Stop the Violins

   I have to apologize if I seem to have been violin-bashing in my most recent posts.......I'm not really, it's just that our beleaguered upper strings have borne the brunt of our conductor's intensive attention lately. AND, the wrath of a very bored principal flautist. Truth is, the violin sections deserve more attention than anyone else, as they play a heckuvalot more notes  (well, except when doing choral works by Beethoven and in The Messiah, where the cello continuo is continuous-their copyists forgot to insert the rests).
   I do stand by my comments regarding crappy bow technique, although it applies to all of us strings, not just the violins. I find it interesting, however that with the horizontal instruments (versus the vertical cello or bass), the tendency to hold the bow up off of the strings is so much more prevalent....I'd think that gravity alone would tire the bow arm enough to settle the hair on the strings but instead, the reverse seems to happen. It's like the bow and the strings are both charged with the same polarity, repelling one another.
   I spend so much time trying to convince my students that the strings aren't going to bite them, and their bows aren't going to fall apart if they leave them on the strings between notes but it is a struggle. Are we all inherently AFRAID of making a smooth, controlled sound? Is hacking away at our instruments really what feels most natural to us? I have had exactly the same problems with my own bow tech, and simply don't understand why the body behaves as it does. Perhaps there is a fundamental flaw in the way beginners are taught to use the bow which carries over into more demanding stylistic work. Maybe it's the brain's attempt to reject the multitasking of two hands simultaneously doing completely different things.  Maybe it would take a neurologist to explain......