French or German bows for Beethoven, by Kai Koepp

Map of Europe showing the extent of Napoleon's territory around 1810–1812

From Cramer to Tourte in France

In late-18th-century Paris, violinists favoured the Cramer bow – a German model that the Mannheim violinist Johann Wilhelm Cramer had famously introduced to the French capital in 1769. The unique feature of this model is a head profile that swings out in two directions, often combined with an elegant frog of ivory, as numerous French and German examples show. According to the contemporary French violinist Michel Woldemar, the Cramer model was used by most players in Paris until the revolution of 1789. But by 1802 Woldemar reports that it had been dismissed completely in favour of the new model by François Xavier Tourte.

It has long been assumed that the rest of the musical world unanimously followed the preference of Parisian string players, and that all professional musicians soon changed to the Tourte model. However, recent research at the Bern University of the Arts clearly shows that this was not the case, and this preference was reported only among followers of Giovanni Battista Viotti. Particularly during and after the Napoleonic wars, musical style was a matter of social and political identity, and this included the choice of sound production – symbolised by the bow. Anyone who did not identify with the revolutionary Viotti school of violin playing – and this was most of the German-speaking world – was likely to have retained a traditional bow model in the early 19th century. This even applies to the defeated German states in the Confederation of the Rhine (see map below), which was created by Napoleon between 1806 and 1813. Research has revealed that the famous Saxon court orchestra at Dresden did not use ‘modern’ bows in the French style before 1851.

However, German traditional bow models were far from being uniform or standardised because they were made to suit the musical demands of different repertoires. Bows were often supplied by makers who were familiar with the requirements of the local musical style. Many German court violin makers were also musicians and would have understood the specific playing qualities necessary for a good bow to perform the local musical repertoire.

François Xavier Tourte Cramer model bow, c. 1775
Nicolas Leonard Tourte Cramer model bow, c. 1775

Traditional German bow making

Although the German states had no common identity of musical practice or instrument building at that time, there were two rural German instrument making towns (comparable to Mirecourt in France) that did not serve a local court but depended on the export of their products: Markneukirchen in the east and Mittenwald in the south. Protestant Markneukirchen was part of Saxony, home to the splendid Dresden court and the thriving industrial centre of Leipzig. The Catholic town of Mittenwald in the Tyrolian Alps had no political connection with Bavaria and its Munich court until 1803, but was located on the important trade route that connected the independent industrial centres of Augsburg and Nuremberg with Venice. Both violin making towns had a significant output of bows, but Markneukirchen proved to have better access to exotic woods than Mittenwald, and by 1840 export-oriented bow making had been almost fully taken over by the Markneukirchen workshops, which were to dominate the international market for the next century. Nevertheless, until that time both towns were actively making bows.

Explicit sources from Markneukirchen (including catalogues, treatises and archival material) show that bows were exported to different markets. As late as 1828, when the standard bow was a German interpretation of the Tourte model, the old Cramer model was also being produced in the town, but referred to as a ‘Viennese style’ bow. This implies that Markneukirchen bow makers were actively supplying Viennese customers with a bow model that in other German-speaking parts of Europe had already been replaced by the French model. So the Cramer model that had been fashionable 50 years earlier in Paris was not only still in use in Vienna, but could also be ordered from the export-oriented Saxon bow makers by anyone who embraced the traditional style of violin playing.

This clearly had a significant impact on the style of performances at the time of Beethoven. His symphonies, for example, must have sounded very different when performed by a Viennese orchestra compared with a Parisian one. The string section of the Paris Conservatoire orchestra was a well-trained body brought up in the Viotti style of playing, whereas in Viennese orchestras the strings consisted largely of players who made their living in another profession and who were unlikely to use the Tourte model.

Map of Europe showing the extent of Napoleon's territory around 1810–1812. Some German states were under the French-controlled Confederation of the Rhine, but even these areas continued to use traditional German bow models

The Biedermeier bow

From these observations it is clear that the dating of early bows of German origin needs to be revised. Despite the emergence of the ‘modern’ Tourte model, bows with a Viennese style of head continued to be used in the early 19th century wherever musicians were reluctant to adopt French revolutionary standards and the aesthetics of the Viotti school. Woldemar’s observation that the Cramer bow went quickly out of fashion may well be true for Paris, but it appears incorrect in the case of early 19th-century German examples.

The type of bow that retained the Cramer-style head of the south-western German tradition combined with a more massive frog could perhaps be better described as a ‘Biedermeier’ bow. This term – which denotes a central European aesthetic during the period 1815–1848, characterised by smooth design, a preference for honey-coloured wood and a lack of metal fittings – acknowledges the parallels of the Biedermeier style with the German bows of the period. It also contrasts clearly with the French Classicism that influenced the models of François Xavier Tourte. Only after 1830, with changes both in the French style of violin playing and the German attitude towards the politics of the new French monarch, Louis-Philippe I, did the Tourte style of bow gradually become the standard in German-speaking countries as well.

Kai Koepp, a Swiss National Science Foundation Professor of Interpretation Research at Bern University of the Arts, will discuss the Biedermeier bow more extensively in his talk on 30 October as part of our L’Archet Révolutionnaire exhibition.

Watch Kai Koepp’s lecture here

Biedermeier violin bow, South Germany (probably Vienna), early 19th century
Biedermeier violin bow, South Germany, early 19th century

From Cramer to Tourte in France

Traditional German bow making

The Biedermeier bow

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