You may as well get two violinists. A violin can play a double-stop, and has four strings. Two violins would cover all four notes at once. No need to invent a new bow for THAT. But, if one man like Telmanyi would like to play.....then this is very fine.
This sounds much better than the modern way. This is the lost technique I've always wanted to play. Modern setup really kill many possibilities. It's worse for your shoulders and arms anway
I believe the Vega bow was based on a historical misunderstanding: that the baroque bridge, which is flatter than the modern one, and the baroque bow would have allowed an 18th-century to play unbroken four-note chords. So this performance is a misinformed attempt at historically informed performance.
Fascinating speculation. That could explain why contemporary illustrations of German baroque bows don't seem to show enough curvature to play four notes at a time, pretty much the only valid argument I've seen for the use of arpeggiation. Has anyone actually tried this with a baroque bridge and a bow that has the curve shown in contemporary illustrations?
Many. Speculation has been over for more than half a century. There are now two generations of baroque violinists, playing in period-instrument groups all over the world and and heard in thousands of recordings. When Sergio Luca recorded all the Bach sonatas and partitas in 1977 on a restored 1669 Amati and an original c. 1700 bow, the Nonesuch box set of 3 LPs included a booklet explaining, with photographs, how the baroque violin and bow differ from the modern ones, but I don’t know if you’d get the same package in an LP booklet that would have to shrink the photos. Sigiswald Kuijken recorded the sonatas and partitas on Harmonia Mundi in 1992. In 1997 Elizabeth Wallfisch and Monica Huggett recorded them for Hyperion and Erato/Warner, respectively. You can find bits of these on youtube. I'm sure there are others. Some videos of unaccompanied Bach on Baroque violin: Sigiswald Kuijken: th-cam.com/video/nuY5NH3VeDU/w-d-xo.html Rachel Podger: th-cam.com/video/QVb2xMXcyuw/w-d-xo.html Podger, with a baroque violin/bow, coaching a student on modern violin in the Chaconne: th-cam.com/video/uhcPDo3UPw0/w-d-xo.html Amandine Beyer playing the Chaconne: th-cam.com/video/GXI2w1R8LbA/w-d-xo.html
Some engravings that I've seen show a more deeply curved bow, e.g., in this reference. Also note that "Even Leopold Mozart (1719-1787) in his well-known violin anthology, is of the opinion that three-part chords should be played simultaneously with one stroke of the bow. The style of playing of Niccolo Paganini (c1782-1840) was described in detail by Carl Guhr, at the time Director of the Frankfurt Opera, in his violin anthology of 1829. Guhr followed Paganini over a long period, observing his performances, and according to him Paganini, playing his own compositions in which there are numerous three and four part chords, played them simultaneously." www.baroquemusic.org/barvlnbo.html
Beware the internet; there's a lot of silly things on it and you found a seriously unreliable source. The website to which you link must be the source of your statements about the "German baroque bow" that was drastically different from other bows of the time, because the idea is otherwise is unknown: you'll notice the paragraphs on the subject don't cite anything in support of that fanciful proposition. (All baroque bows, BTW, were held with thumb on the hair.) The engraving in your linked page shows a couple of players playing unrecognizable instruments using what appear to be medieval bows that look like you could shoot arrows with them. You can conclude either that the engraver was not being at all accurate, or that the instruments are not violins. Either way the engraving is not a source of information about violin playing in Bach's day. And since we know that the modern Tourte bow can't play four notes at a time, how could Paganini, who used such a bow, have done it? When someone writes that he played them "simultaneously" (assuming the word is an accurate translation) it has to mean that he was able to keep all four voices moving, just as a violinist playing Bach with a Tourte bow does. And if you want to know what Leopold Mozart wrote, it's better to read his book than rely on a misinterpretation of it.
No offense, but it seems to me that you're going to rather great lengths to wave away the contemporary testimony about Paganini's playing -- why would Guhr have even mentioned the "simultaneous" playing of three- and four-part chords if Paganini had arpeggiated them? -- as well as Leopold Mozart's opinion on the matter (and was there anyone more qualified?).
