Bottesini Method, part 2

What is a position?

The Simandl and Nanny methods were the books I learned from as a beginner. Later, when I felt the need to start over from scratch, I consulted the four volumes by Ludwig Streicher. Common to all three of those methods (and probably many others) is the fixed system of positions that inch up the fingerboard by half steps. Beginning from what Simandl calls the 'half position' the fingers 1, 2 and 4 are used exclusively, although there are some minor disagreements as to when the 3rd finger replaces the fourth near the octave point. Each method begins with the lowest position ('half position', Simandl) and incrementally works up the fingerboard. Simandl takes about thirty pages to climb up to the 6th position. Streicher devotes an entire volume to open strings and half position before setting out from base camp to reach the snowy, rosin-capped summit three volumes later.

For me, the numbered positions are something like the training wheels I once had on my bicycle -- in the beginning they were necessary until it was safe to abandon them in a corner of the garage. For a while thereafter they were something of an embarrassment before achieving their apotheosis as an object of nostalgia. As a young student, each step higher on the chromatic ladder brought me to a new numbered position, and with it a sense of achievement. “What position are you up to?” was something we students often asked each other to determine who was a good player. The poor fellow still struggling with the second position was an object of scorn, or of pity, to those of us who had safely gone on to the third or beyond. Recently, I'm embarrassed to say, I had to look up the positions, having forgotten them long ago.

The numbering system for positions in the Simandl method seems to be based on the natural minor scale. I believe the reasoning behind this was once explained to me, but I've since forgotten that as well. The arbitrary numbering of positions, and 'half' positions are what made it difficult for me to remember them. Nanny's method uses a slightly different numbering system, as illustrated by the wonderful diagram above. Ascending mostly by whole steps, it also includes the more logical scheme of numbering the positions by degree of the chromatic scale.

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The first six positions of Simandl

As any student discovers rather quickly, using the 1-2-4 fingering system, where the distance between the 1st and 4th finger always spans a whole step, it is impossible to play a diatonic scale in any one position above the first without shifting. The Bottesini method differs radically from those cited by quickly introducing the student to the entire range of the instrument to be covered by the method. Within about five pages, Bottesini takes us from open strings to the G-harmonic, an octave above the open string, which is a far as he is going by the end of the volume. With the emphasis on scales and melodic material, Bottesini incorporates shifting throughout the range of the instrument from the outset.

The modern player might be immediately startled by Bottesini's fingering system. After a perfunctory page covering the open strings the first exercises for the left hand begin. Only the 1st and 4th fingers are employed at first.

1st and second positions

It is interesting to note that after these first examples, he never refers to numbered positions again.

Eventually, a fingering scheme of 1-3-4 is introduced, but this differs radically from the systems of Simandl, Nanny, et al. In the first position, whole steps and half steps are both fingered 1-4. From the second position and higher the 3rd finger is gradually introduced for some half steps, although 1-4 is used more often, particularly on the lower strings. If there is some rule about when a half step is taken with the third or fourth finger, I have yet to discover it.

As always, delving into the work of Bottesini makes the us come face to face with the most pressing questions of our era. In this case the question is, what is a position? For Simandl, Nanny, & co. the answer is obvious, due to the consistent 1-2-4 fingering system. In any position where those three fingers are used exclusively, each finger has exactly one correct placement in each position. The same can be said of the thumb, resting behind the neck, which moves from one position to another in a fixed relationship to the other fingers. By contrast, Bottesini invites us to be flexible. In (his) second position, on the A-string, the first finger takes B-natural, while C-natural can be taken with either the third or fourth finger. Looked at another way, in the second position, the fourth finger can have two proper placements, on C-natural, or C-sharp. In Simandl, a 4th finger C-natural (A-string) can only be in half position. In Bottesini's method, it could either be in first or second position.

In the process of acquainting myself with Bottesini's fingering system, I spent a quite bit of time on the first few pages, wrapping my brain and my fingers around the half steps taken with the first and fourth fingers. To feel comfortable in the crimped position, I found myself holding the thumb a bit higher, opposite the first finger (or even higher) rather than my normal position, wherein the thumb resides more or less opposite the second finger. The new hand position felt uncomfortable only in that it was something different. In fact, alternately stretching and contracting the hand felt strangely liberating. With the fingers all out of their usual positions, relying more heavily on the ear than on the hand position was revelatory, as much as it was also sobering.

Anxious as I was to begin climbing the ladder, tackling the more interesting and difficult material to come. A couple lines of text made me stop dead in my tracks. In the middle of a section of brief exercises 'in all keys', where he moves to the flat keys, Bottesini writes: “The pupil will understand that the object of these exercises is to accustom him to keep his thumb perfectly still.” Somewhat confusingly, this instruction appears after exercises in F major, D minor, and B flat major, and it is unclear whether it applies to what is above or below the text. Here is the exercise in D minor, notable for the first use of the third finger in the method.

This appears to be all in the second position, so leaving the thumb in place conforms to the Simandl/Nanny idea of position. However, directly below the text is this exercise in G minor.

First or second position?

Right away there is a conundrum. Is this first or second position? First finger on A-natural implies second position, while using it on the E-flat says first. Was Bottesini asking us to shift position without moving the thumb (Apostasy!), or is this all to be considered as one position?

At the bottom of the page (clearly referring to the exercise above since the next page went on to something else) Bottesini again felt the need to add: The pupil will take care not to move his thumb in getting to the A flat on the G string.

