Up bow and down bow

August 11, 2007 at 11:43 PM

Have you ever wondered what playing would be like if someone had found a way to create a continous tone on the violin? No up bows and down bows just a "virtual" round spinning bow?

Huge amounts of violin music would suddenly become impossible to play. Have you ever noticed and thought about the things you do between up bow and down bow? What if you didn't have this space to make changes and that you had to move from note to note, chord to chord with tone still occurring.

I bought a critical edition of the Paganini Caprices recently. The editor said that there are no accents on any of the chords in Caprice No. 14 and that all notes of all chords are to be sounded simultaneously and fully without retakes. It is extremely difficult with an accented detache but a legato harmonium sound seems completely unattainable. Even a flatter bridge (like Paganini's) would just introduce another set of problems.

Paganini aside, I have found that playing technical passages legato is a great tool for cleaning up my technique. It exposes the sneaky little cheats I use to hop around the violin and forces me back to honesty.

I don't really want a round spinning bow but it is a useful thought.

I read this to my wife, an organist, who reminds me that this is very much the challenge of the organ.

From Roy Sonne
Posted on August 13, 2007 at 11:20 PM

Imagine, if you will, an orchestration of the 14th Caprice, in the style closest to Paganini's which would be the style of a Rossini Overture. Almost all the eighth notes would be staccato, detached. The sixteenths, as in measure 1, would also probably be staccato, except where they are specifically marked with a slur. There would be a wide range of dynamics, from PP to FF. There would probably be a fair number of accented notes.

In the first measure and most (but not all) similar measures) the first note should be down bow. The second note should also be down bow with a retake.

It is indeed good practice to play everything legato. However the resetting of your hand during the space between staccato notes or chords is not a "Sneaky little cheat." It is an important technical device which all fine players use.

From Corwin Slack
Posted on August 14, 2007 at 3:07 AM

I was being hyperbolic. It does help though to do some chords in a legato way because it does expose the differnce between real technique and cheap facility.

My attempts at Pag 14 are definitely in the detache/martele/staccatto mode. I just found it intriguing that an editor would consider a legato Pag 14 was what Rossini wanted. There are, for sure, no staccatto or accent marks in th manuscript.

From Corwin Slack
Posted on August 14, 2007 at 12:35 PM

I meant "what Paganini wanted".

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Up bow and down bow

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