Up-bow
The upward motion of the bow, symbol V.
What it means
The up-bow leads the bow from the tip back to the frog. It is the countermotion to the down-bow, and the two together form the cycle of which all bowing consists. Because the weight of the bow is slight at the tip and increases only toward the frog, the tone in an up-bow grows by nature — a behaviour that one either exploits or deliberately evens out.
In the notation
The sign for the up-bow is a slender V above the note. As with the down-bow, it is set only where the direction is not self-evident or where a whole section is to play uniformly. In marked orchestral parts up- and down-bow signs often stand over longer stretches, because the common bowing pattern of a string section belongs to the effect visually as well.
Musical use
The up-bow traditionally carries the lighter parts of the bar. An upbeat is almost always taken on the up-bow, so that the following downbeat lies in the weightier down-bow. At the end of a phrase too an up-bow seems fitting, because the tone stays retractable and can fade lightly. Dances in triple time, minuets and many phrases of the Viennese Classicism owe their lightness to this division. Where composers want an unexpected hardness, they conversely write an accent into the up-bow.
Performance practice
Practise the up-bow above all in the lower third of the bow: there it is decided whether the tone becomes clumsy at the frog. Take some arm weight off toward the end of the stroke and let the wrist yield to the motion instead of stopping it abruptly. With fast changes it helps to practise the turning points singly — first only the last centimetre before the change of direction, then the whole figure. With upbeats watch how much bow you use up: too long an upbeat forces you to play the downbeat with too little bow. With several up-bows in succession you set the bow down briefly each time and begin anew, instead of drawing it back silently.