Don't move the thumb

After some head scratching, it dawned on me that I had yet to fully free myself from the shackles of the old position system I studied as a beginner. Initially, tackling Bottesini's unfamiliar fingerings, I held onto the idea that to be in a 'position', one of the fingers needed to be fixed in place. Since the early examples had both whole steps and half steps fingered 1-4, I erroneously made the assumption that the placement of the first finger defined the 'position' while the fourth finger could stretch to a whole step or contract to a semi tone. The text and examples cited above finally made me realize that the first finger could move within a position as well.

To be fair, these conclusions are my own extrapolations of what I found in the text. Bottesini doesn't appear to be concerned with the idea of positions in the same way as Simandl or Nanny. He barely mentions them near the beginning of the method before dropping them altogether after about the first ten pages. However, from the numbered fingerings, as well as the admonishments not to move the thumb, it seems clear to me that there is some underlying idea of being in a 'position', however vague that might be.

Based on what I had encountered to that point, I came up with the following first and second 'positions'.    

Since the pitches A-B-C, fingered 0-1-4, could be in either first or second position, the defining characteristic had to be the position of the thumb. The first position would be with the thumb closest to the nut, and the in the second, the thumb would be somewhat farther away.

Upon turning the page and preceding to the next section of the book, it turned out that, while neither refuting my thesis outright, nor confirming it, Bottesini simply went on to something else. He didnt seem overly concerned about 'positions, so, I asked myself, why was I?

The following post(s) will deal with more of the Method.  

Bottesini Method, part 1

Discarding every trifling disputation, I have followed but one threefold guide in the composition of this method: Truth for science. Beauty for art. Usefulness for the pupil.

Bottesini introduces his Method with a few eloquent remarks, laying out the practical foundation of his approach and modestly asserting that, rather than arising from a burning desire to edify the bass playing world, it was only the prompting of others that caused him to create the work. The author's modesty is not merely surprising, emanating as it does from Bottesini, the bassist and composer who bestrode the musical world of the 19th century like a colossus, it also jars the modern sensibility, inured as we are to the scourge of monetization and naked self-promotion that has seeped into every corner of our cultural experience, penetrating even to the out-of-the-way nooks and crannies of the musical world where bassists dwell. The great virtuoso only reluctantly endeavored to write his Method when begged to do so. And, furthermore, he eschewed the golden opportunity to hawk something, a special end-pin, personally endorsed bows or basses, perhaps an exclusive Bottesini Brand® rosin in a special monogrammed stay-fresh case, or maybe a bib for the bass, quivers for the bow, how about a summer camp, or an infallible secret to audition success. The great Bottesini, virtuous in every sense, renounces commercialization, turns his back on the snake oil and rubbish that litters so much of the modern pedagogical landscape.

Within the modest tone of the prologue, Bottesini makes clear that, while respecting the viewpoints of others, he reserves the right to express his own. He begins with an impassioned argument for the three-stringed bass. In adding an extra string, he argues, what is gained by enabling a few lower notes is negated by the loss of sound and clarity of tone. As he describes his experiments in adding a fourth string to various fine instruments: The result was always the same, and always bad... Neither is he in favor of tuning the bass in fifths, which he deems 'absurd'.

As mentioned in the previous post, the English language edition I'm using is published by Carl Fischer. The Escudier edition, in addition to some very handsome illustrations not found in the English version, has some slightly different material in the introductory section. For instance, here, Bottesini takes aim at the so-called Dragonetti Bow. Cette position, on le voit, manque d'élégance. (This position, as we can see, lacks elegance.) Zing!

Written descriptions of bow grips are often vague and unhelpful. Admitting this from the outset, Bottesini limits himself to a few instructions.

The hand not too near the nut, nor too far from it, the middle finger, the third finger, and the little finger firmly placed against the nut in such a way that the middle finger adapts itself to the place where the hair commences; the forefinger must hook upon the stick and press it strongly; the thumb on the side of the nut and always opposite the middle finger, pressing from the right side and a little obliquely, the edge of the groove in the nut.

Most surprising to me is that this description does not seem to match what I have long understood to be the so-called Italian bow grip, where the thumb is positioned in the little c-shaped part of the frog and does not touch the stick at all. (I've seen this part of the bow called the 'throat', which sounds gross when you think about the Italian bow grip as sticking one's thumb in the throat of the bow.) The illustrations seem to bear this out.

Although neither of the editions in my possession have dates of publication, my guess is that the Method was a later work, written after Bottesini had already achieved his fame as a bassist. In support of this, I note how he mentions that others approached and persuaded him to create it, presumably on account of his reputation. I also sense a degree of world-weariness in his remarks. The fatalism in his attitude toward the instrument and its students suggests a long travail and the attendant disappointment inevitably experienced by all who play the instrument over a period of many years.

Bottesini's views on the double bass, particularly concerning it as a solo instrument, might come as a surprise to some, particularly to those in the Academy, and his realistic assessment of the prospects of the majority of students who might take up the instrument flies in the face of our present day practice of maintaining persistent, if sometimes irrational, optimism.

The Double Bass cannot aspire to the advantages of other solo instruments... The sole end and purpose of the Double Bass ought, then, to be giving of the fundamental notes to the orchestra.

Let us make no mistake on this subject; you do not learn to play the Double Bass for the purpose of executing brilliant morceaux with purity of tone, elegance of coloring, and lightness of bow. If uncommon talent, seconded by rare gifts and long studies can attain exceptional results, such attainments are not generally acquired.

Ouch! with that, it's time to start learning the Double Bass. The following posts will delve deeper into the Method.

What would Bottesini do?

