IT arco bowing core term Support my free tools
Music symbols
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Down bow -
Up bow
How is arco played?
Resume playing with the bow on violin, viola, cello or double bass, thereby cancelling the preceding plucked state. Because bowing is the classical default, arco normally appears only where a pizz. passage ends, above or below the staff at the point of return. The restored bowed state continues until pizzicato or another technique instruction replaces it, so arco is a persistent state change rather than a one-note effect. The arco–pizz. pairing is among the most common in string parts.
How does arco sound?
The dry, short, plucked attacks give way to the sustained, singing tone of bowed strings.
In context
Standard glossaries define arco as 'played with the bow, as opposed to pizzicato' and as the cancelling counterpart to pizz. Gerou and Lusk state this function explicitly, and an A-R Beethoven/Ries sample prints pizz. followed by the full word arco. Because arco is already the complete instruction, it is not entered as an abbreviation.