What does martelé mean in music?

Bowing & articulation

Martelé

French, "hammered"

Martelé is a strongly accented bow stroke that begins with a sharp bite of pressure, releases into a fast stroke, and stops on the string before the next note.

The defining feature is the preparation: pressure is set into the string before the bow moves, so the note starts with a consonant rather than a vowel. The stroke is then fast and the bow stops, leaving a clear silence. It is usually notated with a wedge or an accent, sometimes with the word itself.

Martelé is the stroke that teaches bow control, because it isolates the three variables, pressure, speed, and contact point, into separate, deliberate stages. Many teachers use it as the entry point to all accented bowings, since a student who can produce a clean martelé already understands what the bow is doing in staccato and collé.

Staccato: Staccato shortens a note, notated with a dot above or below the notehead, so it sounds for roughly half its written value and is followed by silence.
Détaché: Détaché is the basic string bowing in which each note gets its own bow stroke, changing direction between notes while the bow stays on the string.
Spiccato: Spiccato is a controlled bouncing bow stroke in which the bow leaves the string between notes, producing short, light, clearly separated sounds.
Articulation: Articulation is how a note is started, sustained, and released, the markings that distinguish smooth, separated, accented, and shortened notes from one another.

Every term in this glossary is taught in context somewhere in Arco's curricula, on the staff, on the keyboard, and on your own fingerboard at the same time.

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