Out of the several editions of the famous passage for double basses from Verdi's Othello (Act IV), the one most interesting to me is the version that includes fingerings and bowings. Apparently, displeased by what he heard at the first go-round in Milan, probably during rehearsals for the premier at La Scala in 1887, Verdi sent a letter to Giovanni Bottesini in London, mentioning 'problematic' intonation in the double basses. Along with the letter, the composer included a copy of the passage with the request that the great virtuoso provide fingerings to guide the bassists in Milan toward fixing the intonation problem. Although I am not 100% certain of the provenance of the markings in the Ricordi edition, I have always assumed that they are what Bottesini provided to Verdi.

To the modern eye, at least to mine, some of the fingerings look odd, most notably the half-steps that are fingered 1 - 4.

An aside is in order here, in case any non bassists are torturing themselves by reading this. Nowadays, with the exception of certain 'advanced' or 'extended' techniques, in the lower positions, which encompass most of the orchestral literature for the instrument, bassists mostly use the fingering scheme of 1 - 2 - 4. The 1st and 4th finger spanning the distance of a whole tone - and, obviously, from 1st to 2nd finger, and 2nd to 4th encompassing a semi tone. This fingering scheme appears in method books by Franz Simandl, Edouard Nanny, Ludwig Streicher, and probably many more I am unaware of. [An aside within an aside: I once studied with a teacher who assigned etudes from the method by Isaia Bille, who used the fingering scheme 1 - 3 - 4, the so-called Italian Style. Only this teacher, in disagreement with Sgr. Bille, had gone through the entire volume with whiteout, covering over every instance of the 3rd finger and overwriting it with the numeral '2'. Why would anyone overlook the strongest finger? he asked, rhetorically.]

Despite the development of 'modern' fingering systems, the idea that the span between the 1st and 4th finger shall be a whole step remains largely sacrosanct. Innovations to fingering, such as they are, most often strive to increase that span, through stretching the fingers, pivoting with the wrist &c., which makes the appearance of the half-steps and major thirds fingered 1 - 4 seem archaic, or at least a little bit odd. (Once again for the non bassist: half-step corresponds to the major third in that the former is played on one string, the latter, on adjacent strings, the distance between the fingers remaining the same.)

I have made my own version of the excerpt (see below) including the fingerings from Bottesini. Instances of the 1 - 4 half-step fingerings can be found in measures 6 and 7, 11 and 12, 17, 22, 23 and 24.

Looking over the entire passage, one will not find a single instance where the 2nd finger is employed - the Italian custom of avoiding that digit altogether in the lower positions. There are some other interesting features or, one might say, inconsistencies, wherein at one time a half step is taken with the aforementioned fingering of 1 - 4, and followed soon thereafter with the same notes being fingered 1 - 3.

Recently, while searching my computer for a copy of the Othello excerpt to give to a student, I rediscovered a scan of Bottesini's method book. Years ago, unsolicited, someone had sent me a CD containing scans of the whole book, an edition published by Carl Fischer, with the text in English. Unfortunately, there are no dates or information about the editor or translator, but it looks to be an old edition, with the archaic fingerings intact. The book is also available on IMSLP, Léon Escudier, editor, with the text in French. This version, in addition to an extended introductory section, also includes a second part that deals with the double bass as a solo instrument. I'm aware that a few modern, bowdlerized version of the book exist, where, in addition to the fingerings being 'updated', various passages were transposed or rewritten to utilize a fourth string, something Bottesini did not favor. With extra time on my hands lately, as is I'm sure true of anyone reading this contemporaneously, I thought it might be interesting to go through the book in order to try out Bottesini's fingerings, and, in so doing, discover if there is any method to what, at first glance appears as madness. My intention is to make note of my experiences here. The next number of posts will be dealing with that subject matter.

Before proceeding to the Bottesini Method, a few observations about the Othello passage might be of interest. There is some debate about the accent on the first note - specifically how loud to play that. At auditions, some players play it quite forcefully, others less so, or not at all. The score has no accent, last time I checked. The up-bow marking suggests to me that less of an attack might be the better approach. Perhaps the accent is there more to indicate that the note should have a definite beginning, rather than fading in from nothing. The indication of the 3rd string in m. 17 is almost certainly an error. The 1st string is more logical and fits with the numbered fingerings. I'm hoping that study of Bottesini's Method will shed some light on the fingering choices in measure 22 - the interval C-flat to B-flat is fingered one time 4 - 1 and the next 3 - 1.

An old post might be of interest. It is an account of when the {redacted}SO, under Sir Georg Solti, performed the piece, with Luciano Pavarotti in the title role. One minor episode not covered by the blog post concerns the marking soli contrabassi a 4 corde. The three string bass being still widely used at the time, Verdi felt the need to specify that only those with the low E string should play the first six measures, until tutti is marked in measure seven, probably to avoid having players join in in the middle of a phrase. At the first go through with Solti, it seemed like he had never noticed the marking before. There was some back and forth with the principal until the brain trust, such as it was, came to the (wrong!) conclusion that contrabassi a 4 corde meant four players. We were all set to proceed that way, with four players beginning, and the rest of the section joining at bar seven. Needles to say, this didn't sit well with some of us. It was one of a number of times over the years I thought the section might actually come to blows. At the time, I was using a five-string bass and wondered whether I should be a pill and, adhering to the letter of the law, sit out. In the end, hotter heads prevailed, and we all played the whole thing.

The post about the 1990 performance is here.

