(It.).
Term used in Italy since the early 19th century for various bass and double bass lip-reed aerophones.
(1)
A type of upright wooden serpent with a large flared bell of brass and between
one and four keys. The instrument is peculiar to Italy, differing from the
French basson russe (see Russian bassoon) in both bell shape and in
the arrangement of keys. Its name may be derived from the abbreviated form of
‘corno in basso’ (‘c. in basso’); variants are encountered, such as simbasso,
gimbasso, and even gibas. Produced by makers such as Magazari, Piana (see fig.1) and Papalini, the wooden cimbasso replaced the serpent
as the lowest member of the brass family in about 1816, making its first
appearance at La Scala where it was noticed by Spohr. Paganini was perhaps the
first composer to adopt the instrument, in his Violin Concerto no.1 in E
(1816); he was followed by
many Italian composers, including Donizetti, Bellini and Giovani Pacini. It
cannot be stated with certainty that these parts were always played on a true
cimbasso; where the instrument was unavailable, the part could have been played
on a keyed ophicleide, an instrument known to have been in use at this time
despite its absence from contemporary Italian scores. The wooden cimbasso
remained popular until at least the mid-1830s.
(2) After about 1835 the term, like the term ‘ophicleide’ or ‘oficleide’, tended to be used generically to describe the lowest orchestral brass instruments, which were in a period of fast-developing innovation. The cimbasso required by Verdi in his earliest operas was probably a valved ophicleide, like those being made at the time by Apparuti (fig.2) and Uhlmann. In other orchestras the parts were actually played on euphonium- and tuba-like models, which Italian and Austrian makers more properly called bombardoni. This explains why Italian scores of the 1840s often exhibit the eccentric habit of naming a new instrument at the start of each section without making any change to the writing of the part in question (Meucci, 1988–9, appx).
In 1845 Giuseppe Pelitti (1811–65) invented the pelittone (patented in Austria in 1847), a contrabass tuba designed to supersede all existing low brass instruments in Italian orchestras; in 1851, he devised the even larger generale pelittone. The fashion for ever-increasing bore size and sound was strongly opposed by Verdi in 1881 when he expressed his dissatisfaction with these huge instruments.
(3)
In 1881 G.C. Pelitti (1837–1905) created, at Verdi’s request, a new low brass
instrument, the trombone basso Verdi. In spite of its ‘basso’ epithet,
it was in fact a contrabass trombone pitched in B (fig.3; see Gazzetta
musicale di Milano, 1881, and Panizza). Verdi scored for this instrument in
his subsequent operas, Otello (1887) and Falstaff (1893);
thereafter it was quickly adopted by almost all Italian orchestras (Prout, It.
trans., 2/1901). It gradually became customary to perform all parts ever conceived
for the cimbasso on the trombone basso Verdi, at least until the bass
tuba was adopted in Italy during the 1920s. The dissemination of this trombone,
which continued in occasional use in Italy into the late 20th century, obscured
the history of the cimbasso before 1881 and affected the nature of the recent
revival of the instrument: modern models are trombones frequently pitched in F
rather than B whereas
in fact no instrument called a cimbasso was a trombone before 1881, neither was
it ever pitched in F. See Trombone, §§4 and 6.
A. Mazzucato: Grande trattato di instrumentazione e d’orchestrazione moderne (Milan, 1846–7/R1912 with appx by E. Panizza) [It. trans., of H. Berlioz: Grand traité d’instrumentation, 1843]
E. Prout: Instrumentation (London, 1877/R; It. trans., ed. V. Ricci, 1892, 2/1901)
GMM, xxxvi (1881), 139
F. Göthel, ed.: L. Spohr: Lebenserinnerung, i (Tutzing, 1968), 245
C. Bevan: The Tuba Family (London, 1978)
R. Meucci: ‘Il cimbasso e gli strumenti affini nell’Ottocento italiano’, Studi Verdiani, v (1988–9), 109–62; Eng. trans., abridged, in GSJ, xlix (1996), 143–79
R. Meucci: ‘The Pelitti Firm: Makers of Brass Instruments in Nineteenth-Century Milan’, HBSJ, vi (1994), 304–33
C. Bevan: ‘Cimbasso Research and Performance Practice: an Update’, Perspectives in Brass Scholarship: Amherst, MA, 1995, 289–99
RENATO MEUCCI