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152 Spiccato

This document provides instructions on how to play spiccato bowing technique on the violin. It discusses that spiccato can be played effectively even with an unconventional bow hold. The key is to think of the bow bouncing up off the string rather than pushing down into it, similar to how a pianist's fingers move for staccato notes. Having flexible fingers allows for a perfect spiccato sound. The document emphasizes practicing slow coordination between the bow arm and left hand fingers to ensure clear tone quality when playing spiccato passages.

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Hayane Saatkamp
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218 views2 pages

152 Spiccato

This document provides instructions on how to play spiccato bowing technique on the violin. It discusses that spiccato can be played effectively even with an unconventional bow hold. The key is to think of the bow bouncing up off the string rather than pushing down into it, similar to how a pianist's fingers move for staccato notes. Having flexible fingers allows for a perfect spiccato sound. The document emphasizes practicing slow coordination between the bow arm and left hand fingers to ensure clear tone quality when playing spiccato passages.

Uploaded by

Hayane Saatkamp
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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BASICS

Spiccato
Understanding that the bow hold does not matter
In a way, you do not need to ‘learn’ how to play spiccato at all, any more than you need to learn how to
bounce a ball. You know that if you throw a ball directly down at the ground, it will bounce up vertically,
and if it hits the ground at an angle, it will bounce off at an angle. You know by instinct, and through trial
and error.
Playing spiccato is just as natural. You do not even need any special bow hold. Although the fingers affect
the stroke in various ways, the bow hand and fingers should not be the first thing you think about when
playing spiccato. You can prove this very easily by playing spiccato while holding the bow in your fist
instead of with a proper bow hold.
 Experimenting on one note, hold the bow in the middle of your fist, as though holding a hammer. Play
spiccato in various parts of the bow in the lower half.
 Try longer and shorter strokes; faster and slower; higher and lower bounce; higher and lower in the
bow; more and less tilt of the bow hair, from playing on the side of the hair to playing with flat hair.
 At each place in the bow play a perfectly good, clean spiccato simply by moving the bow with your arm
and guiding the bouncing of the hair on the string with natural instinct.
Once it is clear that even when holding the bow in your fist you can play a perfect spiccato, playing it with a
normal bow hold seems very easy.

Up not down : play spiccato like a pianist


The feeling of playing spiccato is that the bow comes up out of the string, not that it goes down into the
string. Think up–up–up–up, not down–down–down–down.
Watch pianists playing short staccato notes, the equivalent of spiccato on the violin.
They do not appear to make a downward movement of the finger into the key to play each note, but more an
upward movement away from the key. There is a sudden acceleration at the very bottom of the downward
movement, like touching something quickly to see how hot it is. This creates an illusion that the key has
been struck by the finger coming up, not going down.
Playing spiccato with the bow is the same:

The feeling is one of pulling the spiccato out of the string, like a pizzicato, rather than of moving the bow
down into the string. The arrows represent the curved nature of the bow stroke: catch the string at the bottom
of the curve:
BASICS
The spiccato in the Mozart concerto can be played very short and almost like a collé, so the feeling of up–
up–up is clear; but there is the same feeling of going up, not down, in a passage of lighter, more running
spiccato:

Flexible fingers
Although you can play a perfect, natural spiccato while holding the bow in your fist, you can achieve the
same result much more easily if the fingers are springy and flexible, even if the ‘give’ in each joint is so
slight as to be invisible.
One way to get a perfect degree of flexibility is to think of finding a middle point between the two extremes
of too much movement and too little.
Experimenting on one note, begin with loose, floppy fingers and thumb; gradually lessen the floppiness until
you have restricted all movement or give; gradually release the fingers again.

Co-ordination
When there is any impurity in the tone, the first thing is to decide whether it was a problem in the right hand
or in the left. The contact of the bow hair with the string, i.e. the precise balance of height of bounce with
length of bow, often takes the blame for any scratch, when it was actually a late left finger that caused it.
The faster the passage of spiccato, the more careful you have to be to stop the string sufficiently before the
bow plays the note. But even in a passage of not-very-fast spiccato, it often sounds as though there is not
enough length of bow (i.e. it sounds like too much height of bounce, not enough length of bow) when
actually the proportions in the bow stroke are correct, and the blame rests entirely with the fingers not
stopping the string sufficiently.

Practising better co-ordination in spiccato is simple: play very slowly and make a great point of placing each
finger before the bow.
Feel a syncopation in the rhythm, i.e. place–bow, place–bow, place–bow:

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