Scan 105
The American history and encyclopedia of music .., 1908
6 lines. Read by computer on 8 September 2026. Printed page 77. See the scan on archive.org.
1knot is placed in the opposite end of the mesh, which is drawn to the other extremity of the bamboo, and the knot fastened in a cleft. The strain of the hair gives the bamboo a natural outward curve. The first horsehair bow was doubtless of this description. As years passed the curve gradually grew less, until the bowstick during the Twelfth Century became nearly straight. Later it acquired the inward curve, which still exists. This curve renders possible a decided tension of the hair. At intervals attempts were made to improve the method of tightening the hair. About the Fourteenth Century two fingers were inserted between the hair and the stick. The Seventeenth Century bow was provided with ratchet points over which the hair could be hooked, and during the next century Corelli introduced the use of a screw to replace the ratchet points.
3Tartini, 1740, made the bow longer and more elastic than previously, but Francois Tourte, a Frenchman (1747-1835), brought the bow to its present state of perfection—white horsehairs stretched over a stick of Brazilian lance-wood or snake-wood curved inwardly. It was Tourte who decided the extent of the curve and the length of the bow, and contrived the method of pinching the horsehairs by a piece of wood in order to present a flat surface to the strings, in this way greatly increasing the volume of sound and the power of expression. The violin bow should be a little over twenty-nine inches in length, and the hairs should be twenty-six inches long. Formerly from eighty to one hundred hairs were considered necessary in constructing a perfect bow, but now the number varies from one hundred and seventy-five to two hundred and fifty.
5It is not hard to imagine the bowed ravanastron passing through Persia to Arabia, and thence to northern Africa. Here it fell into the hands of the Saracens, who, when they went to Spain, carried with them the rebab or rebec. However, the use of the bow is claimed with the rote, one of which instruments was found over the bones of a German knight of the Seventh Century. In outline the rote resembles
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