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Bariolage is a musical technique used with bowed string instruments that involves rapidly playing alternated notes on adjacent strings, one of which is generally left open,Stowell, Robin (1990). Violin Technique and Performance Practice in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries, p.172. Cambridge. . thereby exploiting the different of each string.Patricia, Strange and Strange, Allen (2003). The Contemporary Violin: Extended Performance Techniques, p.32. Scarecrow. .Winold, Allen (2007). Bach's Cello Suites, Volumes 1 and 2: Analyses and Explorations, p.19. Indiana University. . "Involves rapid alternation between two adjacent strings, usually with an open string note on one string and fingered notes on the other string," the difference producing an "interesting timbre." Bariolage may involve quick alternation between a static note and changing notes that form a melody either above or below the static note.Nardolillo, Jo (2014). All Things Strings, p.9. Scarecrow Press. . "A technique of rapid alternation between a moving line and a static note, often an open string, creating a dazzling virtuosic effect...particularly popular in the Baroque era." The static note is usually an open string note, which creates a highly resonant sound. In bluegrass fiddle the technique is known as " cross-fingering".
The term bariolage appears to have been coined in the nineteenth century to denote an Baroque music violin technique requiring flexibility in the wrist and forearm, the mechanics of which are not discussed by nineteenth-century writers. Etymologically, in French, the term was Semantic change from the noun meaning a 'disorderly mix of bright colors',David C Boyden and Peter Walls, "Bariolage", The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (London: Macmillan Publisher, 2001). which in turn derives from the verb barioler meaning 'to cover with a mix of bright colors'.David Dalton, Playing the Viola: Conversations with William Promrose, with a foreword by Janos Starker (Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 114. . The bowing technique most often used for bariolage is called ondulé in French or ondeggiando In Italian.Don Michael Randel, "Bariolage", Harvard Dictionary of Music, fourth edition, Harvard University Press Reference Library 16 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003). . Bariolage may also be executed with separate bow strokes.David C. Boyden and Peter Walls, "Bariolage", The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (London: Macmillan Publisher, 2001).
The French violinist-composer Pierre Baillot writes in his pedagogical treatise of 1834, L'Art du violon (perhaps looking back on what he considered an earlier, less advanced era),
Joseph Haydn used this effect in the minuet of his Symphony No. 28, in the finale of the "Farewell" Symphony, No. 45, and throughout the finale of his String Quartet Op. 50, No. 6. The "croaking" "A quavering effect created by a quickfire repetition of the same note on open and fingered strings." or "gurgling"Hunter, Mary and Will, Richard (2012). Engaging Haydn: Culture, Context, and Criticism, p.283. Cambridge. . unison bariolage passages on D and A gives this quartet its nickname of The Frog.
In the following example, from a violin sonata by Handel, the second measure is to be played with bariolage:
In this passage, the repeated A is played on the open A string, alternating with Fs and Es fingered on the adjacent D string. The notes on the D string (E and F natural) would be fingered as normal (first finger and low second), but the fingerings given above the second measure would be 2040, indicating the switch (bariolage) from open A string to the stopped fourth finger on the D string, also playing the note A.
Another well-known example of bariolage is in Bach's Preludio to the E major Partita No. 3 for solo violin, where three strings are involved in the maneuver (one open string and two fingered notes).
Bariolage is much more rarely employed during the Romantic music period in the nineteenth century, but some notable examples of its use are found in Johannes Brahms works. Brahms used this device in the String Sextet in G Major (where it occurs at the very beginning in the viola) and in the Third Violin Sonata, Op. 108.David Milsom, Theory and Practice in Late Nineteenth-Century Violin Performance, 1850–1900 (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited; Burlington, VT: Aldershot Publishing Company, 2003), p. 93. .
In the twentieth century, composers have adapted the bariolage idea to other instruments, particularly the trombone, where a constant pitch may be repeated while rapidly changing between different slide positions—a technique some composers call enharmonic change or enharmonic tremolo. Notable trombone pieces using this device are Luciano Berio's Sequenza V for solo trombone, and Vinko Globokar's Eppure si muove for a conducting solo trombonist and eleven musicians.James Max Adams, "Timbral Diversity: An Annotated Bibliography of Selected Solo Works for the Tenor Trombone Containing Extended Techniques", D.A. diss. (Greeley: University of Northern Colorado, 2008): pp. 6, 61, 111.
Elliott Carter adapted the technique to the harp in a solo work actually titled Bariolage (1992), which blends the device with trills and a harp technique called , "in a profusion of trilling passages and enharmonic unison colourings."Kirsty Whatley, "Rough Romance: Sequenza II for Harp as Study and Statement", in Berio's Sequenzas: Essays on Performance, Composition and Analysis, edited by Janet K. Halfyard, 39–52 (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited; Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2007): p. 49n13. .
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