Whatever one may think of this sometimes lugubrious performance, I think there's overwhelming evidence that this was the way Bach intended his works to be played, using the German baroque bow with variable tension (accomplished in those days with the violinist's thumb). He indicated no arpeggios in the manuscripts, except where he intended the violinist to play them for effect, and the arpeggiation has never sounded right to me. We have to be careful not to let habit influence our reactions here, lest we fall into the trap of those who are disappointed to see the full colors of old master paintings restored after they've been cleaned!
Not only is there no evidence at all that Bach intended violin chords to be played unbroken, but we know it's impossible unless you invent a gimmick like the Vega bow. Actual baroque bows and baroque violins have been in common use among early music specialists for decades, and they don't allow unbroken four-note chords, regardless of what the right thumb does. You have to play chords pretty much the same you play them on a modern violin. Bach would not call this an "arpeggio," or anything other than normal playing, so he would not have notated it.
But again: 1) Spreading a four-note because that's the way you MUST play it technically is not an arpeggio, and thus would not be notated as one, 2) Nobody notates "play this the way you always play such things and cannot play any other way." So the absence of a performance direction that no one would ever write is not evidence.
I wrote an unclear sentence just now. I should have written "Spreading a four-note chord because technically that's the way you MUST play it is not an arpeggio."
The problem being that he wrote "arpeggio" above some of those four-note chords. Why would he have bothered to write it out if that was the only way the chords could be played, and he omitted the instruction elsewhere?
this bow makes the music too heavy... the individual melodies cannot be hear clearly. the music cannot flow properly because it is too weighed down by the mass of notes.
Do you mean the typical Hammond B3 sound? I think that especially the e and a strings have a much clearer sound and the vibrato sounds very precise, very unlike the wabbly b3 sound.
An impressive feat- but why? It's completely unnecessary, adds nothing to the music except noise, and takes away lightness, shape and phrasing. The organ-like quality of the continuous notes is intriguing for a minute or two but soon starts to become tiring to listen to. If you want to experiment with bows why not try an 18th century model that Bach might himself have recognised? I respect the performer for trying something unusual with great skill, but I don't think it's very convincing musically.
+Dai Griffiths have you seen the bows in use in Bach's day? They play chords beautifully- but arpeggiated (as indeed do our current day bows, for that matter). Bach was himself a string player and knew what to expect from players: when he wrote for violin he surely expected it to sound like a violin, not an organ!
+Oliver Webber. There are at least two different things to say. Firstly, I'm a fiddle player, but not a classical musician, although I do love classical music. So I am no expert on early music. This also gives me a non-standard view on what sounds right. And to my ear the 'organ-like' quality sounds just fine. I have always been disturbed by the insistent arpeggios of Bach' solo violin music, and so the arguments put forward by people like this sound intuitively right to me: musiikkistoria.blogspot.co.uk/2010/02/baroque-german-violin-bow.html. Secondly, I do believe that it is hard for us today, with all our highly refined violin technique, to imagine that it might have been very different a few hundred years ago. This constrains the way that we can conceive of how we should expect a violin to sound. In my fiddling I use a standard baroque bow (in as much as there is such a thing), but not a curved German bow such as I have seen illustrated, where you can adjust the tension on the hair with the fingers. Another variable is the curve of the bridge. Like many 'old time' and bluegrass players, I have a bridge that has a significantly lower curve than a classical bridge, to facilitate playing multiple strings. I would be very interested to know if flatter curves were also used in baroque or earlier music to facilitate double stops and chords. I am curious to know to what extent a curved bow, finger control of the tension, and a flatter curve on the bridge could together make it possible to play 3 (or even four?) notes together, Bach notated. I imagine that most violin teachers would be disturbed by any of these three!
