Double bass

• 1. Introduction

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  The double bass is the largest and lowest-pitched chordophone in the modern symphony orchestra, and it has spent centuries occupying a peculiar, contested position: part violin, part viol, tuned differently from every other bowed string instrument around it. A typical double bass stands around 180 cm from scroll to endpin. Yet despite its imposing physical presence, it is not as loud as many other instruments, due to its low musical pitch. In a large orchestra, usually between four and eight bassists play the same bassline in unison just to produce enough volume. How did this instrument end up in that paradoxical place, too large to fill a hall on its own, yet indispensable to the orchestra's foundation? The answers lie in centuries of unresolved debate about the instrument's ancestry, a string technology breakthrough in the 1650s that may have saved it from extinction, and a line of extraordinary soloists who refused to let the bass remain merely a background voice.

• 2. A Family Dispute

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  Paul Brun, in his A New History of the Double Bass, asserts that the instrument has origins as the true bass of the violin family, pointing to internal construction that is nearly identical to violins and very different from viols. Double bass professor Larry Hurst takes a different view. He argues that the modern double bass is not a true member of either the violin or viol families. Hurst says that most likely its first general shape was that of a violone, the largest member of the viol family, and that some of the earliest surviving basses are in fact violones fitted with modern trappings. Some existing instruments, such as those by Gasparo da Salò, were converted from 16th-century six-string contrabass violoni. The dispute is visible in the instrument's physical form. The double bass features sloped shoulders that resemble the viol family, while the violin has bulging shoulders. Many very old double basses have had their shoulders cut or sloped to aid playing with modern techniques; before these modifications, the design was closer to the violin family. One tuning choice settles nothing: the double bass is the only modern bowed string instrument tuned in fourths, which is how viols are tuned, rather than fifths, which is the standard for violins, violas, and cellos.

• 3. The String That Saved It

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  Professor Larry Hurst argues that had it not been for the appearance of the overwound gut string in the 1650s, the double bass would surely have become extinct. Before that development, the thicknesses needed for regular gut strings at the bass's lowest pitches made those strings almost unplayable and hindered fluid, rapid playing in the lower register. Overwound strings attain low notes within a smaller overall diameter than non-wound strings, which is what made the instrument practicable at scale. For most of the period before the 20th century, double bass strings were made of catgut. Steel has largely replaced gut since then, because steel strings hold their pitch better and yield more volume when played with a bow. Steel strings can also be set up closer to the fingerboard, enabling players to play clearly in higher positions on the low strings. The classic 19th-century Franz Simandl method does not use the low E string in higher positions, because older gut strings set up high over the fingerboard could not produce clear tone there. Gut strings survive in specific communities today: bassists who perform in baroque ensembles, rockabilly bands, traditional blues bands, and bluegrass bands value the dark, thumpy sound heard on recordings from the 1940s and 1950s. The late Jeff Sarli, a blues upright bassist, noted that starting in the 1950s, they began to reset the necks on basses for steel strings.

• 4. Two Bows, One Instrument

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  The French bow was not widely popular until its adoption by 19th-century virtuoso Giovanni Bottesini. It is held as if the hand is resting by the side of the performer with the palm facing toward the bass, similar to how players hold bows for violin and cello. The German bow, sometimes called the Butler bow, is the older of the two designs. Its design descends from the older viol instrument family, and the player holds it with the palm angled upwards, as with the upright members of the viol family. Proponents of the French bow argue it is more maneuverable due to the angle at which the player holds it. Advocates of the German bow claim it allows the player to apply more arm weight on the strings. The differences between the two, however, are minute for a proficient player, and modern players in major orchestras use both. Double bass bows vary in length, ranging from 60 to 75 cm. Pernambuco, also known as Brazilwood, is regarded as an excellent quality stick material, but due to its scarcity and expense other materials are increasingly being used. The double bass bow is strung with either white or black horsehair, or a combination of the two known as salt and pepper, as opposed to the customary white horsehair used on the bows of other string instruments.

