BASICS
Bow hold
How to find the bow hold best suited to your unique natural hand shape
BY SIMON FISCHER
PROFESSOR AT THE GUILDHALL AND MENUHIN SCHOOLS
The first finger is at a normal
distance from the second
Exaggerate the spread of the
fingers as an experiment
The fourth finger naturally curves
when it is positioned on its tip
The finger automatically straightens
when it is placed on its pad
94 THESTRAD SEPTEMBER 2013
The essentials of string technique
HOW EXACTLY SHOULD YOU HOLD THE BOW? There are many different schools
and approaches, but in the end the answer depends on your unique hands. Think of
all the variations you could have: the length and thickness of the fingers, which could
have pointed or rounded ends; the width of the hand at the base knuckle joints; the
length of the thumb and little finger relative to the other fingers; the degree of
general flexibility between the fingers and in the hand, and so on.
Because of this, naturalness must always win over theory. I often remember the
final of an international violin competition I saw when I was a student. The winner
was a very good violinist, and a particularly fresh and interesting musician. But if you
looked at her bow hand, you'd think she had never had a violin lesson in her life.
She was doing something odd with her wrist all the time, pushing it down below the
level of the bow, and her right-hand finger placement seemed haphazard and
undisciplined. It was all entirely natural and unconscious - she just played.
As a student hungry to develop technique, I saw this as a wake-up call: it made
me realize that you can have a 'textbook' bow hold and not be an interesting player
or musician. You can also develop your own, less conventional bow hold and win
competitions with the compelling qualities of your music making.
BASIC PRINCIPLES
Whether your bow hold is textbook or more individual, there are some basic
principles that can be very helpful when used as a framework. Different approaches
to technique around the world are all united by the natural laws of cause and effect,
proportion, leverage and balance. These must always apply, whatever the
philosophy of playing.
For example, how far away from the thumb should the first finger sit on the bow?
The laws of leverage dictate that the further away the first finger is from the thumb,
the more it adds to the weight of the bow into the string. The closer to the thumb you
place the first finger, the more it needs to do to achieve the same result. Think of
how a door handle is positioned opposite the hinges, and how hard you would have
to pull if the handle were positioned close to the hinges. Or try pressing a piano key
down right at the back end of the key, where it feels stiff and heavy. There may be
different ways of holding the bow, but this principle of leverage remains the same.
Try playing strongly in the upper half of the bow, with a normal bow hold (figure 1).
Then play the same strokes with the first finger exaggeratedly further from the
thumb (figure 2), and notice how far less effort is needed to achieve the same result.
BASIC FINGER PLACEMENT
The tip of the thumb contacts the bow at two points: one side leans against the
raised black thumb-piece, and the other side leans on the stick or thumb leather. The
placement of the thumb is diagonal, and its contact point changes depending on
where in the bow you are playing.
Place the bow on the A string at the heel. Note how the tip of the thumb is in
contact with the bow: is it more to the left of the tip, in the centre, or more to the
right?
Play to the point. Notice how the thumb's contact point moves to a slightly
different place.
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Do not position your second
finger opposite, or to the
right of, your thumb
Rest your second finger slightly to
the left of centre of your thumb
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BASICS
This is a movement that you would rarely do deliberately: you would normally let it
happen naturally on its own. Equally, you must not prevent It from happening.
One of the most frequent causes of problems In the right hand comes from placing
too much of the pad of the thumb on the bow. It is very easy to prove that it should be
placed on its tip: place the fourth finger of the left hand on the string on its tip and see
how the finger naturally curves (figure 3). Place it on the string on the pad and see
how it naturally straightens (figure 4).
It Is exactly the same on the bow: if you place the pad of the fourth finger on the
stick, the finger wants to straighten completely. Similarly, if the thumb is placed too
much on the pad, it automatically straightens and becomes stiff. When it is placed on
its tip, it naturally bends and retains its flexibility. There should be an imperceptible
bending-and-straightening movement of the thumb in just about every bow stroke we
play. If this flexibility is lost, the whole hand will lose its give.
The teacher Raphael Bronstein recommended that players with very short arms
using a full-size bow should position the thumb higher up the bow, a centimeter or so
away from the curve of the thumb-piece. The rest of the bow hold is the same,
relative to the thumb, as when holding the bow normally.
WITH THE MODERN BOW HOLD, the first finger has two contact points: on top of
the stick (sometimes on the middle joint of the finger, sometimes between the middle
joint and the nail joint) and on the side of the stick. With the old Leopold Auer bow
hold - as seen in the playing of Heifetz, Milstein and many other great players of the
past - the first finger contacts the stick between the base knuckle joint and the middle
joint. This hold has not entirely gone away. A rather less extreme version of it is still
used by great modern players, for example the Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos.
The second finger's only contact point is at the crease near the nail joint. The circle
made with the thumb is the centre and basis of the bow hold. The nail joint of the
second finger is entirely redundant when playing the violin. Children often try to touch
the tip of their thumb with the tip of the second finger, but this is an unnecessary
action that leads to a loss of freedom in the entire hand.
It is important that the second finger lies not directly opposite the thumb (figure 5)
but instead slightly left of its centre (figure 6) otherwise you end up with a feeling
of three fingers on one side of the thumb and one finger on the other, instead of two
and two with the thumb in the middle. However, this placing of the second finger to
the left of the thumb must only be very slight: placing it too far to the left immediately
causes tension in the base of the thumb. If it is not far enough, however, you will lose
power in the leverage of the bow into the string.
There should often be a strong contact between the pad of the third finger and the
side of the frog, with the finger sitting between the round part of the thumb-piece and
the centre of the frog. At the point, the contact between the third finger and the bow is
at the crease near the nail joint, not the pad.
When I was twelve years old, a new teacher changed my bow hold to one where
the second and third fingers were very low, so that the tips of my fingers were almost
off the lower edge of the frog. It felt cramped and I didnt like it at all. A couple of years
later another teacher asked me to do the opposite: his approach was all about feeling
the bow in the tips of the fingers. My hand then seemed too high above the bow. If
you exaggerate that approach only slightly, it feels as though you are using your
fingers like pincers. The right approach has to be a middle course between those two
extremes.
The tip of the fourth finger sits on top of the bow - or on the upper inside edge,
depending on the level of tilt. For most hands, a simple guide is to keep the line
of the right edge of the frog continuing up the right side of the finger.
CONTACT WITH THE BOW
To answer the question of how firmly you should hold the bow, think of how you
would hold a spade. How far apart should your hands be? How high or low
should they be positioned, and how far apart? The answer is simply that it
depends on what and how you are digging. Similarly, in powerful playing, and
when playing chords or strong martel strokes, the fingers naturally hold the bow
more firmly. When playing soft, delicate strokes, the fingers might barely contact
the bow at all.
SEPTEMBER 2013 THE STRAD 95