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With the wood — striking or bouncing the wooden stick of the bow on the strings.
Printed above the string staff as col legno, sometimes specified as col legno battuto (struck with the wood) or col legno tratto (drawn with the wood); without a qualifier, struck is the usual reading. It stays in force until arco, ordinario or naturale.
Col legno produces a dry, hollow, percussive sound. Use it for eerie, skeletal effects — danse macabre passages, ghostly textures, or rhythmic patterns that need a completely different color from normal bowing. Players may resist using their best bows for this technique.
Holst, The Planets, “Mars, the Bringer of War”, first violins, m. 1: “col legno” at p — all the strings tap out the movement’s 5/4 rhythm with the wood of the bow.
Col legno is one of 1760 terms in the Gradus musical dictionary: the words, abbreviations and instrument names that appear in printed scores, plus the vocabulary composers use to talk about them.
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