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As the title asks, I wish it could be clear to me. Can someone give me a good characterization? Do you produce them differently on a cello than on a violin or viola?

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3 Answers

The term martelé refers to "hammered", meaning this that the section is to be played aggressively spiccato.

The term détaché refers to "separated", as in clear and articulated notes, not necessarily marked in any way.

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Martele is not the same as spiccato. Spiccato is "off the string", martele is more of a marcatto on the string with the short bows (mostly in the upper third). Detache is correct as separtated (not legatto) – rodica Jun 14 '11 at 6:10

'Martele' could be described as a long staccato. Staccato is a short stroke executed with very short bow length, biting the string at the beginning of the note, releasing the pressure and moving energetic but very short and biting again for the next note. Martele is executed in a similar way, only the energetic movement involves much longer bow and more energy. Now, 'detache' means separate strokes but smoothly connected with even bow speed and pressure.

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Détaché - Simply meaning detached, it implies that each note is played in a separate bow stroke (as oppose to Legato where groups of notes should be smoothly played in the same stroke of the bow.) The bowing should still be smooth without emphasis on the separation - this emphasis would imply a Détaché-lancé bow stroke.

Martelé - Hammered. Simply speaking, it's a more aggressive form of staccato, and usually used for individual dotted notes. Most of the time you'll want to use the entire lenth of the bow, and use the first finger on your bow hand to apply pressure to get a good initial "bite" which you'll then gradually release along the bow's length.

I can only speak for the violin in terms of application technique, but I would imagine they are similar (though the amount of pressure and the points you use on the bow may well be different.)

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