylindrical and smooth. It is bought by the pound, and
must be very carefully sorted, for not more than one hair in ten is
perfectly cylindrical and fit for use on a high-grade bow. Experience
determines the right number of hairs, for if the ribbon be too thick
it hinders the vibration of the strings; if too thin the friction is
not strong enough to produce a good tone. Fetis gives 175 to 250 as
the number used in the modern bow,[3] and Julius Ruhlmann 110 to
120.[4] Tourte attached the greatest importance to the hairing of the
bow, and bestowed quite as much attention upon it as upon the stick.
He subjected the hair to the following process of cleansing: first it
was thoroughly scoured with soap and water to remove all grease, then
steeped in bran-water, freed from all heterogeneous matter still
adhering to it, and finally rinsed in pure water slightly blued. When
passed between the fingers in the direction from root to tip, the hair
glides smoothly and offers no resistance, but passed in the opposite
direction it feels rough, suggesting a regular succession of minute
projections. The outer epithelium or sheath of the hair is composed of
minute scales which produce a succession of infinitesimal shocks when
the hair is drawn across the strings; the force and uniformity of
these shocks, which produce series of vibrations of equal persistency,
is considerably heightened by the application of rosin to the hair.
The particles of rosin cling to the scales of the epithelium, thus
accentuating the projections and the energy of the attack or "bite"
upon the strings. With use, the scales of the epithelium wear off, and
then no matter how much rosin is applied, the bow fails to elicit
musical sounds--it is then "played out" and must be re-haired. The
organic construction of horsehair makes it necessary, in hairing the
bow, to lay the hairs in opposite directions, so that the up and down
strokes may be equal and a pure and even tone obtained. Waxed silk is
wound round both ends of the hair to form a strong knot, which is
afterwards covered with melted rosin and hardens with the hair into a
solid mass.
The head, 1 in. long and 7/16 in. wide at the plate, is cut in one
piece with the stick, an operation which requires delicate
workmanship; otherwise the head is liable to snap at this point during
a _sforzando_ passage. The head has a chamber and wedge contrivance
similar to that of the nut, in which the other end of the hair is
immovably fixed. The hair on the face of the head is protected by a
metal or ivory plate.
The model bow here described, elaborated by Francois Tourte as long
ago as between 1775 and 1780 according to Fetis,[5] or between 1785
and 1790 according to Vidal,[6] has not since been surpassed.
That the violin and the bow form one inseparable whole becomes evident
when we consider the history of the forerunners of the viol family:
without the bow the ancestor of the violin would have remained a guitar;
the bow would not have reached its present state of perfection had it
been required only for instruments of the _rebec_ and _vielle_ type. As
soon as the possibilities of the violin were realized, as a solo
instrument capable, through the agency of the bow, of expressing the
emotions of the performer, the perfecting of the bow was prosecuted in
earnest until it was capable of responding to every shade of delicate
thought and feeling. This accounts in a measure for the protracted
development of the bow, which, although used long before the violin had
been evolved, did not reach a state of perfection at the hands of Tourte
until more than a century and a half after the Cremona master had given
us the violin.
The question of the origin of the bow still remains a matter of
conjecture. Its appearance in western Europe seems to have coincided
with the conquest of Spain by the Moors in the 8th century, and the
consequent impetus their superior culture gave to arts and sciences in
the south-west of Europe. We have, however, no well-authenticated
representation of the bow before the 9th century in Europe; the earliest
is the bow illustrated along with the Lyra Teutonica by Martin
Gerbert[7], the representation being taken from a MS. at the monastery
of St Blaise, dating in his opinion from the 9th century. On the other
hand, Byzantine art of the 9th and 11th centuries[8] reveals
acquaintance with a bow far in advance of most of the crude contemporary
specimens of western Europe. The bow undoubtedly came from the East, and
was obviously borrowed by the Greeks of Asia Minor and the Arabs from a
common source--probably India, by way of Persia. The earliest
representation of a bow yet discovered is to be found among the fine
frescoes in one of the chapels of the monastery of Bawit[9] in Egypt.
The mural paintings in question were the work of many artists, covering
a considerable period of time. The only non-religious subject depicted
is a picture of a youthful Orpheus, assigned by Jean Cledat to some date
not later than the 8th century A.D., but more probably the work of a
6th-century artist. Orpheus is holding an instrument, which appears to
be a rebab, against his chin, in the act of bowing and stopping the
strings. The bow is similar in shape to one shown in the Psalter of
Labeo Notker, Leipzig, 10th century, mentioned farther on. On Indian
sculptures of the first centuries of our era, such as the Buddhist
_stupas_ of Amaravati, the risers of the topes of Jamal-Garhi, in the
Yusafzai district of Afghanistan (both in the British Museum), on which
stringed instruments abound, there is no bow. The bow has remained a
primitive instrument in India to this day; a Hindu tradition assigns its
invention to Ravanon, a king of Ceylon, and the instrument for which it
was invented was called _ravanastron_; a primitive instrument of that
name is still in use in Hindustan[10]. F.J. Fetis[11], Antoine
Vidal[12], Edward Heron-Allen[13], and others have given the question
some consideration, and readers who wish to pursue the matter farther
are referred to their works.
There is thus no absolute proof of the existence of the bow in primitive
times. The earliest bow known in Europe was associated with the rebab
(q.v.), the most widely used bowed instrument until the 12th century.
The development of this instrument can be traced with some degree of
certainty, but it is quite impossible to decide at what date or in what
place the use of the bow was introduced. The bow developed very slowly
in Europe and remained a crude instrument as long as it was applied to
the rebab and its hybrids. Its progress became marked only from the time
when it was applied to the almost perfect guitar (q.v.), which then
became the guitar fiddle (q.v.), the immediate forerunner of the viols.
[Illustration: Drawn from the ivory cover of the _Lothair Psalter_, by
permission of Sir Thomas Brooke.