Introducing the Baroque Double Bass — Transcript

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1. 0:13So this is just one example of a baroque bass. It's my baroque bass rather than the
2. 0:21baroque bass because the baroque times which most of us count as being from 1600 to
3. 0:261750 was actually a very transitional time for bass instruments and is the
4. 0:31time when the double bass was born in a way and became part of ensembles on a
5. 0:37regular basis. No pun intended sorry about that! The range of them might go to
6. 0:44about the depth a cello goes to these days or just slightly lower so one
7. 0:49tuning goes to an A which is here. The lowest string on a cello is about here
8. 0:56and there are other examples of tunings from other parts of Europe that went a
9. 1:00whole octave lower than the cello. So from here from the cello it went down to B,
10. 1:06A or a G might be the lowest note or an F or an E or a D which is where my
11. 1:12instrument stops but there are other records of instruments going down to a C
12. 1:15below that, a whole octave lower than a cello. What we do know is that, say for
13. 1:22example in France the bass, the double bass wasn't known until 1700 and
14. 1:28there's records of Montéclair who is a bass player with the French Paris Opera
15. 1:32bringing a double bass over from Italy and using it for the first time in Paris
16. 1:38Opera. Where it was used, for storms, demons, magicians and choruses. Depending
17. 1:44on what country, what city you were in, you had different bass instruments. They
18. 1:48might have three strings, four strings, five strings, six strings some of them.
19. 1:53Some of them are described as being human size but then how big were humans
20. 1:57in those days? Some of them were smaller. Now this bass I feel very lucky
21. 2:03to have, it is an Italian instrument and it is an old Italian instrument. At one
22. 2:09point it was thought to be made in 1600. That's been revised by repairers since
23. 2:14and the latest information I have is that it could have being made in the end
24. 2:20of the 1600s. So very late 17th century instrument and you can see from the
25. 2:25look of it that there are lots of repairs to the body, it's had lots of
26. 2:30cracks along the way but on a double bass we manage to survive with those.
27. 2:36Somehow the sound is ok whereas on a smaller instrument like a violin that
28. 2:41might be disaster. I mean I don't know if you can pick out the detail but here, you can
29. 2:46even see a sort of arrow shape, you can see how a bit of wood has been inserted.
30. 2:51I don't know violins could cope with that but double basses somehow do.
31. 2:58One, this is smaller, I don't know many of my modern based colleagues that would
32. 3:03consider this a big enough instrument for a modern orchestra. As orchestras
33. 3:08and other ensembles have developed, you know, just think of pop bands. The main
34. 3:12emphasis on development has been greater projection, greater volume, being able to
35. 3:17reach more people at once in bigger venues and being able to impress people.
36. 3:21There's something really impressive about the feeling of sound as
37. 3:25well as the sound of sound and you really get that with a double bass. Quite
38. 3:30often when we take them into schools especially with children who might have
39. 3:33hearing impairment, we ask them to put their hands on the bass, you really feel
40. 3:38the vibrations. You often feel them through the floor.
41. 3:40So although the pitch of a double bass is quite low and might be outside some
42. 3:45people's natural comfortable hearing range in terms of pitch, you can feel it.
43. 3:51It adds a feeling and a depth and a colour to an ensemble. So, it is smaller.
44. 3:57The other difference is the fingerboard is shorter. So there is no solo
45. 4:03repertoire for baroque double bass or certainly none that I have found, it is
46. 4:07not a solo instrument. We rarely have to play anything that goes higher than this
47. 4:12part of the instrument so we don't need a long fingerboard for playing high
48. 4:15harmonics and whizzing around, we just don't need it.