• 5. The Range Problem

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  Orchestral parts from the standard Classical repertoire rarely demand the double bass exceed a two-octave and a minor third range, from E1 to G3. One notable exception is Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, which calls for three octaves and a perfect fourth. Composers such as Wagner, Mahler, Busoni, and Prokofiev requested notes below the low E, pushing the instrument beyond its standard tuning. To meet those demands, professional orchestral players developed several solutions. Most use four-string basses fitted with a C extension, an extra section of fingerboard mounted on the head of the instrument that extends the lowest string's range down by four semitones to C1. More rarely, this string may be tuned to a low B0, as a few works in the orchestral repertoire call for such a note, including Respighi's The Pines of Rome. Several major European orchestras use basses with a fifth string instead, normally tuned to B0. A small number of players tune their strings in fifths rather than fourths, like a cello but an octave lower. The jazz player Red Mitchell used this tuning, as does the Canadian bassist Joel Quarrington. Prokofiev's Lieutenant Kijé Suite, dating from around 1933, contains a bass solo that calls for notes as high as D4 and E4, well above the instrument's standard orchestral ceiling.

• 6. The Soloists Who Changed Everything

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  Domenico Dragonetti was an acquaintance of both Haydn and Beethoven, his playing known from Italy to the Tsardom of Russia, and he found a prominent place performing with the Philharmonic Society of London. Beethoven's friendship with Dragonetti may have inspired him to write difficult, separate parts for the double bass in his symphonies, including impressive passages in the third movement of the Fifth Symphony, the second movement of the Seventh Symphony, and the last movement of the Ninth. These parts do not double the cello part. During Rossini's stay in London in the summer of 1824, he composed his popular Duetto for cello and double bass for Dragonetti and the cellist David Salomons. In the 19th century, Giovanni Bottesini was known as the Paganini of the double bass. His concertos require virtuosic runs and great leaps to the highest registers of the instrument, including the realm of natural and artificial harmonics. Many 19th-century and early 20th-century bassists considered these compositions unplayable, but in the 2000s they are frequently performed. In the early 20th century, Serge Koussevitzky, best known as conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, popularized the double bass as a solo instrument in modern times. From the 1960s through the end of the century, Gary Karr was the leading proponent of the bass as a solo instrument and was active in commissioning hundreds of new works. Koussevitzky's own famous solo double bass was given to Karr by Olga Koussevitsky; Karr played it in concerts around the world for 40 years before giving the instrument to the International Society of Bassists for talented soloists to use. Bertram Turetzky, born in 1933, commissioned and premiered more than 300 double bass works over his career.

• 7. Jazz, Rockabilly, and the Electric Question

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  In jazz and jump blues, bassists are required to play rapid pizzicato walking basslines for extended periods, developing virtuoso techniques that enable them to play rapid solos incorporating fast-moving triplet and sixteenth-note figures. In jazz and related styles, bassists often add semi-percussive ghost notes into basslines to add rhythmic feel and fills. Rockabilly style is physically demanding on the plucking hand: the strings are percussively slapped and clicked against the fingerboard, and gut strings are preferred because gut does not hurt the plucking fingers as much as steel. Since piezoelectric pickups are not well suited to reproducing the sounds of strings being slapped against the fingerboard, bassists in rockabilly and psychobilly often use both piezoelectric pickups for the low bass tone and a miniature condenser microphone to capture the percussive slapping sounds. These two signals are blended together using a simple mixer before the signal reaches the bass amplifier. The feedback problem in high-volume genres has led to technological fixes including electronic feedback eliminator devices and instruments like the electric upright bass, which has playing characteristics similar to the double bass but usually little or no soundbox. Several manufacturers also make travel instruments, double basses with features that reduce their size to meet airline travel requirements, designed for touring musicians who need a fully functional instrument on the road.

• 8. A Century of New Voices

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  The earliest known concerto for double bass was written by Joseph Haydn around 1763, and is presumed lost in a fire at the Eisenstadt library. Johannes Matthias Sperger alone composed 18 concertos for the instrument. Mozart's concert aria Per questa bella mano, K.612, written for bass, double bass obbligato, and orchestra, remains popular among both singers and double bassists today. In 1976, American minimalist composer Tom Johnson wrote Failing, a very difficult piece for solo string bass, in which the player must perform an extremely virtuosic solo while simultaneously reciting a text explaining how very difficult the piece is and how unlikely the performer is to complete it without making a mistake. In 1977, Dutch-Hungarian composer Géza Frid wrote variations on The Elephant from Saint-Saëns' Le Carnaval des Animaux for scordatura double bass and string orchestra. André Previn wrote a Double Concerto for violin, double bass, and orchestra in 2007. The solo repertoire has continued to expand into the 21st century, with Kalevi Aho's Concerto from 2005 and John Harbison's Concerto for Bass Viol from 2006 among the more recent additions. The instrument that scholars cannot fully agree on classifying has nonetheless accumulated a solo catalogue spanning more than two and a half centuries.