Chapter XI: Violin Bows

He who wields the violin bow aright wields the wand of a magician. If ever mortal could call the spirits from the vasty deep, it is the virtuoso who throws into sympathetic vibrations the cords of a Cremona.

The wood of his wand, from the forests of Fernambuc or Pernambuco, choice and seasoned, and delicately graduated and tapering, receives through the varying pressure of his five fingers the waves of his personal magnetism.

The back of his thumb will often touch even the hairs which are in direct contact with the strings, and therefore the psychic and emotional vibrations of the artist’s soul are wedded closely to the physical pulses of sound which throb in the agitated air column of the Cremona, and flow forth in the air waves (like light and heat), filling space with their musical magnetism, and seeking only the medium of kindred spirits and suitable organisms to utter through the vibrating human nerve tissues of others the open secrets of the player’s soul.

No Mesmer, or magician of the East, controls a more subtle force than does the violinist, who, face to face with his audience, lifts his tapering wand and rules therewith the

“_Tides of music’s golden sea setting towards eternity._”

By those who indite exhaustive historical or constructive treatises on the violin--the bow, like the violin, has been treated archæologically--we have been led up to ancient monuments and shown bows (or things supposed to be bows) on vases, sculptured frescoes, missals and other monkish manuscripts. We have been sent out to wild islands and continents, and introduced to the Ravanastron bow of ancient Ceylon; the bow of the Moorish rebab; the ninth, eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth century viol bows of Europe--all more or less primitive, with sometimes gut for hair, or hair loose, hair limp, and with no means of regulating its tension except by the introduction of the fingers to press the hair or tighten it for a moment.

In Paul Veronese’s Marriage at Cana (Versailles) this is well shown. Paul himself was a viol player, and apparently held his bow chiefly by the hair for this same regulative purpose.

C. Simpson (the division “viol”), 1667, gives a somewhat more advanced viol bow, in which the hand splits the difference between wood and hair and rests on both (Fig. iii). Of course, when held to the chin, this clumsy finger regulation of the hair tension would be less convenient to manage, and hence we come upon the eighteenth century with a strip of notched metal (Fig. iv.) and a movable sliding nut.

I

Maggini Nic Amati Dolphin Strad Joseph Guarnerius
1630 1641 1714 1734

II

Corelli 1700 Cramer 1770 Viotti 1780 Tartini 1740

III

Finger control 17th cent.

IV

Cremabliere control 18th cent.

V

Screw control 19th cent.: Paganini’s bow Tourte 29 inch ’34

VI

19th cent.: Hair control. head. handle. ]

As for our purpose the violin proper began in the eighteenth century with the emergence of its true type from the viol tribe, so for our purpose the violin bow begins with the emergence of the violin. A glance at the bows of Corelli (1700), Cramer (1770), Viotti (1780), and Tartini (1740) (Fig. vi.) will show the evolution in the direction of the Tourte bow; and although Tourte (1740) is generally credited with substituting the screw for the crémaillère, it will be noticed that Corelli’s bow (1700) has already got the screw. But is the Corelli bow authentic, or in reality a bow subsequent to 1740, the earliest working date of Tourte _père_?

With François Tourte, the younger son, culminated the art of violin bow making. He is the Stradivari of the bow. We give his portrait, but father and son were both master-workers. Although the Stentor (Fig. vi.) bow’s head has superseded, for some reason, the more rounded form of François Tourte, nothing has been done since in advance of Tourte, and “after Tourte” is still the greatest recommendation a bow can have.

It is easy to see what called forth François Tourte. He came in answer to a need. He doubtless heard of Tartini and examined his bow. It was comparatively short and cumbrous. Forty years afterwards Viotti comes to Paris, and with him dawns a new era in violin playing. Refinements and delicacies of tone, upper shifts and varieties of execution, various styles of bowing, dealing with staccato, arpeggio, and rubato, methods varied and brought to perfection, demanded qualities of balance, lightness, and elasticity which would have been quite thrown away on the old sawing and scraping school of the seventeenth century. The very Cremona violins, beginning to mature as the century waned, called aloud for a suitable and sympathetic companion to caress, excite, charm, draw from them their sweetest tones and most vigorous powers.