+Dai Griffiths of course if you enjoy it that's great- but being a baroque specialist myself what I can say is that this way of playing the violin would be bizarre to say the least to Bach and his contemporaries: bows like this did not exist. The view that *did* exist do a wonderful job of rendering Bach's music in my opinion but of course that doesn't mean everyone will prefer that way.
+Oliver Webber The plus is a) the innovation (this kind of bow never really existed back then) and the ability to play stuff that is impossible with the regular bow and b) There are a couple of places where you HAVE to break the chords on a regular violin, which breaks the underlying rhythm in an awkward manner, and this bow solves it. Now the negatives. a) There is a rhythm in the Chaccone that is maintained by splitting the chords correctly. By playing every chord whole, there are some places where the rhythm is totally dissolved into a static mass of notes. b) Sometimes the melodic line must linger while the other voice appear and disappear, which you do on a regular or even a baroque violin. But here at so many places it sounds like the additional voices are "over sustained" -- they're continuously "on" even where're they're not needed and it obscures the main melody. At some points you can't say where the main line went. and c) It's like the violin can't decide if it has to sound like an organ or a violin at times. The contrast between the two makes it look like the instrument has split personalities.
this is beyond interesting. I've always wondered what those chords would sound like when unbroken.
Wow. This bow really produces a singing tone in the double and triple stops.
What a nice work to give us an idea of how it souds chords unbreaken. Thak you for share.
You may as well get two violinists. A violin can play a double-stop, and has four strings. Two violins would cover all four notes at once. No need to invent a new bow for THAT. But, if one man like Telmanyi would like to play.....then this is very fine.
Sounds fantastic.
Sounds like an accordion
No per niente! Al massimo Assomiglia a un quartetto d'archi
many practice hard and some eventually manage play the chacona. from those a few could play like that.
this is the way how it should be played!
where can i buy a bow like this?
It sounds scary, but he did a great job.
I like this more. Even if a Baroque bow and bridge would only allow you to play 2-3 strings at once, not 4, I still think this sounds nice.
This is what it’d sound like on a hurdy-gurdy, I presume. The mechanism is certainly the same, assuming you disengage the drones on the hurdy-gurdy.
a hurdy-gurdy only is able to play one melody at a time.
This sounds much better than the modern way. This is the lost technique I've always wanted to play. Modern setup really kill many possibilities. It's worse for your shoulders and arms anway
vreemd, maar very nice sound !
Where can one buy this Vega bach bow?
Did he recorded the all partitas?
Yes th-cam.com/video/nXACgL5eMx4/w-d-xo.html
I believe the Vega bow was based on a historical misunderstanding: that the baroque bridge, which is flatter than the modern one, and the baroque bow would have allowed an 18th-century to play unbroken four-note chords. So this performance is a misinformed attempt at historically informed performance.
Fascinating speculation. That could explain why contemporary illustrations of German baroque bows don't seem to show enough curvature to play four notes at a time, pretty much the only valid argument I've seen for the use of arpeggiation. Has anyone actually tried this with a baroque bridge and a bow that has the curve shown in contemporary illustrations?
Many. Speculation has been over for more than half a century. There are now two generations of baroque violinists, playing in period-instrument groups all over the world and and heard in thousands of recordings. When Sergio Luca recorded all the Bach sonatas and partitas in 1977 on a restored 1669 Amati and an original c. 1700 bow, the Nonesuch box set of 3 LPs included a booklet explaining, with photographs, how the baroque violin and bow differ from the modern ones, but I don’t know if you’d get the same package in an LP booklet that would have to shrink the photos.
Sigiswald Kuijken recorded the sonatas and partitas on Harmonia Mundi in 1992. In 1997 Elizabeth Wallfisch and Monica Huggett recorded them for Hyperion and Erato/Warner, respectively. You can find bits of these on youtube. I'm sure there are others.
