WILL’S BOW Part 16. Completion.

Will Fedkenheuer’s bow is now finished and we can weigh it. It weighs 59.4 grams which is right where we want it. Without the light unlined frog the bow would weigh about 60.5 grams. It is now rosined and can be played and among other things, this is the final test of whether the total amount of camber is right for the bow’s intrinsic strength.

Players sometimes wonder how a maker like Peccatte could make such eminently playable bows and yet not play themselves. The answer is that a bow during its construction cannot be played and a maker must have the techniques and sensitivity to evaluate the stick as he is working it down. The stick is held in a certain way and flexed giving the maker a great deal of information on how the bow is bending along it’s length, the wood’s quickness of response and its level of resistance. By trial and error the maker learns to sense the things the player needs from a completely different frame of reference; how the stick feels in his hands.

Nonetheless if we have a reasonably good bow arm we can get our confirmation of the bow’s quality and also get a lot of pleasure in exploring its tonal potential; this bow got played late into last night. But no bowmaker will play at the level of his clients and so their feedback is essential. Perhaps it’s just as well for there are so many different solutions depending on the player and the instrument. The maker should approach each bow without preconceived notions based on his or her own taste.

Thanks to FedEx, Will can have the bow tomorrow and start to get to know it. For the maker this is the culmination of the performance, so much has gone into the bow and it is with a mixture of excitement and anxiety we send it off, hopeful that it will exceed his expectations. Everyone needs to serve, the violinist rehearses a Beethoven Quartet for weeks or months to be able to share Beethoven’s own gift, the parent nurtures their child, its part of human nature.