Bow frog

The foreign language terms sometimes appear in musical instructions, such as au talon, indicating to play with the bow near the frog.

[1] However, the English term is also used, such as in the Alfred edition of George Gershwin's An American in Paris, in which the violins and violas are instructed to play "near the frog" at bar 32.

[2] During the earliest periods of music history, prior the Baroque era, the frog was a curved piece of wood affixed to the bow that served as a sort of rail to guide the hair ribbon and separate it from the stick.

This uneasy device added considerable weight to the bow and was seldom used, but the concept for a new mechanical function of the frog was progressing.

In Paris, Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume introduced an oval ferrule that allowed the hair ribbon to widen and flatten as the violinist augmented the pressure.

While Galliane proposed a new look, its primary purpose was a new functionality for the frog, giving a helicoidal shape to the bow hair that follows the natural movement of the string player's arm.