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Joy to the World

an argument against happiness

A casual glance at an orchestra in performance usually reveals a group of mostly phlegmatic individuals going about their business. To the untrained eye, stoicism appears to be the order of the day, but the astute observer can mark a variety of attitudes and emotions among the musicians. During a single concert it is often possible to observe everything from rapture to despair, disguised either cleverly, or not at all. Even when the general mood of the ensemble is good and spirits are mostly high, it is almost always possible to find at least one individual who is scowling or otherwise showing signs of being under a dark cloud. Conversely, when spirits are generally low, there is always someone who seems to be happily playing away, either oblivious to, or immune from the general malaise around them.

One entertaining pastime to consider during an otherwise un-engaging performance is to look for the player onstage who seems to be enjoying themselves most of all and then to seek out their counterpart, the one who is suffering. This is easier than it seems at first for, interestingly, these individuals are often seated right next to each other. Having observed this phenomenon over a number of years, I've struggled to determine if this antipodal relationship is causal or correlative. Is this a coincidence? Is it Schadenfreude - a happy individual taking pleasure in the low spirits of another? Or is it something else? Why do individuals in close proximity exhibit such discordant emotional responses to the same performance?

In my experience, the overly happy player is more often than not at least partially oblivious to their surroundings, and therefore probably incapable of experiencing Schadenfreude. On the other hand, the unhappy individual, possessed of a keener sense of discrimination, possibly sharpened by years of discontentment, is more acutely aware, sometimes painfully so, of what is going on around them. Maybe this boils down to something like the bumper stickers you see occasionally that say “If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention.”

For a while I postulated that there might be a limited supply of happiness available during any performance, and the happy player had siphoned off more than their fair share - the “I drink your milkshake” theory. But later on I began to wonder if that viewpoint might have been overly simplistic. The supply of happiness is most probably variable; happiness can be created or destroyed. But is the creation of happiness equivalent to the destruction of unhappiness? This got me to wondering if the happy player, through the reckless enactment of their enjoyment, might actually be creating unhappiness in those around them.

The subject got rolling around in my mind again when I recently came across the term Gluckschmerz, a made up word with a mysterious etymology. Gluckschmerz, while not its exact opposite, is a good complement to Schadenfreude. My small understanding of these two terms is that they both have something to do with a sense of justice and with group dynamics, which make them both apt for talking about the orchestra. More than simply the enjoyment gained from witnessing someone else's suffering, Schadenfreude is the feeling of satisfaction that arises from knowing justice is being done when a transgressor receives their well-deserved comeuppance. Likewise, beyond being suffering caused by the joy of another, Gluckschmerz is the unhappiness felt upon witnessing someone deriving pleasure from something that is ill-gotten, illegitimate, or otherwise undeserved. When an acerbic conductor calls out a certain musician, players may experience Schadenfreude if they feel the criticism to be merited. When the criticism is not forthcoming they might feel disappointment, which, when the undeserving player then gambols and frolics through a concert in an unaware and unconscious state of bliss, curdles and becomes Gluckschmerz.

On the one hand, there is something profoundly depressing when considering how joy and misery are sometimes dependently linked. I can imagine Messrs. Schadenfreude and Gluckschmerz as two grizzled old timers, long time stand partners at the back of a string section in some godforsaken orchestra. Like two petulant children on opposite ends of a teeter-totter, one can only go up when the other comes down; they are hateful of, yet dependent upon the other. Conversely, there is cause for optimism, for as we are especially reminded during the holiday season, we are, all of us, sinners. As such, when we fall, as we all do, inevitably, we might be able to take solace in the fact we might be generating happiness, at least somewhere. At any rate, this dark underbelly to happiness is something to keep in mind over the next few weeks.

Logging Back On

Now that I've gone ahead and redacted myself from the {redacted}SO, I intend to begin blogging again, although the subject matter will probably be substantially different than before. But more on retirement will be forthcoming later. The pressing concern of the moment is a concert by The Growlers: A Double Bass Ensemble, exactly one week from today. Details are below.

I'm very happy to be performing Logs, by Paul Chihara on this concert. It has been a favorite of mine since college days, way back in the late 1970s. Most notable to me is Chihara's use of the 'circular bowing' technique, which produces a very earthy, organic kind of sound, evoking feelings of being deep within a quiet, ancient forest, sensing that trees are truly alive. The inspiration for the piece apparently came from Zen breathing exercises in The Art of Archery. Our performance of Logs will use six double basses, spread out as much as space will allow, hopefully giving the audience the sensation of being surrounded by old trees. Indeed, what is a double bass, if not an old log fashioned into something else?  

Probably of Interest to Bassists Only

(the first draft of this post had some unfortunate typos in the examples, hopefully corrected now)

Mozart, Don Giovanni Overture and Symphony no. 40 provided opportunities to trot out a few crusty old fingerings and, thanks to some slow-ish tempos, roll out a few things that had been on the drawing board for years but never battle tested.

Following a somber presage of the Don's ultimate fate, the hastily composed overture (apparently penned after a Kavanaugh-esque night of drinking on the eve of the premiere) moves along at sprightly clip, Allegro Molto it says in the part. Low strings and bassoons join the action with the following passage.

Unlike a lot of things, this is actually quite pleasant to play on the double bass, with open 'A' and 'D' strings to call upon. When the passage returns, a fifth higher, not so much. The problem is really the 'c-sharp' to 'e-natural' – it's either across 3 strings, or a shift (the interval of a sixth is a long way on an instrument tuned in fourths). I came up with the following solution back in college.

'N' stands for thumbnail, or end of the thumb, a nifty way to play fourths. Another way to deal with fourths is to finger them 3-2, which leads to a handy way to take on chords in the first inversion, which you can see in the 5^th and 6^th bars of the excerpt.

I like this solution so much, I actually used it the first instance of this passage. 

