François Xavier Tourte was a Frenchman

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 who, though trained as a watchmaker, soon changed to making bow

Bow (music)

In music, a bow is moved across some part of a musical instrument, causing vibration which the instrument emits as sound. The vast majority of bows are used with string instruments, although some bows are used with musical saws and other bowed idiophones....

s for playing classical string instrument

String instrument

A string instrument is a musical instrument that produces sound by means of vibrating strings. In the Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification, used in organology, they are called chordophones...

s such as the violin

Violin

The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....

.
He made a number of significant contributions to the development of the bow, and is considered to be the most important figure in the development of the modern bow.

Development of the modern bow

Tourte began as an apprentice to his luthier father, Nicolas Pierre Tourte père (c.1700 - 1764). After his father's death, Tourte, in collaboration with the violin virtuoso G. B. Viotti

Giovanni Battista Viotti

Giovanni Battista Viotti was an Italian violinist whose virtuosity was famed and whose work as a composer featured a prominent violin and an appealing lyrical tunefulness...

, made important changes in the form of the bow in the Classical period between 1785 and 1790. They lengthened them slightly, to 74 – 75 centimetres, and used more wood in the tip and a heavier nut.
Tourte's bows are made from pernambuco wood, the most usual form of wood used on professional bows today, bent by being exposed to heat.
Tourte's bows tended to be heavier than previous models, with more wood at the tip of the bow counterbalanced by a heavier frog (the device connecting the hair to the stick at the end nearest the player's hand).

They generally have a usable hair-length of around 65 cm, and the balance point is 19 cm from the frog. The bows were elegantly fluted through half, or sometimes the whole, of their length. The curve in the wood was created by heating the wood thoroughly and then bending it. Before Tourte, bows had been cut to the desired bend. The final important change credited to Tourte is the screw in the nut to moderate the tension in the hair. This propelling and withdrawing screw is found on virtually all modern violin bows. He is also credited with the invention of the spreader block, which fixes the hair of the bow in a flat ribbon, and so prevents tangling.

At the height of his career, a single Tourte bow fetched 15 Louis d'Or

Louis d'or

The Louis d'or is any number of French coins first introduced by Louis XIII in 1640. The name derives from the depiction of the portrait of King Louis on one side of the coin; the French royal coat of arms is on the reverse...

. Tourte destroyed any bow that was not entirely faultless before it left his workshop. He never varnished his bows but only rubbed them with pumice powder and oil. The Tourte pattern was followed by Dominique Peccatte

Dominique Peccatte

Dominique Peccatte was an influential French luthier and bow maker. He was apprenticed in Mirecourt and later worked with Jean Baptiste Vuillaume....

, Jacob Eury

Jacob Eury

Jacob Eury born in Mirecourt on 6 April 1765, died 7 October 1848, was a French luthier and bow maker.He was apprenticed in Mirecourt with his father as a violin maker, and later became an archetier / bow maker....

, Nicolas Maire

Nicolas Remy Maire

Nicolas Rémy Marie was an illustrious French Archetier - Bow Maker.He trained in the Lafleur workshop and served his apprenticeship in the workshop of Pajeot in Mirecourt. Maire's style remained close to that of Pajeot.He opened his own workshop in Mirecourt in 1826 and left in 1853 to work in...

, François Lupot, Nicolas Maline

Nicolas Maline

Nicolas Maline was a luthier and an archetier/bow maker.He was apprenticed in Mirecourt and worked for Etienne Pajeot, J.B...

, Joseph Henry

Joseph Henry (bow maker)

Joseph Henry was a French bow maker for string instruments.Henry studied with Dominique Peccatte and established his own shop in 1851. His bows are quite rare and sought after...

 and Jean Pierre Marie Persois

Jean Pierre Marie Persois

Jean Pierre Marie Persoit [Persois] - was a great and intriguing French bowmaker or Archetier.One of the first bowmakers to be hired by the young Jean Baptiste Vuillaume....

.

Quotes

"The French bow maker François-Xavier Tourte, more commonly known as François Tourte or Tourte le jeune, is often referred to as "the inventor of the modern bow," or "the Stradivari of the bow." His bows, dating from the end of the eighteenth century and the early decades of the nineteenth, had a marked effect upon the timbre

Timbre

In music, timbre is the quality of a musical note or sound or tone that distinguishes different types of sound production, such as voices and musical instruments, such as string instruments, wind instruments, and percussion instruments. The physical characteristics of sound that determine the...

of violins and upon performance practice, enabling new forms of expression and articulation to be developed, and in particular, facilitating the increased use of legato. François Joseph Fétis's entry in the second, expanded edition of his Biographie universelle des musiciens et bibliographie générale de la musique (1860-65) has until recently been the only source of biographical information about François Tourte. Some thirty documents recently discovered in French archives provide further fresh insight into this maker's life and work."
Stewart Pollens,
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

"Tourte - French family of bowmakers and luthiers. It Nicolas Pierre Tourte and his sons Nicolas Léonard and François Xavier and perhaps Charles Tourte, son of Nicolas Léonard. In addition, at least two channelled (canalé) bows dating from about 1750–60 exist bearing the brand-stamp A.TOURTE." - Paul Childs

External links

• Tourte Exhibit London 2008