What's the difference between Sautille and Spiccato, and other bow strokes?

Hi, and welcome to Virtual Sheet Music.com's Meet the Expert. My name is William Fitzpatrick, and I am professor of violin at the Hall-Musco Conservatory of Music at Chapman University in Orange, California. I am, as well, director of MusiShare in Irvine. Well, why don't I show you two different kinds of strokes. I'm going to move closer so that you can really see this. The first is sautille, and the second is spiccato.

Now, sautille French word, and "saut" means to jump. The difference between sautille and spiccato, is that in sautille, it's the bow that bounces or jumps. In spiccato, it's the hair that's bouncing on the string.

So you see, in a sautille stroke, it would mean that the bow, the hair, rather, is staying on the string and the bow is bouncing up and down. In spiccato, it literally is bouncing. For example, there is a Mozart-Kreisler piece, which is called Rondo. In this piece, it goes very quickly.

This stroke is sautille. Again, the hair is not leaving the string, but the bow itself, the wood, is bouncing, and that allows us to go very quickly. If it's spiccato, well, we cannot go as quickly. So these are two specific strokes that are used with the bow. All of this begs, in my opinion, a little further discovery. For example, well then, how do you, with your bow grip, allow a sautille or a spiccato to be?

Well, I remember in France speaking with a Russian colleague, and we had a long discussion about this because, in fact, with a bow there are certain pressure points which are very, very important to producing the bow strokes that we use. For example, if I use my index and my third finger as a pressure point and no squeezing, just a pressure point, this produces, and you'll see some Slavs, in fact, who play this way, with that finger extended. It produces a martele, or a staccato.

You'll never see a lot of people with their finger pulled away, but that contact here and that contact there will happen even though the fingers are all down. And this allows us to do that martele, or staccatos going up, staccatos going down.

Well, what about legatos? Well, for legatos we use the middle two fingers. Those two fingers produce that legato sound. Again, all the fingers are down, but the pressure point, shall we say, is with finger two, finger three, and we end up with a very smooth sound.

Now let's go back to sautille and spiccato. How then do we make them happen? Well, they follow, curiously enough, they fall under the legato stroke with pressure points. In other words, from the first finger, third finger, the bow starts to bounce when I use those two fingers. So when I'm doing the sautille, my pressure point is towards those two fingers.

If I'm doing any kind of a "marcato" stroke, I use one and three. Again, any kind of a legato, two and three; or any kind of sautille or spiccato, two and three.

So do have a good day, and if you have any questions, comments, or special requests, please feel free to post them on the comments section. Take care and see you next time.

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