Instrument
Double Bass
The largest and lowest-pitched of the bowed strings.
The double bass is the largest and lowest member of the string family, so large that players typically stand or perch on a tall stool to play it, rather than sitting the way violinists and violists do. Its shape also differs subtly from its smaller relatives - sloped shoulders rather than rounded ones, a holdover from its partial ancestry in the viol family rather than the violin family alone. It goes by many names: bass, string bass, upright bass, contrabass, and bass fiddle.
How it's played
One more legacy of its viol ancestry: unlike the rest of the string family, which is tuned in fifths, the double bass is tuned in fourths (typically E-A-D-G). The wider stretch a fifth would demand between fingers is far less practical on an instrument this large, so the narrower fourths make basic fingering patterns physically manageable. Many orchestral basses add a fifth string, or a mechanical extension, to reach down to a low C.
Players also differ in bow technique more than other string sections do, using either a French-style bow held like a violinist's or a German-style bow gripped underhand, a distinction that survives from different regional playing traditions. Its music is written an octave higher than it sounds, to avoid filling the page with extra lines below the staff.
In the orchestra
In the orchestra, the double bass usually reinforces the harmonic foundation, often doubling the cello line an octave lower, providing the low-frequency weight underneath the rest of the string section. A full symphony orchestra typically has around eight basses, lined up at the side or back of the strings. You often feel the section as much as hear it: take the basses away and the whole orchestra suddenly sounds thin.
It's less frequently given prominent melodic material than the higher strings, though composers occasionally spotlight it for specific dramatic or comedic effect precisely because it's unexpected - and Beethoven gave the cellos and basses a famous, speech-like passage of their own near the start of his Ninth Symphony's finale.
Soloists and stars
The bass has had its virtuosos. Giovanni Bottesini, in the 19th century, was nicknamed "the Paganini of the double bass," and Serge Koussevitzky was a celebrated bassist before becoming one of the great conductors of the 20th century, leading the Boston Symphony Orchestra for a quarter of a century.
Beyond the orchestra, the double bass is also central to jazz and many other genres, played pizzicato (plucked) far more often outside classical music than within it.
Famous double bass moments
- Mahler - Symphony No. 1, third movement: a solo bass plays a mournful minor-key "Frère Jacques."
- Saint-Saëns - "The Elephant," from The Carnival of the Animals, a lumbering waltz for solo bass.
- Schubert - "Trout" Quintet, one of the few great chamber works to include a double bass.
- Beethoven - Symphony No. 9, the recitative-like passages for cellos and basses in the finale.
- Bottesini - Double Bass Concerto No. 2.
Where to start listening: the opening of the third movement of Mahler's Symphony No. 1 famously gives the double bass a rare, exposed solo melody. Then try "The Elephant" for the instrument's comic side.