Mozart 40 is one of those pieces that ends up on almost every double bass audition. Over the years, I've come across countless ways to finger the passages in the last movement. At m.49, I use what was once upon a time an innovative approach, but now I think is fairly standard. The little wrinkle at the 5^th measure was one of those things I had been working on for a while but never had a chance to try. Beyond flashiness for its own sake, I thought it might be nice to handle the 1^st and 5^th measures with the same string crossings while avoiding an ungodly open 'G' string. My stand partner gave me a bit of side-eye during this passage, but I'm choosing to take that as a sign of approval. Also, lastly, the traditional 'on one string' approach to this measure looks kind of embarrassing to me when you see a whole section doing it together. Nothing more to say about that.  

Initially, I thought I needed to arrive at the 5^th measure like this.

Eventually I found that I didn't need to 'prepare' the thumb position and settled on what is shown in the full example.

Either the tempo was a bit slower by the time we reached m.229, or else I was finally warming up. Anyhow, I felt confident enough to try out the following.


 

The first measure is a variant I've used off and on (instead of using a fingering similar to m.49). I've added some brackets to show the 'positions' and hopefully make it look slightly less insane. Playing across the strings at mm.3 and 5 was a concerted effort to try and find a way to play these passages more leggero, which is often a thankless, losing battle. Finally, the odd looking half-step, fingered 3-1 (mm.5-6), is for relaxation of the hand, and also to create a larger interval, with the 'F-sharp' sounding (to my ear at least) better on the low side.  

The 5,436 Overture

European thought, art, and culture is imported by Americans, who consume it like candy.  So it’s not entirely strange that a piece of music about the victory of a Russian Tsar over a French Emperor would become an American summer staple. The 1812 Overture  possesses many of the elements essential to American blockbuster style entertainment: bombast, triumphalism, religiosity, militarism, shallow spectacle, with a dollop weaponry thrown in.  Beethoven had his chance to dominate the 4th of July circuit but muffed it with Wellington’s Victory.  It is debatable whether we in the USA should be cheering on a Russian victory, either in 1812 or today. Ideologically, I’m not sure who was the good guy in that conflict.  But for the casual listener, I’m sure the piece is merely something vaguely rousing and patriotic, a musical tableau from around the time Canadians burned down our White House, or something. (Many of us would surely like invite them back to repeat the deed, forthwith!)

A trauma during my formative years as a musician left me incapable of appreciating Tchaikovsky’s masterpiece. One of the first things I ever played with a local Youth Symphony was the 1812. A bit about Tchaikovsky’s writing for the double bass can be found here.  For now, it is sufficient to say that in Tchaikovsky, the bass isn’t fully a member of the string family, but gets palmed off on the low brass, as if they needed the help.  At a ‘string sectional’ on the piece, we got to the final page and rehearsed the section, right after the cannon shots, where the strings play those wonderful, swirling passages, tremolando. Of course, the basses don’t play that.  We play the chorale with the winds and brass. So I, along with another unlucky, sallow-faced and unprepared pre-teen bassist, had to squeak and sqawk through the chorale alone, horribly off key, and putrid of tone, while 40 of our comrades snickered.  I’ve found it impossible to enjoy the piece since that day.

The summer season devoted a lot of time to the music of Leonard Bernstein, culminating in two highly successful performances of his Mass - all the more satisfying since I was off both nights.  However, in addition to all of the Americana, there was a suspicious, perhaps even meddlesome, amount of Russian music programmed as well, as if somebody felt the need, musically, to say there are good people on both sides.  Most memorable was a weekend Maria Butina and Wayne LaPierre could only have dreamed about - two Tchaikovsky Spectaculars, back to back, with each night capped off (pun intended!) by the 1812 Overture.  The fusiliers seemed hellbent on using up the their entire supply of gunpowder, each shot louder than the one before, until the final blast at the second performance had me extracting a deeply impacted earplug with a pair of tweezers after the concert.

There is a body of circumstantial evidence of collusion between summer and ‘downtown’ programming.  Year after year, some of the same pieces tend crop up a season later in one place or the other.  This year, suspiciously, the first set of subscription concerts is another all Russian affair.  Also, the annual free “Concert for {redacted}” this week culminates in, yes, the 1812 Overture.  Enough to give any conspiracy theorist reason to persist for yet another season. 

Stoppage Time

Billing the concerts last week as the Season Finale suggested we might be entering the realm of Alternate Facts, since many knew the ensemble was scheduled to return for four more performances. The season would really end with the orchestra accompanying a week-long run of Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope, yet another of the film night performances sneaking across the boarder between classical and popular music to infest our schedule. Cherubini, Chant sur la mort du Joseph Haydn was an interesting choice in this era of Fake News; the work was composed in reaction to a (failing?) London publication's erroneous report that the revered composer had died. Having survived in spite of Cherubini's request that all copies be destroyed once he learned the error upon which it was based, the star-crossed composition was given an interesting performance here on Saturday evening. About seven measures into the quiet introduction, in response to an inadvertent noise from the stage, the Maestro stopped the performance, turned and excoriated the audience for the disruption. Breaking the fourth wall is often an invitation for the least inhibited among us to open up their own particular jar of crazy, and so, true to form, in the uncomfortable silence following the Maestro's remarks somebody yelled out something, a few people clapped, a few more tittered, none of which did anything but make the atmosphere more tense. With all hope of quickly putting a minor disturbance behind us gone, we started again from the beginning.

There were many theories put forth by musicians to try and explain what had happened. Perhaps the Maestro reacted to some audience members' spontaneous expressions of surprise over the onstage noise, which also had a visual component. Maybe the quick assignation of blame to the audience was a show of solidarity with musicians. The only constant was the poor reporting in the press, beginning of course with the premature pronouncement of Haydn's death, and continuing with both local papers writing up the incident as a concert halted due to 'coughing', a misrepresentation parroted by one of the more popular classical music blogs.