49. 4:20Instead of the nice shiny metal, what you can probably see is that they look quite a
50. 4:25dull brown color and you might see how they're twisted, so they do actually look
51. 4:31like string and that's because that's how they're made, it is made of sheep gut
52. 4:35that is twisted and twisted and stretched and washed of course to make the
53. 4:40strings. That's what they would have had in the baroque times, that's what they
54. 4:43would have played on and so that's what we do as well to recreate the sound that
55. 4:47we might have heard in the baroque world. There's a wonderful description of how
56. 4:53gut strings are made on the Gamut website. Daniel Larson who makes strings
57. 4:59has gone into quite a lot of detail so don't read it over your lunch because it
58. 5:04could make you feel a bit ill but he's also included a lovely chart of how many
59. 5:10guts go into a string and he has said that it could be that up to 32 sheep
60. 5:18were needed to make this string. Another string maker Nick Baldock who works in
61. 5:24Germany has said a whole hillside of sheep goes into making the bottom string,
62. 5:28one as thick as this. So obviously you need more sheep, you need more space, you
63. 5:32need more wood to make double basses so perhaps there weren't so many around and
64. 5:36they're not as easy to experiment with as maybe smaller instruments are.
65. 5:40The advantage of the gut strings or the difference with gut strings is that
66. 5:45they've got a warm and softer quality to them and there's more width to the sound,
67. 5:52if that makes any sense, rather than a narrow sort of projection of sound
68. 5:59there's
69. 6:03a band of sound. What I find with some of the students that I teach, when they're
70. 6:10making the first move on to baroque bass is that their first reaction is one of
71. 6:15horror because what you get under the ear, you get quite a bit of rasp from the
72. 6:21string. You don't get an even smooth tone that you get from well-made modern
73. 6:27strings but that doesn't carry too many feet. So when you're in the audience you
74. 6:32don't get that rasp, you just get this lovely warm sound world
75. 6:39All cellists I know and all violinist that I know will have some sort of overhand hold
76. 6:44on their instrument but in the bass world and in modern orchestras too
77. 6:48you'll see some using the French over-the-top method and you'll see some
78. 6:52using the German with a deeper frog, this bits the frog here, with a deeper frog
79. 6:57and their hand at the side and each will argue that theirs is best but
80. 7:01that's that's for another time. So what you see on this bow is that
81. 7:05compared to a modern bow the tip is narrower and therefore lighter, there's
82. 7:09less wood so this is the heavier end and this is the lighter end and that means
83. 7:14that it's easier to play stronger at this end and quieter at this end. I'm
84. 7:20exaggerating for effect of course but that is an inequality that in our style
85. 7:28of playing baroque music we will use to exploit. So rather than trying to
86. 7:33override it all the time we use that inequality to our advantage and as a
87. 7:40form of expression. The other thing on a modern bow you'll see is a metal
88. 7:46band holding the hair flat and that helps keep the hair taut and it helps
89. 7:52you give more of an attack at the start of your note. We don't have that so
90. 7:56attack has to be made with the fingers and with the arms instead
91. 8:07One of the first pieces where there's actually a line written for the Violone
92. 8:14as opposed to general bass it's written for the contrabass is in a piece,
93. 8:19an opera by Marais and it is for a storm. So where you would have the cellos
94. 8:23playing this
95. 8:27What you get is the contrabass adding
96. 8:37and okay by today's Hollywood standards that's not much of a storm but to the
97. 8:42ears of the people of that time, that would have made a big difference.
98. 8:47It brings gravitas to choruses and what you find in some choruses especially
99. 8:54in Handel and maybe some later Bach, I'll play a bit from the B minor mass, is that
100. 9:00the contrabass or the violone is added when the bass singers sing, so not with
101. 9:06the tenors, we leave that to the cellos of violas, but when the bass comes in
102. 9:10then they join so you might have this with the tenors
103. 9:24If you add the double bass to that you immediately get this extra depth and sound.
104. 9:39The beginning of the Matthew Passion for example is one of my favourite
105. 9:43basslines, I'm a simple soul and I really love pedal notes on a double bass.
106. 9:48So the beginning of the Matthew Passion is a great example of the gravitas that
107. 9:52you get of adding 16 foot to a pedal.
108. 10:07And as I say on its own it doesn't sound like
109. 10:09anything much but when you combine that with the organ and the cellos and the
110. 10:13bassoons, that adds a real richness, maybe it's like the umami of continuo.