h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

A523225 claims that the double bass gets its name from its role, doubling the bass line. This is entirely wrong. Orlando Gibbons wrote several fantazias with a part for 'great dooble bass' in the early 17th century, which had a part entirely to itself, not doubling any other. The instrument was known in Italy and elsewhere as 'violone' (literally 'large viol'), the biggest of the viol family A87758518

The double bass is indeed the closest of the violin family to the viol family, and Americans still use the term 'bass viol' to mean double bass. Hmm I'm starting a rewrite here. Sorry about that. Please just remove that spurious etymology and all will be well for the moment.

Strangely the OED takes no notice of Gibbons, giving 1728 as their earliest citation for double-bass. I must write to them again

Dubious etymology removed.

Thanks Eoin. It was narking at the back of my mind that there is a good reason for the name 'double bass' and I've tracked it down in the Grove entry on 'Pitch notation':

'The earliest English organ specification ... 1519. The compass was to be from 'dowble Ce fa ut', which shows why CC would be two leger lines below the bass staff. From the specifications as a whole it is clear that, for some three centuries, the sequence in this organ notation was CC, DD, EE, FF, G, A, B, C etc.'

In other words, from the 16th century any note below the bass stave was called double-F, double-E and so on.

At the other end of the range, going right back possibly to Guido in the eleventh century, aa denoted the A above middle C and aaa the one above that (leger line above the treble stave) -- hence the word 'treble' for a singer capable of going there. Funny that, that makes g-clef really a double, not a treble clef.

Can you compress that into a single paragraph as "Why the Double Bass is called the Double Bass"?

Here goes:

The double bass gets its name from the convention whereby notes below the G at the bottom of the bass clef were named as double capital letters&mdash;FF, EE, DD and so on downThe bass-clef notes were an octave of single capitals, then single lower-case letters (Middle C was written as c</i&gt, then double lower-case letters (cc</i&gt and finally treble letters (ccc</i&gt for the highest notes a boy could sing.. By this system, a three-string double bass was tuned AA-DD-G or AA-DD-&gamma;.

Sorry for the unintended smileys. You can reverse-engineer the GuideML.

The Gamma should have a capital g: &Gamma;

You could probably leave out the gamma alternative, it's distracting.

So the par should read (removing spaces around tag marks)

The double bass gets its name from the convention whereby notes below the G at the bottom of the bass clef were named as double capital letters & mdash ; FF, EE, DD and so on down < FOOTNOTE > The bass-clef notes were an octave of single capitals, then single lower-case letters (Middle C was written as < i >c < /i > , then double lower-case letters (< i >cc < /i > , and finally treble letters ( < i > ccc < /i > ,for the highest notes a boy could sing.< /FOOTNOTE > . By this system, a three-string double bass was tuned AA-DD-G.

Damn, this is hard.

The double bass gets its name from the convention whereby notes below the G at the bottom of the bass clef were named as double capital letters & mdash ; FF, EE, DD and so on down < FOOTNOTE > The bass-clef notes were an octave of single capitals, then single lower-case letters (Middle C was written as < i >c < /i > ) , then double lower-case letters ( < i >cc < /i > ) , and finally treble letters ( < i > ccc < /i > ) for the highest notes a boy could sing.< /FOOTNOTE > . By this system, a three-string double bass was tuned AA-DD-G.

Hah! It came out all right the first time in Brunel. Serve me right for being all progressive and posting through Pliny.

Pliny is grand for casual use, but until all the bugs are ironed out it is not much use for doing this sort of technical work.

I've added your paragraph into the name section, and I've removed the other reference to "doubling the bass" which I hadn't spotted.

Thanks.

I just noticed the number (as many as 5) you quote for an orchestral bass section. The Philharmonia site says 'The typical orchestra has 16 First Violins, 14 Second Violins, 12 Violas, 10 Cellos and 8 Double Basses, but of course numbers vary ...'

There is a chart in Grove under 'Orchestra' listing selected historical section numbers from 1607 (Monteverdi, 2 basses) to 1974 (New York Phil, 9 basses). They don't separate first and second violins, so the numbers below are violins-violas-cellos-basses.

Beethoven wins in 1814: 36-14-12-17
Strauss 1929 Dresden State Opera: 33-11-11-11
Wagner Bayreuth 1876: 32-12-12-8

Malachy says 8 is the norm now: 4 desks, rising to 5 for big works. That would be the case in the RTÉ NSO and the Ulster Orchestra.

Monteverdi had 4 violins, 4 violas, 2 cellos, 2 double basses, and 3 viols in his orchestra for Orfeo. Charpentier wrote a few pieces for an orchestra of viols; I've taken part in a performance on a course, it is quite amazingly successful. And it has to be noted that the viol parts in the 6th Brandenburg Concerto are not what you'd particularly call solo parts; they do take part in the counterpoint, but mostly they chug along accompanying the viola and cello soloists. Ripieno as opposed to solo.

I'll change the number from 5 to 8, then.

El tells me that Mozart's ideal for an orchestra (which he never achieved) had far more cellos and double basses and less violins than a modern orchestra. It makes you wonder what an "authentic" performance of Mozart's work would be.

"A modern symphony orchestra will typically have eight double basses, and this may be expanded to nine or ten for bigger works. "