London 'bass, circa 1770.

And here is the bass I had made to replace it.

Though not worth as much it was actually an even finer instrument.

Once again strung in the old style with a mixture of plain gut and round wire covered gut, for reasons of superior sonority, even if they could be quite awkward to tune, if the atmospheric relative humidity or temperature changed ...

ATB from George

Both of them were typical English basses [and therefore not inferior to the great Italian Baroque instruments], both had a very silken soft sound which keeps focus, and very frighteningly strong forte sound which is duly slightly rough! And incredibly articulate, due in part to the very light string weights with gut, but also to the very thin fronts on both. Thin like a violin!

Great for Bach, great for Beethoven, and superb also for Brahms, wonderful for Jazz, and surprisingly good when I joined in a Rock Jamming Session one time!

ATB from George

Not a bassist here George but one of the finest sounds from the instrument (for me) came from a Klotz on several recordings by a jazz musician, Glen Moore. What a magnificent tone!

Very nice, George.

Do you know where your old instrument is now?

I often wonder if the makers of instruments that are now centuries old and still being used professionally, had any idea at all that their handiwork would survive so long.

I also find the process of using tree-ring width to "date" old instruments fascinating. I believe it has a close analogy with modern genome mapping logic.

Winky

Hello George,

Amazing to know that your c1770 bass existed in the time of Mozart and Haydn, makes me wonder who played it originally… and where… and with whom.. and who’s music did it perform too…
If only these old instruments could speak I bet they would tell some interesting stories!

quote:

Sadly it was badly damaged after a concert, and as I could not afford to insure it, I put the repairs in hand with no idea how they were going to be paid for.
It worked out that I sold it to cover the costs.

It’s a crying shame it was damaged after a concert, sounds like it was effectively a write-off…

how did it get damaged?

nymph

quote:

Originally posted by GFFJ:
, and surprisingly good when I joined in a Rock Jamming Session one time!

ATB from George

I guess that's when it got broken, with you riding on it?

No, it was smashing it into the Amps that did for it! (Sorry George!)

Do you still play George?

Dear Winky,

The instrument was of the first quality in its time as it is now, so I think it is fair to say that it would have been played in the most exalted musical circles in the place it was made - London. I like to think that as less than a thirty year old it might have played in the orchestra given to Haydn to premiere his Twelve London Symphonies in the 1790s! If only these old instruments could speak.

Dear Nymph,

It was a long way from a write off - the cost of repairs was estimated at 3000 GBP, but reduced owing to the lack of insurance. It apparently played wonderfully after the repairs, which were far less extensive than the restoration I had done. I did not have the heart to go and play it after the repairs I could not afford, and simply asked for it to be sold in payment, so I did get most of the value of the initial restoration back. That was the downpayment on the new bass. That was a brave decision as it took three years for me to pay for the new one, and saving 5000 GBP in that period. Really it was a great privelege to own such an instrument even for a short time.

I did not witness what happened, because I was carrying another bass to its owner's car. He was a friend, and severely disabled with childhood Polio. When I got home an hour later, I had a dreadful feeling, and unwrapped the bass from its paded bag. My fearsome thought was unfortunately all too justified. The last music I played on it was Mussorgski's Pictures At An Exhibition.

Dear Doc,

One of the misconceptions of old basses, is that they are very strong. The bass is easily the least robust musical instrument. Consider the area of the front and back, and the great tensions in the strings, and add in the fact that the wood is of a similar thickness to that found in the much smaller violin. Then you will see that merely pressing on the instrument would cause a visible deflection. As my luthier friend observed, "rather like high class balsa wood."


Dear Tony,

I am being bullied to start agin. Managing to stave it off, but the person bullying is a lovely person - one of my best friends - and she is running an orchestra for aged, and disabled people. I shall not be able to hold off for long. Though I shall never undertake a lot of playing again.

Dear Frank,

The new camera is a Canon Ixus 750, which fills the place of an over forty year old 35 mm Rangefinder - the Canonette, which actually might be worth quite a bit of money ...

But it was my Norwegian grandmother's camera, so not going to be sold.

ATB from George

George the 1770 looks absolutely stunning.

Shame you don't still have it.

Dear Mark,

That picture only gives a hint of how lovely it was.

I remember once being told by some cellists playing in front of me, that the old bass was so projecting that they could feel their instruments responding with sympathetic vibrations to the bass even if they were not playing!

It projected like mad, and yet was strangely quiet at the player's ear. It had a deceptively gentle and soft tone, which could give the player the idea that it was not projecting. It was very easy to play too loud on it, though it was very nice played softly. It always kept the fundamental pitch very clearly even when playing very quiet. And it was so live that it played as well with gut as steel strings. In fact it was too weak in the wood to carry steel, and I only ever tried some very briefly. Steel did not improve the instrument! The sound went off, and it kicked on note starts, and got a hard edge to the tone, even if it was hugely powerful. Like a V8 in a Caterham ...