Humans, on either side of the proscenium, occasionally make unintended noises. With training and concentrated focus on the task at hand, most musicians are able to block out whatever the audience is doing, even when it is startling, like someone talking loudly, falling ill, or even a fistfight breaking out in the box seats (the so-called Brawl at the Hall). Unexpected surprises from the stage can be harder to ignore, since (ostensibly) we are paying close attention to each other. Where force of concentration is insufficient, the professional code of conduct keeps most musicians focused on their own tasks when faced with anything from a broken string or dropped mute to someone vomiting onstage (yes, that happened). Lacking the training, not bound by a professional code of conduct, and probably not concentrating as deeply, audience members can be forgiven for spontaneous reactions to something startling or unusual.

Coughs, on the other hand, are often symptoms of a bored or uninvolved audience. A disinterested group of people tends to cough and fidget more. Sometimes the very same audience that coughed a lot during one part of a performance will become riveted later on, and much more quiet. Concerts with superstar performers tend to draw audiences that contain more people who are not really there to hear the music, so these crowds often contain more people who are disengaged from the performance, inattentive, and noisy. But, no matter who is performing, audience behavior is a reflection on what is happening on stage. Becoming irritated with an audience is like yelling at the wind. Asking people not to cough is like telling someone not to think of a pink elephant and then getting upset when they do.

Tongue Tied

When I asked an acquaintance why he was having so much trouble committing to acquiring a new cat, even though it was something he repeatedly expressed a strong desire to do, he replied that, as a man ‘of a certain age’, he fully expected that, even if it didn’t outlive him, his next cat would be his last.  In that frame of mind, he certainly didn’t want to rush into such an important decision and eventually ended up agonizing over it for more than a year.  When our music director’s contract was extended until 2022, as a musician ‘of a certain age’, I realized that either he or his replacement would be my last.  Fortunately for me, as a rank and file player, I won’t have a lot of agonizing to do, but the decision isn’t entirely without consequences. And the arrival of a new maestro is an interesting time to be in an orchestra - sort of a chance for the dispassionate observer to play Jane Goodall minus a trek through the jungle - certainly an experience to savor one last time.

Esa-Pekka Salonen came to town a few weeks ago, conducting some heavyweight repertoire - Mahler 9 and Verklärte Nacht were the mainstays - which might indicate somebody in the organization has their eye on him as music director material.  I like Salonen for the post, both as a conductor and composer, but also for a more insidious reason.  As the arrival of the current music director prompted a number musicians to take up the study of Italian, I wonder if a new era might see a similar interest in the Finnish language emerge. Unfortunately, the US State Department Foreign Service Institute lists Finnish among the group of languages most difficult for English speakers to learn. According to the FSI, in order to become conversant, a student of Finnish might expect to put in about 44 weeks, or 1100 hours of study. I think it would be very interesting to see if any of my colleagues would take up the challenge. Coincidentally, since Finnish is related to Hungarian, and both are from outside of the Indo-European family, there is a certain pleasing symmetry to the idea I might end my career just as it began, under the baton of a maestro speaking one of the Uralic languages.

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The Bass Blog now has a Facebook page.  Nothing much to see there at the moment, but hopefully that will change in time.

The Red, White and Blue Orchestra (part two)

You see, teamwork will only take you so far. Then the truly evolved person makes that extra grab for personal glory.

Montgomery Burns – The Simpsons, season 7, episode 12: Team Homer (aka the Pin Pals episode)

What makes an orchestra an orchestra? One essential component seems to be that to qualify as such, an orchestra must have more than one type of instrument; another requirement is that it have groups of like instruments playing the same part. Some more concise definitions require that bowed strings make up the grouped instruments sharing parts. Perhaps that is why the designations 'string orchestra' versus 'band' or (if they are trying to fancify it) 'wind ensemble' are used to describe groups made up entirely of strings or winds, respectively. Or maybe the right to the designation acknowledges that the orchestra began as a group of stringed instruments, and it is this core group which continues to give the ensemble its identity. Les Vingt-quatre Violons du Roi, from the time of Louis XIII was, as the name suggests, a group of instruments from viol family with multiple players sharing each of five separate parts. It is this ensemble which is regarded by many as the prototype for the modern orchestra. The members of this fabulous group had the perk of being allowed to carry swords and they held secure positions that were hereditary or could be sold. (Anyone who decries the supposedly coddled state of orchestral musicians as yet another symptom of decay in the modern era should look back about 500 years and reconsider.) The 24 strings, who were better at using their 'indoor voices', were occasionally augmented with wind instruments, customarily used for outdoor performances, playing one to a part and, to quote King Louis, voila!

