There’s no place to hide. Perhaps you think you can slack off when you join your first school or community orchestra, since you’re safely tucked away into a fairly large group of players. Of course, you’ll always need to play in tune and in tempo, but there’s no point in worrying over fussy details of bowing, right?

Wrong.

A few conductors of yore, mainly Leopold Stokowski, did advocate “free bowing” to produce a lush, less focused sound. But most circumstances today call for a more uniform sound, and that means uniform bowing: everyone in the section being consistent in terms of bow direction, bow distribution (which portion of the bow is being used), and articulation.

As you discover fairly early in your string studies, small changes in bowing can make big changes not only in the music’s volume but also in its character, and in how easy it is to get from one phrase (or even just one string) to the next. For a phrase’s character to come across clearly in orchestral performance, all the players in a section need to be doing the same thing at the same time.

James Kjelland, associate professor of music education at Northwestern University, has written an entire text and workbook on the subject: Orchestral Bowing: Style and Function, published by the Alfred Publishing Co. It offers useful explanations of the most common techniques—definitions of such things as spiccato, martelé, and sautillé, for example, which are all different ways to produce a staccato style. The book also illustrates how very different, detailed bowings can achieve different effects in specific pieces of music.

Kjelland won’t tell you the “best” bowing for any particular passage, because the options vary according to the artistic effect you want to achieve. But he does offer a simple definition of “good” orchestral bowing: It’s the “easiest way for the most players to achieve the best results.”

Results-Oriented Bowing

Getting good results, like most things relating to string playing, is a little complicated. “The essential point about sound production,” says Kjelland, “is that all basic bowing factors—speed, distance from the bridge, and pressure—must be in balance for good tone to result. And good tone is assumed to be present at all times and therefore not an interpretive choice, as such. The interpretive aspects of bowing—articulation, volume, timbre, and direction—are choices to be determined by the interpreter.”

Getting good results also has to do with exactly which part of the bow you’re scraping across the string. The upper third—the part toward the tip—is good for soft entrances, rapid strokes like tremolo, and pianissimo volume, says Kjelland. The middle, which is comparatively unstable, is the part to use for bouncing and springing strokes. The lower third is great for explosive attacks and strokes that are a combination of on and off the string.

And something as basic as whether you’re bowing up or down can make a difference in the character of your sound and articulation. Starting on an up bow, for example, can be very effective for quiet entrances.

These elements work together. As an example, Kjelland notes in his book, to play a series of eighth notes in a fast Mozart piece, you might, depending on the dynamic level, want to use a brush spiccato, alternating down and up strokes using the lower third of the bow, beginning and ending off the string (to allow separation of the notes), and brushing the string with the bow hair flat rather than at an angle, for the cleanest attack.

The possibilities can be dizzying, but don’t let that intimidate you. “Figuring out your own bowing is an important part of becoming an independent musician,” says Kjelland. When you play in an orchestra, your conductor and section principals should work out the details for you; even so, on your own time it’s good to explore different bowings, so you can develop an understanding of the many ways a musical phrase can speak through your bow.