Martelé
Martelé is French for "hammered". It's a powerful accented stroke with a sharp bite at the front of each note, then the note rings, then the bow stops — a real silence before the next one, and you prepare the next bite during that silence. It is the third stroke worth learning to actually perform, after détaché and legato.
It grows out of détaché
You already have most of martelé from the-detache-family:
| bow speed | weight | start of note | between notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain détaché | even | even | nothing | seamless |
| accented détaché | fast → slow | heavy → light | a lean | connected |
| martelé | fast → slow | heavy → light | a sharp bite | a definite stop |
So martelé adds two things to accented détaché: a real consonant at the front, and a rest at the back.
The mechanism — prepare, bite, release, stop
The whole trick is that the accent is prepared during the silence before the note.
- Bow on the string, stopped. Sink weight in and grip the string with the hair — you can wiggle the string silently side to side without sounding it. That's the string caught.
- Move — a fast bow — and release the weight the instant the bow moves. The note starts with a click, not a scratch.
- The rest of the note is a fast, light bow — the string rings freely.
- Stop the bow on the string. During the stop, let the hand go completely loose, then re-prepare the next bite.
How to play it
Upper half of the bow. Set the bow, grip the string, then a fast stroke — release the grip as it starts. Stop. Loosen the hand. Re-grip. Repeat. Don't hold the weight on through the note.
Where in the bow
Anywhere — from a few centimetres to almost whole bows, for any note length except very fast passages. Start in the upper half or the middle, moderate length. Then try it from the frog (harder — bigger muscles, the bow's own weight) and as broad whole-bow martelé.
On the page
There's no unique symbol. You read martelé from context: a small wedge or arrowhead
over the note, or an accent (>), or sfz, together with the character of the passage
— marked, detached, firm. Stage 3 taught you to read the wedge and the accent; this is where
those become "prepare the bite".
Try it
Try
Open A. Set the bow, sink weight, silently move the string side to side a few times — feel it gripped. Then play one martelé: fast bow, release the weight as it starts, stop. Rest a full second, hand loose. Do four. Then a G major scale, one martelé per note. Stop if the hand clenches and won't let go between notes.
The usual mistake
Keeping the weight on for the whole stroke — which chokes the string and gives a strangled, crushed sound instead of a ringing one. The weight is a spike at the very front and gone by the middle. The second mistake: no real stop between notes, so it turns into accented détaché. The third: a slow bow — martelé needs a fast bow, and fast is not the same as heavy.