François Tourte was rescued from the clock-making business, to which he had been early apprenticed, by the sheer bent of his own genius. His brother, who worked with his father, was not the genius, and, as is often the case, the father failed to see which of the two sons was to carry on the fame of the house, and there may have been jealousies and disputes besides. The poor stuff given François to work upon when, after eight years of watch-making, he was allowed to enter the parental workshop a little, suggests that he was the male Cinderella of the family.

He had to deal with strips of old sugar-barrels and fashion them into bows, which he sold for about fifteen-pence each. But as soon as he got a free hand he experimented with all kinds of wood, and arrived at the conclusion that the only wood suitable for his purpose was Fernambuc wood. It combined stiffness and lightness, but was very difficult to obtain, on account of so many ports being in those disturbed times blockaded. Fernambuc wood was only imported for dyeing purposes, and the price had risen in Paris to five francs a pound. Then, as only pieces with straight grain were required, whole trees might be cut up in search of a few likely strips. This accounts for the high prices of Tourte bows, even when first produced.

They were doubtless largely labours of love with this matchless artificer, who could neither read nor write. The nut would be often made of tortoise-shell, jewelled with mother-of-pearl, and gleaming with a gold screw button. These cost £12, and would now fetch, if ever they came into the open market, fancy prices. His bows, mounted in silver with ebon nuts, sold for three guineas, and now fetch £30.

Tourte _père_ originated the backward bend of the bow, which is not cut but artificially bent by heat; but both the father’s and the eldest son’s bows are held to be now too short for the strain of execution put upon them by modern players--not so François Tourte’s, and all bows made “after Tourte.”

He fixed the proportions--length, between 29·134 inches and 29·528 inches. The weight of the bend is nicely poised with the gold, tortoise-shell, or ebon of the nut; in each is a small wedge, as may be seen in Fig. viii., which nips the hairs and keeps them flat. The fine selection of hairs, 150 to 200 (modern exigencies require more, or up to 250), the careful flattening of it out, the preference for live hair, or hair combed out and not taken from dead horses who may have lain some time in the shambles; above all, the exquisitely graduated thicknesses, now held to be _de rigueur_, all characterise the intuitive genius of Tourte.

I say advisedly “intuitive genius,” for Tourte had no education but that of a watch-maker. This may, indeed, have given him his fine sense of delicate and exact proportions, but it is still remarkable that examinations of the diameter of Tourte bows in different places give uniform results. The bows swell or taper in the same place, and as the air columns in the violins of Strad give the same note, so do the bows of Tourte yield the same proportions, which it has not been found safe or expedient to depart from.

Violin bows may be smaller or larger, _i.e._ shorter or longer, as far as I can see, without any detriment to Tourte’s principle; children, women, and exceptionally long armed men may have to use them, but the proportions, the wood, the balance, even the mechanique, must be left as Tourte left them--perfect.

The one point in mechanique in which the invention of F. B. Vuillaume may be thought to have improved upon Tourte is in his fixed nut for viola, tenor, or violoncello bows. This consists of a metal nut, which alone is moved by the screw up and down inside the main nut, which remains rigid; thus the length of the hair exposed for playing always remains the same.

The only other original maker of the first rank and excellence, who has been nicknamed the English Tourte, was John Dodd. He was born in 1752, and lived chiefly at Kew, and there he was buried. He was always out at elbows, even when his reputation was at its height. Poor Dodd had his friends and admirers. He was his own worst enemy; he was undersized in stature, and walked with a shuffling gait. He wore his clothes until they were in rags, and a broad-brimmed hat somehow gave him an additionally dilapidated air.

I am afraid he drank, for although his habits were said to be regular, the most regular of them all was his four daily visits to the public-house, where he consumed what to less experienced topers seemed an immoderate quantity of a drink called “pearl.”

When the old fellow was known to be excessively hard up, kind Mr Richard Platt, a musical professor of the town, and Dr Sellé, who has given us some of the above details, came to the rescue. But the bow-maker tired them all out, and ended at last in the Richmond Workhouse.

I will not say whether he can be exactly cited as a frightful example of the degrading effects of liquor, for he died of bronchitis at the altogether respectable age of eighty-four.

