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Double Bass Beethoven 5 without an extension

Steve Freides

Steve Freides

Former Mannes College Theory Faculty
Supporting Member
Dec 11, 2007
2,576
1,508
Ridgewood, NJ
#1
I downloaded the part for Beethoven Symphony #5 yesterday from IMSLP. I'll be playing it with a local community orchestra on November 21 and this will be my time playing Beethoven. I have a few questions. The part I downloaded is 12 pages long and looks like it's old and in the public domain, no publisher that I can see on the printed part.

First mvmnt, m. 168. It seems the celli are to divide and play the C in two different octaves but the basses only the higher. Do people with a C extension play the lower C here? (I would guess not).

m. 186, 2nd beat. Is this saying for the celli to play the lower note and the basses the upper (making them playing the same note at concert pitch)?

m. 442 (a few bars after rehearsal F) - bass is up the octave after being in unison w/ celli for most of what's immediately before and after. Is this an accommodation to the lack of a low Eb or simply a musical decision on Beethoven's part? This, of course, raises the whole issue of what sort of basses played in Beethoven's orchestra - love to hear about that and/or read links or books if anyone cares to recommend.

m. 479 and 482. Fermati on low Eb and low D, which I cannot play on my bass. What to do? Maybe go up the octave starting 2nd eighth of m.478

Second mvmnt, m. 58, low Eb - and etc., through the rest of the piece, how to handle the notes I can't play.

Thanks very much in advance for advice and suggestions (other than install an extension or get a new bass - working on both those things, anyway, but they won't be here for the concert in 3 weeks.)

-S-
 
#2
Stephen Buckley recently wrote a thesis on this subject - the problem of the low notes in Beethoven's double bass parts. I can recommend it, it is an interesting subject. You can download it here:

http://scholarship.rice.edu/handle/1911/71928

In particular, he discusses at some length the occurrences of low notes in movements I-III of Symphony No. 5.

Beethoven seems to have been well aware of the lower compass of the double bass of his day. In his earlier works the combined cello/bass part thus never ventures lower than F.

In later works - from the Eroica and onward - he seems to have been writing for basses with the lowest string tuned to E, but often the parts went lower, sometimes as low as C.

Part of the explanation for the extra low notes is that double bassoons were used to reinforce the basses, although not present in the score. Their use is documented in contemporary accounts of the premieres of Symphonies 4, 7 and 8 . The double bassoons played from the double bass part.
 
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#6
I got to just shy of half way through last night, will finish today. It's well-written, with footnotes but not overly academic in my view although I did teach college for 17 years so I may have a different standard for that. :)

-S-
 
#8
I can give a quick summary.

Beethoven didn't have basses with a low C, so if you see notes below E, you are expected to do one of the following:

- Most likely, switch up an octave in a musically sensible way for the passage at hand.

- Less likely, tune your low E down a half step or two.

The reasons, again summarized/simplified, are that

- Beethoven was a lousy copy editor and sometimes, within the same piece, you can find him writing the bass part up an octave at one spot, and then forgetting to do it later on.

- It was common for a contrabassoon to double the bass part and they can play down to low C so, since Beethoven knew he'd hear the notes, anyway, he didn't care that you couldn't play it all.

I think the most convincing argument against playing those notes is that, from reading what people wrote at the time, even a low E was difficult to produce - strings weren't what they are today and many basses in many places had their lowest string tuned to an F, not even an E, for that reason.

I recall a class when I was a student at Mannes with Carl Schachter teaching, and the example was a Beethoven piano piece in which, had the piano of his time gone higher, the music would have gone higher, too, but Beethoven didn't just stop, he did something different and interesting with the limited register he had. It makes me think that the right choice is not to play notes written for an extension, but then again, upper piano register isn't low bass register, so I think either way could be OK.

-S-
 
#9
Steve Freides said:
I think the most convincing argument against playing those notes is that, from reading what people wrote at the time, even a low E was difficult to produce - strings weren't what they are today and many basses in many places had their lowest string tuned to an F, not even an E, for that reason.
Click to expand...
Well, there's kind of two distinct questions here. One is a question of history: what were the bassists at that time doing? This includes instruments, bows, strings, technique, expectations, etc.

However, the more interesting question is the practical one: under ideal circumstances, what should a modern bassist do?

I have no doubt that the very low register of the old instruments sounded weak and croaky. But with the string technology we have now, it is possible to make high quality sounds below an E. You should trust your own musical instincts. If the lower octave seems more fitting or appropriate, then just do it. It's not like the extension police are going to arrest you.
 
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#10
I agree, Paul. In this instance, if there was a contrabassoon playing the part, I'd probably not play below E, but if there wasn't, then I would if I could - which is, in turn, a moot point for me since I don't have a bass with an extension at this time.

