Hi, I'm Lisa Grodin, and I'm here to talk about one of my favorite subjects which is historic Bows
the bow is the violinists muse a
Historic bow sings and it articulates in the native language of the music that was originally written for it
so
You have a soundscape that's recaptured in live in color so it delights us today and every bow has its own personality
sometimes I think of it as
Really having up a great dane and a chihuahua. There are both dogs. They are just different, so if you take a
17th Century Style Bow and
A modern bow they can do a lot of the same things, but they just do them differently
there was a very famous violinist name Viotti who said
The Viola sail of Shape which means the violin it's the bow
It's all about the bow at the bows. It's it puts the whole mechanism of the violin to work
I'm going to show you a 17th century bow
This bow sometimes called a dagger bow. It's pointed. It's really sharp on the end and
Sometimes it's called a dance bow or a Monteverdi bow it
Slopes towards this point, and it has very little bow hair here. It skips and plays very articulately
And it has a clip in frog that is the frog can be removed um
Sometimes you have to put things between the frog and the bow hair when it gets really humid, so you you have some traction there
But this kind of bow plays 17th century music
unbelievably well
this type of bow was popular in 18th century in
Italy the music was very very florid and passionate and this kind of bow
sustains that beautiful tension all the way to the end of the bow
This was popular in France as well as in italy
This is a transitional bow is
Ideal for playing beethoven and if you look at the shape, it's a little bit different from the Baroque bow
the Baroque bow slopes from the frog to the point and the sound naturally tapers
the transitional Bow
Has a little smile in the middle
so comparing the Sonata bow that was popular in Italy and in France and
The transitional bow you can see that the shape of the tip of the bow is a little bit different
And you can also see why this style bow would sustain even more powerfully at the point
Here is another transitional bow
It's perfect for playing music of Mozart at this time
The Bows were not standardized
So you could have a lot of variation in Different bows
This brings me to the Modern Bow
These two are modern in the sense that they have a screw mechanism on the bottom
They have the smiley shape in the middle and a right angle at the point and that's key because these bows
Sustained sound and projected sound even more differently than the transitional boasted
These two Modern bows. Have a very very similar design
They look a little bit different because they're made out of different materials
but they're based on the model that Francois Tort made popular back in the
1800s he set the standard for Modern Bows
He inspired the kind of bow that everybody would have imitated from that point on in bow making
So you can see these two bows are very very similar
this one on the bottom is made out of wood and the one on the top is made out of Carbon fiber and
The one on the top does not warp it does not break as far as I know the one on the bottom is breakable
malleable and
fabulous these both ideal from Modern music
This is A 17th century Dagger Bow
This bow is perfect for playing 18th century French music
This bow is ideal for playing the music of Corelli
When I play I mcLennan ox music by Mozart this is the bow I choose
Beethoven
This is a Modern bow
This is Lisa Grodin for voices of music
you