Indeed, he had his qualities; no bribe or stress of want could make him swerve from his sense of what was due to his art.

His wood is as magnificent as his workmanship. He doubtless had his secret, but it was possibly one that he could not impart. He would take no apprentice, for fear he should learn the trick; and whether he could or could not teach it, he refused £1000 offered him by some one who wanted to learn it. Dodd’s bows are not very uncommon; he died only in 1836, and, strange to say, these true musical wands do not run into a five-pound note yet (1898).

John Dodd the bow-maker must not be confounded with Thomas Dodd the fiddle dealer and varnisher, who employed Fendt and Lott to make the fiddles. John Dodd the bow-maker was the brother of Thomas Dodd. John lived in Blue Bell Alley, Mint Street, Southwark, before he went to Kew, but the rustic suburbs suited his habits, and as he had acquired a European reputation before he died, it little mattered where he lived.

Vuillaume of Paris made excellent bows, and even founded a school of bow-making. Many bows that don’t sell as his are stamped “d’après Vuillaume,” “scuola de,” which is certainly more respectable than a forged label to which violin dealers do so commonly resort.

Vuillaume’s hollow steel bows have never “caught on,” though good players have used them now and again. But then a good player can use any bow, and whilst a good bow is a luxury, a real violinist will be able to perform very respectably with a bad one. It is said that Paganini on one occasion excited the wonder and enthusiasm of his audience by performing on his instrument with a long churchwarden clay pipe, and at another time with a rush!

It would be unfair even in a sketch like this, which only professes to seize the salient point of general interest to collectors and amateurs, not to mention Jacques Lafleur (1760-1832), an admirable imitator of Tourte.

Lupôt, brother of the great violin-maker (1774-1837), was the first to line with metal the groove in the underside of the nut, to prevent wear and tear of the ebony or tortoise-shell.

Domminique Peccate (1810-74) is also thought to have almost rivalled Tourte. He was originally a barber, and transferred the delicacy of hand required in tonsorial operations to the fine adjustments and elegant tapering and octagonal proportions of violin bows.

Peccate went to Vuillaume in 1826, stayed with him eleven years, and then became foreman to François Lupôt. He ended his life at Mirecourt, where he began it; latterly he worked entirely on his own account.

We have now among us one James Tubbs, whose bows are already known throughout the world owing to their attractive appearance and good balance. Time will alone decide Tubbs’ position in the scale of bow-makers, for time alone will determine the question of “last,” “warp,” and flexibility, and general endurance of efficiency.

On rosin, about which pages have been unnecessarily written, I have but one word to say--get it pure. You can do this by confining yourself to the best shops, or those who deal with them. Go to Hill, Chanot, Hart, Withers, and Vuillaume.

Some ignorant people talk of rosin as “greasing the bow.” Smooth horsehair or greased horsehair is, of course, useless. It is not the absence but the presence of friction which sets the strings in vibration; it is the surface of the horsehair, roughened by infinitesimal particles of rosin, which prevents the horsehair touching the string with a continuous pressure, so that it receives in reality a succession of tiny shocks. This is what renders the succession of vibrations so rapid as to sound continuous.

Without rosin, the violin, in spite of strings and bow, and the art of all Cremona, would be mute.

To average rosiners let me give a word of advice, early given me by my old master, Ouri, pupil of Frank Mori: “Don’t rub the horsehair down smooth with long sweeps, but powder the rosin off into the hair with quick rubs and a light hand; in this way you avoid rubbing the oleaginous particles of the gum into stickiness.”

I notice that the best players use plenty of rosin and never let the bow get thirsty. I remember the matchless violinist Remenye taking up my violin and bow and calling aloud for rosin. “Why, you have no rosin on; you cannot expect the violin to speak without.” Yet I thought my bow had plenty of rosin on, but it was not enough for Remenye, who powdered it away in clouds. But please to remember that, however thirsty the bow may be, the _violin_ does not require to drink, and the habit of smothering and smearing its beautiful smooth belly with thin glutinous dust is a most vile one, and worthy only of third-rate second violins at fourth-rate music halls. These musical galley-slaves may not have time to clean up; you of the Stradivari and the Amati violins and the Tourte and the Dodd bows _ought_ to have, or you are no fit guardian of such treasures.