Instrument
Cello
A warm, tenor-to-bass voice, played upright and braced against the floor.
The cello is the second-largest bowed member of the string family, played upright between the knees and braced against the floor with a metal endpin. Its range sits closer to the human voice than any other orchestral string instrument, which is a large part of why cello melodies are often described as sounding especially warm, expressive, or vocal.
How it's played
Like the violin and viola, the cello has four strings tuned in fifths, pitched an octave and more lower: C, G, D, and A, from lowest to highest. It shares the same four-string design scaled up, with a much deeper body that gives its low notes their resonance. The player sits, holds the instrument between the knees with its neck by the left shoulder, and draws the bow across the strings horizontally.
Its range is unusually wide - from a deep, rich bass up into a singing tenor and beyond - which lets one instrument play bass lines, inner harmonies, and soaring melodies.
In the orchestra and the string quartet
In the orchestra, cellos frequently double the bass line an octave above the double bass, reinforcing the harmonic foundation, but they're just as often given rich, singing melodic lines of their own - especially in the Romantic era, when composers leaned heavily on the cello's emotional weight. A full orchestra usually has around ten or twelve cellists. In a string quartet, the cello anchors the bottom of the texture beneath the violins and viola.
A short history
The cello emerged in 16th-century Italy alongside the violin. For much of the Baroque era it was mainly a bass instrument, playing the supporting basso continuo line, and it competed with the viola da gamba, a similar-sized instrument with frets that eventually fell out of use. Over the 18th century the cello won out, and composers began to treat it as a solo voice. The adjustable endpin that props it on the floor only became standard in the later 19th century; before that, players gripped the instrument between their legs.
The solo cello
Alongside its orchestral and chamber roles, the cello has a substantial solo repertoire, including Bach's six unaccompanied Cello Suites - among the most performed and recorded solo works for any instrument. Those suites were relatively obscure until the Spanish cellist Pablo Casals discovered a copy as a teenager and spent years studying them before performing and recording them publicly, almost single-handedly moving them into the center of the repertoire.
Beyond Bach, the instrument's concerto repertoire includes two particularly beloved works - Dvořák's Cello Concerto, written during his time in the United States, and Elgar's Cello Concerto, an elegiac, autumnal piece written in the aftermath of the First World War.
Essential cello music
- Bach - Cello Suites Nos. 1-6, especially No. 1's Prelude.
- Haydn - Cello Concerto No. 1 in C major.
- Dvořák - Cello Concerto in B minor (1895).
- Saint-Saëns - "The Swan," from The Carnival of the Animals.
- Elgar - Cello Concerto in E minor (1919).
- Shostakovich - Cello Concerto No. 1 (1959).
Where to start listening: Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 (specifically its famous opening Prelude) is the instrument's most iconic solo moment. Elgar's Cello Concerto is a good next step for its very different, more melancholy character, and "The Swan" is three minutes of pure cello song.