Bowing Advice for S. Quartet piece

I'm not a string player, and figuring out bowing has been a bit of an ordeal for me. At first I wrote the piece with absolutely no bowing slurs in it, but then I tried to add some and ended up more confused than I already was! I've been reading Kent Kennan's and Samuel Adler's Orchestration texts and trying to study scores for similar pieces (i.e. Mahler's Adagietto from Symphony 5), but I'd like someone else's critical opinion.

here's the mp3 file to listen along to:

pathos2.WAV - FileFactory

Here's the pages of the normal version:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3301/3597900708_7ff819cf2e.jpg?v=0

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3625/3597900940_e14cea5270.jpg?v=0

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3632/3597900982_2f88656d9e.jpg?v=0

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3363/3597901030_ce91ea5536.jpg?v=0

And here's the same piece with my attempt at writing in bowing:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3562/3597900766_15b16a2382.jpg?v=0

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3406/3597900816_405e0c08ee.jpg?v=0

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3381/3597900886_3536c38d84.jpg?v=0

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3337/3597900920_4f8799a448.jpg?v=0

Is this bowing random and stupid or not? Don't spare any judgement, rip me apart. And I also apologize for the lack of pdfs.

Bowing really can be a headache. Of course, the best way to get a handle on bowing is to take up a string instrument for a few years, but that's not really a viable option for most people.

While your bowing isn't really random and useless, string players will probably tend to ignore or revise your bowings in the case that major beats are falling on upbeats. One important technique is to design your bowings so that the players are playing down bow on more major beats and up bow on pickups and beats 2 and 4 and such. In figures where there is say, a two or three note run leading up to do a down beat, it would be logical to have those notes slurred as a single up-bow, and then the downbeat would be a down-bow. Unless, of course, you want those pickups to be particularly emphasized, then you could mark them as separate bowings, but that is more rare to see.

To recap, one of the best things you can do so that string players don't get frustrated is put down-bows on those major beats (barring when the fall in extended slurs) because it will feel much more natural for them. This is somewhat oversimplified, of course, but it will help. Also, another thing you could do besides looking in orchestration books is just to get your hand on some good professionally published orchestral music for violin or just violin solo music and read through it so that patterns become ingrained in your brain.

One follow up question: what is the maximum number of notes that could be fit into a single bow stroke? Let's use the tempo of this piece as a guide (45 bpm).

Obviously, it's highly variable, based on how you want the notes to sound and the ability of the player. Theoretically, a player could sustain a note for maybe around 30 seconds if it were a slow, very quiet, note (or they could be playing equivalent slow quiet notes of the same duration) but if you want the notes to have any real volume or character, you can't bow nearly as long. In the case of this song, at 45 beats per minute, I wouldn't slur more than 2 or 3 measures together.

Thanks Dan, you've been a great help.