-S-
 
#12
When the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra with Simon Rattle visited Stockholm in 2008 they ended their program with Beethoven's 7th symphony. A big string section on stage, so I expected the usual eight basses.

However, I counted only six double basses. Wait - there are two contrabassoons. Where did they come from? This puzzled me no end. There is no contrabassoon part in the score, is there? And two of them! Was this an improvised, last minute replacement due to illness? Or had something gone wrong during transport of the double basses?

Now I know why.
 
#13
When I played Beethoven's Fifth last year, I down tuned to a low D. I would have gone down to a Low C but that would have made the third movement a tad bit more difficult than it had to be as I was still catching up.

I am curious on the subject now and I can't wait to read the thesis later on tonight.
 
#14
I want to read this thesis. My initial reaction is that I don't think think EADG was already standard in Beethoven's day, so the composers of the time had no hard and fast rule as to notating the double bass range. Secondly, most older published parts you see were probably done after EADG was more standardized, so sub E notes would mostly be transposed up, whatever was in the score, and the original manuscript might not have been even consulted. Personally, I see no argument for transposing low notes up when doubling a cello line which goes below E unless doing so would introduce a significant technical hurdle.
 
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#15
I stopped reading every word of the dissertation about halfway through - the latter part discussed a lot of individual passages in detail, and that was more than I needed.

The most interesting part, to me, was the idea that contrabassoons often played the double bass part or, more speicifcally, the cello part down an octave. That's the person's theory, anyway, and he gives evidence to support it. I know we all needn't agree with what's in this dissertation but it's certainly thought provoking, at least for me.

-S-
 
#16
Steve Freides said:
I can give a quick summary.

Beethoven didn't have basses with a low C, so if you see notes below E, you are expected to do one of the following:

- Most likely, switch up an octave in a musically sensible way for the passage at hand.

- Less likely, tune your low E down a half step or two.

The reasons, again summarized/simplified, are that

- Beethoven was a lousy copy editor and sometimes, within the same piece, you can find him writing the bass part up an octave at one spot, and then forgetting to do it later on.

- It was common for a contrabassoon to double the bass part and they can play down to low C so, since Beethoven knew he'd hear the notes, anyway, he didn't care that you couldn't play it all.

I think the most convincing argument against playing those notes is that, from reading what people wrote at the time, even a low E was difficult to produce - strings weren't what they are today and many basses in many places had their lowest string tuned to an F, not even an E, for that reason.

I recall a class when I was a student at Mannes with Carl Schachter teaching, and the example was a Beethoven piano piece in which, had the piano of his time gone higher, the music would have gone higher, too, but Beethoven didn't just stop, he did something different and interesting with the limited register he had. It makes me think that the right choice is not to play notes written for an extension, but then again, upper piano register isn't low bass register, so I think either way could be OK.

-S-
Click to expand...

Some other things to note as well (I've done some research on early bass tunings for history essays because, well, I'm a huge nerd):

Viennese Tuning (in thirds, often with a low F string) was in use in germany Link Removed. Considering that Beethoven 5 was written in the period of 1804-1808, It's not unreasonable to assume that Beethoven knew he was writing for at least SOME bass players tuned as such (though he had allegedly met Dragonetti as early as 1799).

"D" Violones, the lowest, or "great bass viol", included a low D below our low E. While it is overly represented in modern early music consorts (the G violone being much more common), it did stay in general use for over 100 hundred years, so the sound of the low D must not have been total crap. I think to say that "they didn't have the tech" is a bit of a skewed version of history. While the D string on the violone might not have had the.. agility that our modern strings had (and probably would not have been used for the arpeggiated figures which use notes below G), It did have its uses, mostly in slower passages, just like 16' and 32' pipes on organs.

IMO, and the evidence I've read generally backs me up on this, it's not until the Mid-romantic era with composers like Brahms that you get bass parts composed for the Double bass, and not for the cello, or the keyboard, etc. Before then (even within as small an era as Prussia) there were so many systems of bass tuning in use (4 and 5 string viennese tuning, 4ths, 5ths, maybe even a few holdover Viols being dead wood in the back of the secton), that to try and write idiomatically for the instrument was a waste of time. So, Composers wrote for the instruments we were doubling and expected us to just figure it out. In the words of one of my old ensemble coaches "I don't wanna hear about it, I just wanna hear it!". By the time Brahms is writing, tuning in 4ths with 4 strings is generally the accepted method (save for France, which holds over in 5ths until the late 19th century, and England, where the 3 string bass, as well as a 4 string tuning of GDGD, holds out to as late as 1910-20) that he can write for that tuning and expect people to understand what he's doing.

Well.. this turned into a diatribe. I try not to post these because I usually go wildly off-topic. I think i'm okay here though. let me know and I'll get rid of it.
 
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