HIPP Baroque

[Tea Earl Grey Hot]

There's a type of cello that some researchers are starting to think was fairly common called the violoncello da spalla, which means "shoulder cello." You can see three of them used in that Brandenburg No. 3 video above.

Ah, I thought it was a cello of some sort. Did they also use those bows you mentioned in the OP?

Yeah. It looks like baroque cello bow to me. Maybe its size is a little different to accommodate the instrument.

All of the performers in the historical videos above use baroque type bows.
There isn't exactly one type of baroque bow. They varied during different decades and locations. From what I understand, the shape of the bow gives a noticeable sound difference between down and up bows. Down bows sound stronger than up bows. On the modern bow, that difference isn't as noticeable. The baroque bow design is geared towards are more non-legato articulation. A true seamless legato is impossible on it because of the difference between down and up bows. Baroque bows can also make dynamic changes faster which is useful for articulation and nuance in baroque music.

Here's from top to bottom a baroque, classical, and modern violin bow:


The modern bow was invented during the late classical era. The late classical era and the romantic era valued legato articulation more than during prior eras so the newer bow that we're use to caught on because it enabled true legato playing. During the baroque however, by far the preferred default articulation was detached (in between staccato and legato). They preferred in normal playing a very slight silence between notes in performance on most instruments and their playing techniques and instruments were designed for this articulation. On the harpsichord and organ for instance, I don't use my thumbs as nearly as much as a pianist would. Keyboard technique for most of the baroque used "paired fingering" which basically has you playing scales using thumb crossing less or not at all. So, in the right hand, they'd play an upward scale: 1 2 3 4 3 4 5, and down, 5 4 3 2 3 2 1. The only articulation you can reasonable do with this sort of fingering in moderate to fast pieces is detached. Thumb under technique was a later invention that facilitates faster playing, but it can also bias players to using legato articulation too much if they're not careful. Modern thumb crossing technique is actually a late-baroque, not classical invention, but performers seem to have used it in combination with the older paired technique. It didn't take over completely yet.

Edit: forgot to mention. Don't confuse the baroque bow for the so called "Bach bow" or "german baroque bow." Those are bows that are ridiculously curved to allow for polyphonic chord playing. That's an early 20th century invention based on some wacky theories about Bach's violin and cello sonatas and have been thoroughly discredited since the 1940's. A few websites though talk as though it actually existed but they're crazy.