All musicians of the orchestra collaborate to bring off a performance. True, there are instances of nonconformity, ranging from recalcitrance all the way to willful sabotage (Please, don't ask me to write about that.), but the ethos is overwhelmingly one of cooperation. With between eight and sixteen players sharing a part, the string sections require a different degree of cooperative effort than the winds, brass, and percussion, where each individual bears responsibility for his or her own line. I once participated in a conversation during which a member of a wind section made a disparaging remark about how it seemed that before every performance the stagehands would come and take one or more chairs out of the string sections (meaning a player would be absent – this is something for audience members to lookout for during the warm-ups, by the way), while players at the back (winds, brass, percussion), having more of a sense of responsibility and pride in their jobs, were seldom if ever absent. True enough, but another pair of anecdotes might show this in a different light. Once, with the music director on the podium, we were playing a piece with a major solo part for one of the string principals who became seriously ill mid-week, after one or two performances, if I recall. The newly hired assistant took over on very short notice and performed more than admirably. Another time, a principal of a wind section made the entirely understandable and forgivable error of mixing up a matinee and an evening performance in the schedule. First the concert order was reshuffled, and then the rest of the performance was ultimately delayed by about one hour, awaiting the arrival of the essential yet tardy musician. As the show must go on, in this case I say score one for the strength and flexibility of the collective! It is true that during a performance an audience member might observe a string player dropping out momentarily in order to turn a page, put on a mute, scratch an itch, or whatever, without a significantly noticeable result. But this only underscores the strength of these sections and the adaptability of the players. Like the internet, which can endure catastrophic local failure due to a design where no single node is essential to the survival of the whole, the string sections of an orchestra are strong and flexible because of their built-in redundancy and the players are attuned to working collectively and adjusting to whatever minor variations might occur. This strength emanates from willing self-sacrifice, along with the attendant sublimation of ego, which is the price paid by string players to distribute their responsibility widely among themselves. The countless minor adjustments and compromises that go into playing in a string section are largely unremarked upon in rehearsal and are more or less taken for granted during the applause.

Returning to the post performance acknowledgments, the trend of having more and more individuals, sections, sets and subsets of groups within the orchestra rise for special recognition during the applause seems to be gaining momentum. This trend has also affected other art-forms as well. A New York Times article from a few years back noted the increasing length of film credits, where anyone who so much as brought coffee and donuts to the director now gets a mention. In the concert hall every conductor is now on the lookout for opportunities to distinguish an individual player from the larger group. This is troubling, and not merely as an expression of sour grapes from a string player, but arises from a general uneasiness with the fact that the orchestra, already imagined by many in the public as an autocratic, elitist organization, does little to counteract those negative perceptions by spotlighting individual accomplishment over collaborative effort.

There is a brief section in Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus which I cannot recall exactly or find again when I thumb impatiently through the book, so it is possible I'm making it up out of whole cloth, but the passage I have in mind is a description of the way Renaissance composers embedded a bit Christian symbolism into their compositions by writing crossed voices in the polyphony to invoke the image of the Holy Cross. These secret symbols communicated to those who could read the score but were not readily discernible to those who merely heard the music. With that passage, whether it really exists or not, in the back of my mind, my thoughts crystallized when I found myself in the music library looking through the score of the Bruckner 9^th Symphony in search of a minor discrepancy. What drove me to the library is not now important, probably on the same level as observing that the gargoyle on one side of a Gothic cathedral has six teeth, then traipsing a hundred meters or so in order to discover that its counterpart on the opposite side has but five. Nevertheless, the inconsequential yet nagging question had me seeking out the score in search of an answer. As it was an election year here in the US, I had also been pouring over dozens of electoral maps at the time. Anyone who has done so will have noted the great spatial disparity; vast swaths of sparsely populated territory are held by the Republican (conservative) party while the Democrats (liberals) are clustered in densely populated urban centers. Turning to the Trio section of the second movement, where I knew I would find the answer to my query, the great expanse of empty staves struck me as instantly familiar. What appeared to be a mostly empty page of manuscript actually represented a majority of the players playing! Is it possible that conductors, who (allegedly) spend hour upon hour studying scores, rather than holding animus for the string sections, are responding to this spatial under-representation on the printed page when it comes to post performance acknowledgment?

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Left: Bruckner 9^th symphony, Trio. Two thirds of the orchestra (strings) playing, one third resting. 

Right: 2016 presidential election results. Decisive victory for the Democratic (Blue) candidate (+~900,000 votes).

N.B. Use of the state of Illinois is for illustration purposes only. No information about the location of a Large Midwestern City is intended or implied.

Could it simply be that conductors, seeing an image of a grand orchestral score in their mind's eye, convert the disparity on the page into an unequal lavishing of attention? Some conductors certainly appear to follow the formula that everyone who gets a line in the score gets a bow. Obviously, this does not completely explain the treatment of the string sections, who get 4 or 5 lines yet almost always rise as a group. It is possible that with the strings clustered at the bottom of the score, coming last in the order, and with patience and applause thinning out, the maestro is merely wrapping things up in a kind of yada yada yada. Or perhaps the strings have gone the way of a vestigial organ, or the reptilian brain, once upon a time vital to the organism, maybe its defining characteristic even, but now layered over with the fruits of more recent evolution and progress.

The Red, White and Blue Orchestra (part one)

This post was getting way too long, so I split it in two.

Years ago, after a concert, a stranger approached without invitation and began to unburden himself. The scenario becomes slightly less odd when I add that I was carrying my double bass at the time. As many who play the instrument know, trundling about with such a conspicuous load makes one a slow-moving, easy target, captive to all manner of unwanted attention. The reason for the fellow's need to share his thoughts became apparent soon enough when he noted that as a lapsed Catholic and infrequent concert-goer, attending his first performance after a lengthy absence had evoked unpleasant memories from his childhood. More than anything, he said, the hushed reverence of the concert hall, the men in funny costume, all of the sitting down and standing up, reminded him of the Latin Masses he had endured as a child. Even though the language of music seemed as unfathomable and profound as Latin had been to his youthful mind, he found both piercingly beautiful, literally the voice of the divine, to his way of thinking. What annoyed him about both the concert and the Mass were the ways which both mediated that voice through unnecessary, worldly pageantry and stiff formality that spoke more to human pettiness and egotism than to the otherworldly. Unfortunately, much of what he related is lost to me, for, at the time, even in my as yet underdeveloped penchant for fleeing the scene of a concert with utmost alacrity, I impatiently discounted his remarks as the unfortunate coincidence of a traumatic religious upbringing with poor social skills. Yet this gentleman, who I served poorly at the time with my indifference, is probably in some way responsible for my often wondering about the format of the orchestra concert, its stagecraft (such as it is) and what meaning or message is conveyed to the audience by the non musical portions of a performance.

