Know Your Bow

Your instrument’s bow is deceptively simple: a stick of wood and a frog to hold the hair. The bow reached its final form much later than the violin; it was not until the beginning of the 19th century, in Paris, that François Tourte perfected the design (his bows, like the instruments of Stradivari, are still considered to be without equal). The stick, for anything better than the cheapest grade of bow, is almost always made from a tropical hardwood called pernambuco, so called because it comes from the valley of the Pernambuco River in Brazil. It is an extremely dense wood—like ebony, it sinks in water—but it combines flexibility with great strength and durability.

Posted September 26, 2012 By James N. McKean on String Notes
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