That is the opposite of many modern instrument, which simply will not work with gut strings, because the gut is so light relative to steel, and cannot get enough energy into the much thicker front wood [table] used nowadays compared to that used in old instruments.

ATB from George

As an electric bass player for the best part of 20 years I have often considered trying a 'proper' bass. My only experience was buying one in a Leeds pawn shop in 1989.

When I went to sleep that evening in my student hovel, I left it propped against the radiator. When I woke up it was in pieces on the floor...

Dear Tim,

Your story just indicates how fragile double basses are. On the other hand for it to colapse without even being in ome way being knocked suggests to me that it was probably an old and potentially fine instrument.

The worse the quality the more robust the instrument, because por instruments are made much more heavily, with twice or even three times the thickness in the front and also to some extent in the back.

ATB from George

Now if you look at the bass I had made for me in the second post here, you may well see the likeness with this.

Maggini was the master of bass makers to a very large extent, and set the modern form of the instrument - at least the Italian and English forms as the Germans and French retained two quite different styles which generally are less pleasing on the eye, if not less appealling to the ear.

The new bass above is modelled on one of the great Maggini basses, made in 1666. I have not been able to find a photo of that exact instrument, but this is a very fine looking example.



Notice the constant line of the profile, that, apart from the violin corners on the "C" bouts, is actually very similar to the outline of a guitar. The double bass is not a violin but a viol. The violin decends via Gypsy instruments related to the guitar and lute instruments of the Middle Ages, but the viol is the aristocrat of instruments, used in Church and Royal Court settings. Music for Consorts of viols was an English speciality.

The Viol instruments have flat backs, whereas the Violin instruments have arched backs, and a different attachement of the neck with a guitar shaped flat topped upper bout. German and French basses often follow a sort of hybrid appraoch with short corners [looking plain compared to violin corner, and have the disadvantage that they are heavier and less effectively resonants in that the weight kills the tone to some extent], and sometimes an arched back, which is also much weightier, and generally less responsive in playability, though much stronger in resistance to damage. They almost always have the sloping shoulders [rather than flat topped profile of the violin] of their viol ancestors.

If anyone is interested, I will look up exemplary German and French style instruments to post here, but I think you will see the close relationship between the old Italian School of bass making as brought to its peak by Maggini, and both my old London bass and the new one.

The old form of the bass, which Maggini made was called the Violone, and this had up to five or six strings, while in England the double bass as it was called in the time of Handel was usually only strung with three. In England three string basses were normal till 1914, with four stringers being an otional extra at greater cost for the Boosey and Hawkes "Panormo" Models up till that time. Really four stringers are still normal today, with five strings being still fairly rare in english orchestras.

However in Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the multi-string Baroque instrumet carried on, so the Schubert's "Troute Quintet" was certainly written for a five stringed bass [with violin, viola, cello and piano] in the early eighteen hundredds at a time fifty years after the five or six string bass had completely died out in England.

By the 1890s in Austria and Germany the five stringer became virtually the standard in orchestras, whereas Italy, France and England were steadfastly using three stringers. In Italy Verdi had made an effort to bring the four stringer into the orchestra by writing musical lines down to the new low "E" in them. However this did not bring wide acceptance that the four stringer would become the standaed for many years in Italy - just as in England!

The fewer strings a bass has in general the fuller and more responsive the instrument is, though a very good five stringer is easily better than a poor four or three stringer. However if that very good five stringer were reduced to a three stringer it would become immensely powerful and responsive.

By now perhaps a quarter of the basses in English orchestras are five stringers, but the extra low notes in the music that a five stringer can play [down to the profound "B"] are often played on a four stringer with an extension on the lowest "E" string making the profound "C" available, which is an octave below the bottom note of the cello.

I will dig out a picture of an extension, if anyone is cuious.

In Vienna, mostly the basses are still four stringers, with a few fives stringers to fill in the low notes, whilst in Berlin it is unusualto see a four stringer.

My commisioned bass had five strings, not least because the Maggini pattern is wide between the "f" holes, allowing for the wide bridge necessary to carry the strings far enough apart to allow the strings to swing without clashing, and also to allow for the left hand to have room to differentiate at the other end!

ATB from George

PS: Here is a link to the Poellmann bass web page, where the varieties of different styles of bass may be seen. This is a slight simplification, but will certainly ive you the idea that the double bass has never been even vaguely standardised. All other modern istruments conform to very clear paterns. The double, which is the oldest instrument regularly used in the orchestra, bucks this trend!

http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.poe...0%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN

A Bernard Fendt double bass, made in London at a similar period to mine. The essntial details are enough to draw a reasonable assignment of maker, though it can never be conclusively be proved, unless the ownership of the instrument is known [as it is in some cases] from the intial commissioning, as these old instrument actually were not labelled in the way modern ones are, and if you find a label it certainly makes the instrument very suspect as a fake!