Some videos of unaccompanied Bach on Baroque violin:
Sigiswald Kuijken:
th-cam.com/video/nuY5NH3VeDU/w-d-xo.html
Rachel Podger:
th-cam.com/video/QVb2xMXcyuw/w-d-xo.html
Podger, with a baroque violin/bow, coaching a student on modern violin in the Chaconne:
th-cam.com/video/uhcPDo3UPw0/w-d-xo.html
Amandine Beyer playing the Chaconne:
th-cam.com/video/GXI2w1R8LbA/w-d-xo.html
Some engravings that I've seen show a more deeply curved bow, e.g., in this reference. Also note that "Even Leopold Mozart (1719-1787) in his well-known violin anthology, is of the opinion that three-part chords should be played simultaneously with one stroke of the bow. The style of playing of Niccolo Paganini (c1782-1840) was described in detail by Carl Guhr, at the time Director of the Frankfurt Opera, in his violin anthology of 1829. Guhr followed Paganini over a long period, observing his performances, and according to him Paganini, playing his own compositions in which there are numerous three and four part chords, played them simultaneously."
www.baroquemusic.org/barvlnbo.html
Beware the internet; there's a lot of silly things on it and you found a seriously unreliable source. The website to which you link must be the source of your statements about the "German baroque bow" that was drastically different from other bows of the time, because the idea is otherwise is unknown: you'll notice the paragraphs on the subject don't cite anything in support of that fanciful proposition. (All baroque bows, BTW, were held with thumb on the hair.) The engraving in your linked page shows a couple of players playing unrecognizable instruments using what appear to be medieval bows that look like you could shoot arrows with them. You can conclude either that the engraver was not being at all accurate, or that the instruments are not violins. Either way the engraving is not a source of information about violin playing in Bach's day. And since we know that the modern Tourte bow can't play four notes at a time, how could Paganini, who used such a bow, have done it? When someone writes that he played them "simultaneously" (assuming the word is an accurate translation) it has to mean that he was able to keep all four voices moving, just as a violinist playing Bach with a Tourte bow does. And if you want to know what Leopold Mozart wrote, it's better to read his book than rely on a misinterpretation of it.
No offense, but it seems to me that you're going to rather great lengths to wave away the contemporary testimony about Paganini's playing -- why would Guhr have even mentioned the "simultaneous" playing of three- and four-part chords if Paganini had arpeggiated them? -- as well as Leopold Mozart's opinion on the matter (and was there anyone more qualified?).
Whatever one may think of this sometimes lugubrious performance, I think there's overwhelming evidence that this was the way Bach intended his works to be played, using the German baroque bow with variable tension (accomplished in those days with the violinist's thumb). He indicated no arpeggios in the manuscripts, except where he intended the violinist to play them for effect, and the arpeggiation has never sounded right to me. We have to be careful not to let habit influence our reactions here, lest we fall into the trap of those who are disappointed to see the full colors of old master paintings restored after they've been cleaned!
Not only is there no evidence at all that Bach intended violin chords to be played unbroken, but we know it's impossible unless you invent a gimmick like the Vega bow. Actual baroque bows and baroque violins have been in common use among early music specialists for decades, and they don't allow unbroken four-note chords, regardless of what the right thumb does. You have to play chords pretty much the same you play them on a modern violin. Bach would not call this an "arpeggio," or anything other than normal playing, so he would not have notated it.
The problem with that is that he *did* notate arpeggios where he wanted them.
But again: 1) Spreading a four-note because that's the way you MUST play it technically is not an arpeggio, and thus would not be notated as one, 2) Nobody notates "play this the way you always play such things and cannot play any other way." So the absence of a performance direction that no one would ever write is not evidence.
I wrote an unclear sentence just now. I should have written "Spreading a four-note chord because technically that's the way you MUST play it is not an arpeggio."
The problem being that he wrote "arpeggio" above some of those four-note chords. Why would he have bothered to write it out if that was the only way the chords could be played, and he omitted the instruction elsewhere?
this bow makes the music too heavy... the individual melodies cannot be hear clearly. the music cannot flow properly because it is too weighed down by the mass of notes.
