Bass violin

(Fr. basse de violon; It. basso viola da braccio, violone).

The bass of the violin family in the 16th and 17th centuries. It originally had three gut strings tuned F–c–g. By constructing large bass violins with a string length of about 74 cm, it became possible to obtain lower notes, and in the mid-16th century a fourth string was added at the bottom, producing the B'–F–c–g tuning found in many 16th- and 17th-century treatises. Such instruments were often pictured supported by a stool or resting on the ground. However, bass violins were also made small enough to be played standing or walking, supported, in the words of Jambe de Fer (1556), ‘with a little hook in an iron ring, or other thing, which is attached to the back of the said instrument’. They were probably tuned F–c–g–d' (PraetoriusSM) or G–d–a–e' (Banchieri, 1609, 1611, 1628), though Zacconi (Prattica di musica, 1592) assigned F–c–g–d' to the tenor viola da braccio – the origin of the modern notion of the ‘tenor violin’. The violoncino, called for in collections by G.B. Fontana (1641), Cavalli (Musiche sacre, 1656) and others, was presumably also a type of small bass violin, though the lowest notes written for it could only have been obtained by using strings that were thick and unwieldy.

This situation was changed by the invention of thin covered or wire-wound strings dense enough to produce good low notes with a short string length. Bonta has argued that covered strings were first developed in Bologna around 1660, and that they were exploited first on the violoncello, a small variant of the bass violin. Bolognese composers soon developed a solo repertory for the cello, and it rapidly superseded the bass violin in Italy, despite the fact that it lacked the weight of tone of the larger instrument. For this reason, it became necessary to double violoncellos at the octave in orchestras, producing the standard bass scoring of later times.

Italian cellists popularized their instrument in northern Europe in the years around 1700, though the bass violin remained in use in London and Paris until the second decade of the 18th century. According to the Privilège … pour l'Académie Royale … pour l'année 1712–13, two basses de violon were played in the petit choeur and eight basses in the grand choeur, and despite contemporary references describing the basse de violon as a crude instrument strung with thick strings that did not speak easily, Saint-Lambert listed it as a continuo string bass. Although the basse de violon was probably never used as a solo instrument, Theobaldo di Gatti (c1650–1727) became a virtuoso on it. Large bass violins were often subsequently cut down to serve as cellos, and relatively few survive in original condition.

For further discussion of terminology for bass instruments of the violin family see Violoncello and Violone; see also Viol.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BoydenH

M. Corrette: Méthode … pour appendre … le violoncelle (Paris, 1741, 2/1783)

D. Boyden: ‘The Tenor Violin: Myth, Mystery, or Misnomer?’, Festschrift Otto Erich Deutsch, ed. W. Gerstenberg, J. La Rue and W. Rehm (Kassel, 1963), 273–9

S. Milliot: ‘Réflexions et recherches sur la viole de gambe et le violoncelle en France’, RMFC, iv (1964), 179–238

D. Abbott and E.Segerman: ‘Strings in the 16th and 17th Centuries’, GSJ, xxvii (1974), 48–73

S. Bonta: ‘Further Thoughts on the History of Strings’, The Catgut Acoustical Society Newsletter, xxvi, Nov (1976), 21–6

S. Bonta: ‘From Violone to Violoncello: a Question of Strings?’, JAMIS, iii (1977), 64–99

S. Bonta: ‘Terminology for the Bass Violin in Seventeenth-Century Italy’, JAMIS, iv (1978), 5–42

M. Cyr: ‘Basses and Basse Continue in the Orchestra of the Paris Opéra, 1700–1764’, EMc, x (1982), 155–70

S. Bonta: ‘Corelli's Heritage: the Early Bass Violin in Italy’, Studi Corelliani, iv (1990), 217–31

J. de La Gorce: ‘L'orchestre de l'Opéra et son évolution de Campra à Rameau’, RdM, lxxvi (1990), 23–43

P. Holman: Four and Twenty Fiddlers: the Violin at the English Court 1540–1690 (Oxford, 1993, 2/1995)

LUCY ROBINSON, PETER HOLMAN