Due to its variability, the end of an orchestral performance provides more fodder for speculation than the beginning to those who wish to view the concert as psychodrama or read it as some kind of political allegory. At the conclusion of most theater productions, even after dropping character, the players take their bows in a choreographed, rehearsed sequence, perhaps moving from the minor roles to the leading parts, culminating with a final joining of hands by the entire cast. By contrast, the end of an orchestral performance is, by design, an impromptu affair, with only the broad outline of what is to occur known by the musicians in advance. The maestro will take any number of curtain calls, at certain points asking the entire ensemble to stand. Depending on the repertoire, individuals, soloists or sections, will be asked to rise in turn, either remaining on their feet, or sitting to make way for others. Who will be acknowledged, and in what order, is not revealed in advance. Lack of planning is usually not much of a problem, or results in only minor hiccups, but occasionally produces a shambolic or comedic effect. Sometimes at the motion to stand, two players will rise, or none at all, with several people looking over their shoulders, returning 'who, me?' looks to the imploring maestro. How ironic for the audience to observe that the conductor who supposedly possessed the ability to draw the most exquisite and subtle nuances from the orchestra by the slightest gesture of hand during the performance, has now become unable to distinguish between two players sitting a yard or so apart by pointing with that same hand during the applause. With the hand having lost its supernatural abilities, the maestro may next resort to miming the instruments or calling on the players to lip read. An interesting aside is that, during more than thirty years playing in orchestras, beyond some very general instructions (try to smile, look at the audience, don't clean your instrument!) I have never witnessed, or even heard about, discussion of what would take place during the applause.

Through its spontaneity, the post concert ritual opens a window into the inner workings of the maestro. Just as Kremlinologists once studied photos from the Red Square Mayday Parade in order to deduce a deeper meaning from the position of dignitaries atop Lenin's tomb relative to the General Secretary, the concertgoer can sometimes 'read between the lines' during the applause by noting who gets acknowledged, and in what order. For instance, after a recent performance, the trombone section was given a bow, but none of the vocal soloists. What was the meaning in that? A nod to the military industrial complex? A warning to the intelligentsia? Who knows. Every conductor has a unique way of handling the post performance acknowledgments. Certain of them appear to have a set routine for each piece that they follow with little variation – Brahms 1^st symphony might be 1) concertmaster 2) horn 3) oboe, etc., for example – while others appear to react in the moment. A poor performance, inattentiveness, or something that occurred during the rehearsals might move a player down in the order, or off it altogether. Some are generally stingy about rewarding individuals, and others search out any player who might have had the slightest contribution to the performance for recognition. Of course, none of the preceding applies to the string sections except in the rarest of situations. Their treatment is systematic, and will be covered in the next post.

A real page-turner

Francesca da Rimini was on the menu last week. Tchaikovsky's infernal tone poem ranks low on my list of favorites, not only for its predictable harmonies and ear-crushing orchestration, but also because the edition we play from, the only imprint of the piece I've ever seen, is particularly bad. The editor's mistake of combining the cello and bass parts essentially doubles the number of pages, since the two sections play separate parts far more often than not, resulting in one bad page turn after another. The brisk tempo of the Allegro Vivo sections insures that a player barely has time to recover from one page turn before the next arrives. So scarring has been the experience that for me, The Divine Comedy evokes not the work of Dante, but describes the act of sitting on a double bass stool, having to get up to turn another page every thirty six measures, all while wearing a tailcoat. 

In music, the 19^th century is mostly notable for the double bass virtuosi Domenico Dragonetti and Giovanni Bottesini. Yet even with those formidable bassists standing astride the era like a pair of musical colossi, the century must be viewed as a period of failed promise and unrealized potential for their instrument. Yet it began with so much optimism. The late symphonies of Beethoven assigned increasingly important roles to the bass line, culminating with a truly independent contrabass voice in the Ode to Joy of the 9^th symphony. The decoupling of the cello and bass parts in early romantic music was initially greeted as hopeful sign that the double bass might be on the verge of assuming a more important, independent role in the orchestra. However, that brief period of optimism soon gave way to Weltschmerz as composers such as Richard Wagner took the recently emancipated double bass and immediately conscripted it into a new kind of servitude, shackling the instrument to the low brass section. By the latter half of the century, Francesca da Rimini, along with many similarly orchestrated pieces, represents a kind of nadir for the double bass in the orchestra.

Unlike the eternally suffering lovers, Paolo and Francesca, the cello and bass parts of Francesca da Rimini cry out to be torn asunder. From the baroque era through the symphonies of Beethoven and Schubert, a combined part for cellos and basses makes sense as the instruments play the same part far more often than not. Beyond the middle of the nineteenth century, depending on the composer, a separate double bass part becomes the norm. Simply as a practical matter, once the cello and bass lines diverge beyond a certain point, having two separate parts notated on individual staves becomes more of a liability than an asset when layout and pagination are considered, which makes the editorial decision to combine the cello and bass parts of Francesca da Rimini so unfortunate. There is also the ulterior motive that, beside the fact bassists don't need to see the cello part in order to keep their place, a certain amount of shame attends having our colleagues see how little we are doing behind them.

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