This is Baroque music... It is supposed to have many voices. It's Bach we are talking about...
@@aimiliosspiliopoulos1091 Bach wrote with specific performance techniques in mind. This is not one of them.
sounds like an organ, which is interesting as bach was an organist
sounds like gospel organ
Do you mean the typical Hammond B3 sound? I think that especially the e and a strings have a much clearer sound and the vibrato sounds very precise, very unlike the wabbly b3 sound.
It sounds kinda like a hurdy gurdy
Listen to the piece performed on a guitar. Sounds similar. Andrea de Vitis is one of the better recordings.
Omg! 🤡
An impressive feat- but why? It's completely unnecessary, adds nothing to the music except noise, and takes away lightness, shape and phrasing. The organ-like quality of the continuous notes is intriguing for a minute or two but soon starts to become tiring to listen to. If you want to experiment with bows why not try an 18th century model that Bach might himself have recognised? I respect the performer for trying something unusual with great skill, but I don't think it's very convincing musically.
+Oliver Webber
Why? Because Bach wrote chords, and it is up to us to work out how to play them.
+Dai Griffiths have you seen the bows in use in Bach's day? They play chords beautifully- but arpeggiated (as indeed do our current day bows, for that matter). Bach was himself a string player and knew what to expect from players: when he wrote for violin he surely expected it to sound like a violin, not an organ!
+Oliver Webber. There are at least two different things to say.
Firstly, I'm a fiddle player, but not a classical musician, although I do love classical music. So I am no expert on early music. This also gives me a non-standard view on what sounds right. And to my ear the 'organ-like' quality sounds just fine. I have always been disturbed by the insistent arpeggios of Bach' solo violin music, and so the arguments put forward by people like this sound intuitively right to me: musiikkistoria.blogspot.co.uk/2010/02/baroque-german-violin-bow.html.
Secondly, I do believe that it is hard for us today, with all our highly refined violin technique, to imagine that it might have been very different a few hundred years ago. This constrains the way that we can conceive of how we should expect a violin to sound.
In my fiddling I use a standard baroque bow (in as much as there is such a thing), but not a curved German bow such as I have seen illustrated, where you can adjust the tension on the hair with the fingers. Another variable is the curve of the bridge. Like many 'old time' and bluegrass players, I have a bridge that has a significantly lower curve than a classical bridge, to facilitate playing multiple strings. I would be very interested to know if flatter curves were also used in baroque or earlier music to facilitate double stops and chords. I am curious to know to what extent a curved bow, finger control of the tension, and a flatter curve on the bridge could together make it possible to play 3 (or even four?) notes together, Bach notated. I imagine that most violin teachers would be disturbed by any of these three!
+Dai Griffiths of course if you enjoy it that's great- but being a baroque specialist myself what I can say is that this way of playing the violin would be bizarre to say the least to Bach and his contemporaries: bows like this did not exist. The view that *did* exist do a wonderful job of rendering Bach's music in my opinion but of course that doesn't mean everyone will prefer that way.
+Oliver Webber The plus is a) the innovation (this kind of bow never really existed back then) and the ability to play stuff that is impossible with the regular bow and b) There are a couple of places where you HAVE to break the chords on a regular violin, which breaks the underlying rhythm in an awkward manner, and this bow solves it.
Now the negatives. a) There is a rhythm in the Chaccone that is maintained by splitting the chords correctly. By playing every chord whole, there are some places where the rhythm is totally dissolved into a static mass of notes. b) Sometimes the melodic line must linger while the other voice appear and disappear, which you do on a regular or even a baroque violin. But here at so many places it sounds like the additional voices are "over sustained" -- they're continuously "on" even where're they're not needed and it obscures the main melody. At some points you can't say where the main line went. and c) It's like the violin can't decide if it has to sound like an organ or a violin at times. The contrast between the two makes it look like the instrument has split personalities.
Sounds dreadful. Much rather hear it by Grumiaux on a modern bow.
It looses dynamics, tension.