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col legno performed on a violin:
0 sec: battuto,
9 sec: tratto,
20 sec: ... with tremolo,
33 sec: ... with glissando,
48 sec: battuto with movement of the bow across the fingerboard

In music for bowed string instruments, col legno, or more precisely col legno battuto (Italian for 'with the wood [being hit]'; pronounced [kol ˈleɲɲo batˈtuːto]), is an instruction to strike the string with the stick of the bow across the strings.

History

The earliest known use of col legno in Western music is to be found in a piece entitled "Harke, harke", from the First Part of Ayres (1605) by Tobias Hume, where he instructs the gambist to "drum this with the backe of your bow".^[1]

Sound

The percussive sound of battuto has a clear pitch element determined by the distance of the bow from the bridge at the point of contact. As a group of players will never strike the string in exactly the same place, the sound of a section of violins playing col legno battuto is dramatically different from the sound of a single violin doing so.

The wood of the bow can also be drawn across the string – a technique called col legno tratto ("with the wood drawn"). This is much less common, and the plain marking col legno is invariably interpreted to mean battuto rather than tratto. The sound produced by col legno tratto is very quiet, with an overlay of white noise, but the pitch of the stopped note can be clearly heard. If the sound is too quiet, the bow can be slightly rolled so that a few bow hairs touch the string as well, leading to a slightly less "airy" sound.

Equipment

Some string players object to col legno playing as it can damage the bow; many players have a cheaper bow which they use for such passages, or for pieces which require extended passages.^[2] Some players tap the strings with pencils instead of bows, producing a further percussive, lighter sound.^[3]

References

^ Peter Walls, "Bow" II. Bowing, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (London: Macmillan Publishers, 2001): §2, xi.
^ Blatter, A.: "Instrumentation and Orchestration", page 37. Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 1997
^ Strange, Patricia; Allen Strange (2001). The Contemporary Violin: Extended Performance Techniques. Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 108. ISBN 978-1-4616-6410-9.