To understand what Tourte did, we shall have to go back to the early days of the violin and see what kind of a bow the old players used. The earliest bow with which the _viole_, or _vielle_, and the early violin was played was shaped just like the bow from which an arrow is drawn,—a cord stretched from end to end of a stick. It was a very clumsy affair. In the Thirteenth Century when the violin began to develop as we have seen (see page 17), the bow began to change, too. The first improvement was to make one end blunt and to use hair instead of a cord. The head, or tip, was still sharply pointed. Nothing happened until the time of Corelli, the Italian composer and violinist (1653-1713), who did so much to improve violin-playing. He and others of his time used a straight, short bow, which was not at all elastic, although it was made of light wood. This was a distinct gain, as was also the novel idea of a screw by which the hair could be regulated. The next change took place in the time of another Italian violinist, Tartini (1692-1770), the one who wrote the _Devil’s Sonata_, the melody of which he said the Devil played to him one night in a dream. Tartini used a longer bow than Corelli. It was also thinner and more elastic; but the head of it was still scooped like the ancient ones. Then, at the end of the Eighteenth Century, François Tourte (1747-1835), worked away making bows, as his father had done before him, until he developed the modern bow. It appeared just about the time of the French Revolution. Like Stradivari, Tourte continued to work till the end of his life. He worked all day in his workshop in Paris, No. 10 Quai de l’École, and on Sundays and holidays he sat on the banks of the Seine fishing, just as they do to-day, and occasionally caught a tiny little fish to the envy of excited rivals around him. With the stiff, straight, heavy, unelastic bow, the violinist could, of course, produce very few effects. Tourte’s improvements almost revolutionized violin-playing. It is said that Viotti, another Italian (1753-1824), and perhaps up to his time the greatest violinist that had appeared, gave Tourte the benefit of his ideas. It is only by the use of an _elastic_ bow that a violinist is able to produce his wonderful effects. Bowing is to the violinist what breath is to the singer and touch to the pianist: _it is only through the bow_ that the violinist is able to express his emotions and ideas. So until Tourte’s time there was no real _Art of Bowing_, although Tartini wrote a little book on the subject. [Illustration: FRANÇOIS TOURTE “_The Stradivari of the bow_”] The world was slow to adopt Tourte’s bow; and it was not until Paganini (1784-1840), the Italian wizard, came on the stage that a revolution in violin-playing took place. Paganini used every imaginable movement of the bow and developed the flexibility of the wrist. Then a new School of violin-playing arose and violin-playing gradually developed into what it is to-day.