Scan 78
A catalogue of the Lyon & Healy collection of rare old violins, violas …, 1916
10 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1THE VIOLIN BOW
3THE VIOLIN BOW as it is known today did not begin to assume its present form until about the beginning of the 18th century. The bow as used by early violinists, Corelli, for example (born 1653, died 1713), was a clumsy affair, something like the modern double-bass bow. A few years later during Tartini's time (born 1692, died 1770), it had developed to the extent of being made lighter and the first attempt had been made to give the stick a variety of tension by means of a screw.
5The importance of the bow is not fully realized by most players, for it is safe to say that without the bow as developed by Francois Tourte, and as it is known today, the modern symphony orchestra would not have been developed.
7The late Theodore Thomas, founder of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and one of the greatest conductors this country has known, wrote us on October 19, 1903, in a letter about the Hawley Collection, as follows: "It was, in particular, Stradivarius who created a tone which appealed to musicians, and Francois Tourte, who invented a bow which made the modern orchestra with all its shading and nuances—and a Beethoven—possible. Without these instruments and the Tourte bow invented over a century later, the music of today would have been developed on altogether different lines."
9Francois Tourte was to the violin bow what Stradivarius and Joseph Guarnerius were to the violin, and even more, for he found the bow as
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