Double Bass Spelling help?

[Martin Sheridan]

I know that it's not uncommon for surnames to have different spellings. People weren't as particular about spelling in olden times. My name in Irish is sometimes spelled: O'Siridean and sometimes other ways. An early English attempt was Serdan before they fixed it at Sheridan.

Look at all of the variations of Rogeri...Rugeri...Ruggieri etc.

 

[KSB - Ken Smith]

The maker Giovanni Maria del Busseto is known to have made only a few Violins. No 'authentic' Basses are known by him or mentioned anywhere. His work is very scarce what has survived the 350 or so years since they were made.

 

[Michael Glynn]

Looking at the F-holes on the Zepperitz bass got me thinking. I've usually seen that kind of F-hole on the viola d'amore. I looked up some pictures of viola d'amores and found several with the rounded corners:

[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]
http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/waac/wn/wn18/wn18-1/wn18-1m.jpg
Invalid Link Removed
http://www.williampetit.com/viole-d%27amour-hulinsky/1.JPG

Maybe the Zepperitz bass was originally designed as a large viola d'amore (violone d'amore?).

Actually, I just looked in Paul Brun's book and on p.28 there is a drawing from 1650 of a similar looking bass instrument called a "Lyra dodecachordae."

Anyway, this may shed some light on the origins of the rounded corners on basses. Whether or not Zepperitz's old bass was actually made by Bussetto, or whether Bussetto made any instruments of this shape...who knows?

I guess my question would be, why do we call them Bussetto corners now? Did it start with Pollman or is it earlier than that? Does it all stem from the Zepperitz bass and its attribution (correct or not) as a Bussetto?

 

[MingusAmongUs]

I wonder if Busetto means "love handles"

 

[Arduy]

Hello. I am not an etymologist, so take what I'm about to say as personal thoughts. The word "busetto" definitely could be an Italian word, and more precisely from the Venetian dialect, meaning "little hole" or "little sinking". ( Venetian dialect for hole is "busa", and "busetto" is the diminutive.). The surname Busetto in Italy is common in the regions of Venice, Trieste and Lombardy. Then again there's the word "bussetto" that was the name given to a shoemaker's tool made from boxwood or steel (word derived from "busso" - latin = buxus). There's also an Italian city named "Bussetto" in the Emilia-Romagna region.

 

[Jake deVilliers]

"I wonder if Busetto means "love handles""

 

[KSB - Ken Smith]

I know that it's not uncommon for surnames to have different spellings. People weren't as particular about spelling in olden times. My name in Irish is sometimes spelled: O'Siridean and sometimes other ways. An early English attempt was Serdan before they fixed it at Sheridan.

Look at all of the variations of Rogeri...Rugeri...Ruggieri etc.

Rogeri and Rugeri/Ruggiere are two different makers and families. The Rogeri's although trained in Cremona worked mainly in Brescia. The Rugeri/Ruggiere's trained and worked in Cremona..

The Ro's and the Ru's.. lol

Off topic but fact!

 

[robobass]

Another complication (and this is just a guess) might be that in the old (up until about 4 or 5 years ago) German alphabet the Gothic "s" looked like an "f" and has since generally been translated with two ss since the change. Pollman (I believe) used to be spelled with an umlaut (..) over the "o", and the proper "translation" of that into modern spelling would be "oe"
(and pronounce sort of like "Pearlman").

Just a guess.

Louis

Actually, The "s" is still "s", although you're right, in older writing and printing styles (also true of English) it looked like an "f". The Eszett (looks sort of like a script capital "B") has been dropped in the reform and you are supposed to use "ss", although you still see it plenty. Either way, it makes the soft s sound. "s" is usually hard, like English "z". "z" is always a "ts" sound.
The famous Mittenwald (sounds "Mittenvald") Meistergeigenbauerwerkstatt still uses the umlaut, and the pronunciation is closer to "Pearlman".

To the topic, Let us not forget that near universal literacy is a 20th century phenomenon (Okay, I know!). In 18c Europe, it is doubtful that tradesmen would have had generally high readin' 'n writin' skills, so many spelling variations could have arisen from this fact alone.

Robobass

 

[KSB - Ken Smith]

Actually, The "s" is still "s", although you're right, in older writing and printing styles (also true of English) it looked like an "f". The Eszett (looks sort of like a script capital "B") has been dropped in the reform and you are supposed to use "ss", although you still see it plenty. Either way, it makes the soft s sound. "s" is usually hard, like English "z". "z" is always a "ts" sound.
The famous Mittenwald (sounds "Mittenvald") Meistergeigenbauerwerkstatt still uses the umlaut, and the pronunciation is closer to "Pearlman".

To the topic, Let us not forget that near universal literacy is a 20th century phenomenon (Okay, I know!). In 18c Europe, it is doubtful that tradesmen would have had generally high readin' 'n writin' skills, so many spelling variations could have arisen from this fact alone.

