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Attention – Double-Bass-Quartet! Dear music lovers, please admit that you have not heard a string quartet consisting of four double-basses. That is understandable because the players of the biggest and lowest sounding four string instruments of the orchestra are not usually keen on being in the foreground. For instance, in Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, they perform together with the violoncellos as a speaker of the orchestra and look joyfully ahead. In musical literature, the biggest and therefore the lowest sounding of the four string instruments of the orchestra was stamped to “strengthen the violoncellos down an octave.” But illustrating documents of the 17th century show us already head-high gambas in trio and quartet scorings before the violin bass developed into the violoncello. A large part of the German string music of the 17th century is based on forms whose distinguishing features are the polarizing tension between the both “canti” and the basso continuo. A visible example for this practice provides Veronese in his painting “Wedding in Kana” (1562). In the 17th century, the instruments of the violin family extended their sound image and displaced the dignified gambas gradually. Only the contrabass gambas remained and united into the violin bass to the epitome of the orchestral bass, which stayed powerful in the chamber music (divertimento literature).
Approximate Word count = 794
Approximate Pages = 3.2
(250 words per page double spaced)
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