ATB from George

Archetypal German double bass with short corners - a hang on from the instruments Viol origins, but not so attractive in my view as the Anglo-Italian adoption of the violin corners seen above.



This bass is fitted with the "E" string extension to allow notes down to "C" to be played, in this case using keys to activate the pads pressing on the string. This was an English invention from the 1920s by a certain London played named Fawcett, hence the occasional reference to a "Fawcett' extension.

ATB from George

A French bass by Paul Claudot, who made some of the best. I almost bought one when I still had the old London bass.

You may note the strangely obviously hybrid styling of the top bout as it attaches to the neck. Yoiu can see how the line is trying to retain the viol shape and also the relationship to the much flater line of the violin ...

Claudot made basses in both the German shape as in the bass immediately above, and in the Anglo-Italian style as in the Bernard Femdt and Maggini instruments further up ...



ATB from George

And finally to show how shape of a violin contrasts with the viol shaped double bass!

This is a Strad model cello, and shows the typical flattened top of the violin style upper bout, where the neck is attached.

You can see how Claudot [picture immediately above] was trying to model the slopped shoulders of the violone shaped double bass, so as to bring out the violin line.

The problem with the double bass, when the actual top bout really is violin shaped, rather than merely hinting at it, is that the instruments are very hard to play in the higher positions half way up the top string[s], adopting what is generally called the "thumb position," which involves using the side of the thumb to give what is effectively an extra finger for stopping the strings.

This is almost unheard of in orchestral playing - there is a single example in all Elgar's music in the Second Symphony, for example - but is an expected part of the normal technique for playing solo double bass.

ATB from George

Bump!

I love my rangefinder Leicas and the 'look' of the images they help me produce. My Dad had a Canonet A Q17 IIRC.

Your original image is beautiful :-)

George,

They are all exquisite pieces of work. Although much finer work they remind me of my racing sailboat (Moth Class) that my father and I built some years ago. It also consisted of a thin ply skin over thin ribs and fillets. And a well varnished maple finish.

David

Now a proper scan of the photo of the old London bass!

Slightly cropped so as make the salient points slightly less small ... Still nothing like as nice as the original print though ...




ATB from George

To go a full circle, this is my first bass - an East German Meinel three quarter sized student bass - and here it is in the garden of my mother's house in about 1986/7 when I still had hair, and she was still speaking to me!



ATB from George

And the very last Photos from April 2008, the day before playing at a 75th. Birthday concert of a friend, for which event I borrowed this Czech student bass somewhat similar to my first student bass.



Showing a nice French bow hold, and ...



... which shows how close the instrument a player can and should get.

ATB from George

quote:

Originally posted by GFFJ:
Now a proper scan of the photo of the old London bass!

Slightly cropped so as make the salient points slightly less small ... Still nothing like as nice as the original print though ...




ATB from George

There's magic in the original scan George, this attempt has been lightened too much and the dust ...

Dear shoot,

It is very odd really as the original print was made specially from what was a good negative made with a rangefinder camera, the one before my most recent forty year old Canonette, a Mamiya.

The Mamiya was an old camera that once belonged to my mother, but apparently was not working well. I found it worked very nicely, but eventually the built in light meter failed.

As usual in those days my film of choice was Fuji ASA 200.

As I say the original print is very nice, and the capture in the original post was managed with a digital Canon Ixus 750 as almost the first photo i took with it after buying it very reasonably.

The scan is odd, because it is like the worst kind of digital transfer of a recording. All the detail and none of the warmth of the original - a bleached out vision of cold perfection. Yet perfection was not part of the original vision!

The "collect" is like a splendid transfer of a well loved old recording, where some detail seems to have been put into a lesser perspective, but retains the beauty and warmth of the original. Now beauty was in the the instrument. The shot was well planned, and I had the print made, and showed it to my neigbour, an old lady who taught art and performance art in her day.

She was compleimentary about the original print in a way that I found surprising. I think you have seen in the "collect" something of the beauty she saw in the original print.

Thanks for your comments! They give me the confidence to sometimes follow a more beauty orientated way than necessarily a wholely technically perfect one with my photos.

In fact I have a whole packing box full of my photos and others by my grandmother and mother.

My grandmother often took very beautiful photos, and my mother rarely, though she always took very well made ones from the technical stand-point.

Mine are sometimes very pleasing in the artistic sense, though really I am no artist in reality - Wodka aside!

ATB from George