Robobass

Meistergeigenbauerwerkstatt? Is that a 'run-on' word?

Let us not forget that near universal literacy is a 20th century phenomenon

Well, still now into the 21st century there is a struggle with this as well.

All my life we just took things for granted as they were told to us like this 'Bussetto/Busseto/Busetto/Buseto" thing. Now that I question it, no one knows for sure what it is, where it came from or how to spell it!

 

[LouisF]

I think it literally translates "master-string-instrument-maker-workshop" and is all one word as far as my limited German goes.

Louis

 

[Ike Harris]

I used to work with a lounge singer that sang,"I just met a guy named Ma-ri-aah!".

 

[agreatheight]

Meistergeigenbauerwerkstatt? Is that a 'run-on' word?

Not to get you guys too off topic, but in German you can just shove words together to make a new word. Examine:

"Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz"

here it is broken into parts:

[[[Rind]fleisch][[etikettier[ungs]][[[über]wachungs][[[auf]gaben][[[über]trag[ungs]][gesetz]]]]]]]
beef meat label ing over watch task over give ing law

"Beef labeling oversight transfer law"

As for the likely spelling in Italian, you would probably need to look by region, as spellings in the various dialects vary.

Yep, I took German AND Italian in High School and College.

 

[robobass]

Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenüber tragungsgesetz

That's pretty good! Ah, German. Wonderful language - for masochists!
Robobass

 

[Caoimhín]

I personally think that if the shape is named after the maker then we may never know what it was originally. As has already been stated universal literacy is a more modern phenomenon, coupled with the fact that names of places and families change over the years. For instance my family name is Harrington, which is an anglicised version of O'hUrdail, what we use today. However, if you go back a few generations I've seen several different spellings of the name (one being O'hIonguirdail) which may or may not have been pronounced the same depending on how things like even how local accents have changed.

Also, my mother's family name is Maloney, but it seems every single other Irish family with that name are Moloneys. She has been checking census records off and on for a few years and she still don't know if it's the same family of a mutation of a different name.

Place names here are the same. I've seen several different spellings for the same townlands even on different Ordinance Survey maps (which you would assume are an authority on such things).

To throw more spanners in the works up until the mid 20th century (I'm not positive when exactly) we used a slightly different alphabet than the roman one we all use today in the West. While I'm pretty sure the alphabet matter doesn't apply to Italy my point is that a lot changes over the years, things that we take as set in stone today may have not always been as we assume.

Risking sounding like a intellectual (or a smarty pants), Ovid put it best 2000 odd years ago when he said 'Omni Mutantar' - 'Everything Changes' refering to his peom Metamorphoses. And to add some poetic justice to it all I don't know if I spelt his latin phrase correctly or not!

I honestly don't mean to put a wet blanket on proceedings - its a very interesting question and please keep digging Ken - I'm just giving my experience of tracking family names and place names through history.

 

[KSB - Ken Smith]

IF the shape is named after the maker[/qoute]

Well, that is one of the main points I am trying to make besides the spelling. I don't see how the name of the shape is named after the maker in question since there is no proof that G.M.Busetto ever made a Bass. The one Bass mentioned attributed to him is highly questionable.

In that case, origin and spelling go hand and hand. If we knew why the shape came about or who 'actually' did it first, then we might have an idea. It is possible though that given the period of the maker Giovanni Maria del Bussetto, he may have made a Viol d'Gamba with a defined lower rounded corner that we now refer to as Bussetto/Busetto/Busseto style.

Many of the old makers including d'Salo, Maggini, Amati and even Strad to name a few of the more famous ones, made Viol-family instruments besides Violin family instruments.

The earliest use I know about of the "lower rounded corner" as referred to this name by Raymond Elgar in his book 'Introduction to the Double Bass', he shows a Bass by Matthias Klotz on pg.48. The dates given for this maker, the oldest I know about with these 'illusive' corners is 1656-1743. The Bass pictured in the book is considered to be a "the True full-sized" Bass measuring; Belly - 47 5/8", UB - 21 7/8", MB - 15 3/4", LB - 30", Ribs - 9 3/4"@LB to 9 1/4"@UB to 6 1/4"@NK, SL - 43 3/4", Total length - 79".

This Klotz is slightly bigger than the biggest Bass I own which is huge in itself. I can just imagine carting this thing around town to gigs..

The Top & Back of the Klotz are both only 2-pieces of wood, matched from a single extra wide billet. Only the Top is purfled. My Bass is the same in this respect but considered to be English with Germanic and French influences. My large Bass has soft almost Guitar like lower corners as if the Bussetto 'bubble' is just missing. An obvious 'Klotz-like' imitation but Englishized in its own way.

Of the lower rounded corners we have come know as 'the Bussetto' (pick your spelling) all of the early German makers that made these did them in 4/4 dimensions. The later Neuner-Hornsteiner Basses have often been seen with smaller dimensions but this is almost 200 years after the model came into play from what I have found.