The disappearance of the instrument
Years after being one of the most popular bass instruments in France, the basse de violon started to disappear. The main factors were three: first, the creation of the wire-wound strings. Second, the appearance of technically demanding music for bass instruments, and third, the increasing importance of the contrabasse in the eighteenth century, being favoured for the performance of the bass lines.
The first and second factors are closely related, as the thickness of the strings had much to do with the playability of the instrument. The music was changing. The composers were writing pieces that were more challenging for the instrumentalists, and clearly the size of these big instruments hindered the possibility of playing gracefully and with taste.
William L. Monical explains in his book Shapes of the baroque: the historical development of bowed string instruments:
While thin plain gut strings were reasonably successful in the upper registers […], heavier strings created problems in lower pitch ranges. Very thick strings were needed to sound with suitable tension in lower registers. The resultings stiffness of gut in large diameter created problems of intonation and required excessive bow pressure to bring thick strings into vibration […] A musician would have to make constant bow pressure adjustments in executing even simple melodic passages involving string crossings.1
Some composers such as Domenico Gabrielli and Giuseppe Jacchini began to write pieces that required the performer to play virtuosic passages. I present as an example an excerpt from the second ricercar of Gabrielli, in which is visible how the concept of a bass violin had changed radically.2
If the bass instrument on which the musician was playing didn´t respond to the necessities of the piece due to difficulties in bowing with articulation, it is understandable that interest in the large basses de violon gradually declined.
All these reasons together turned out into the cut of the basses de violon. The new active musical style needed more manageable instruments. The new strings allowed these bass violins to be smaller, as there was no need of a long back length to create the necessary tension for playing. Also, the length of the neck grew shorter. Previously, there was no need to play in the upper register as the compositions written for these instruments didn´t go higher than the third or fourth positions. John Dilworth explains in The Cambridge Companion to the Cello3 that once Stradivari created his violoncello B form, flattening the arch of the back, the violoncello acquired a new and different sound, creating a nearly optimal solution for the union of the bass and treble sounds. As an example of how much the size of the instrument affected the performer, the Hills brothers wrote about the Servais:
Difficult to manage on account of its size, it required a man of his build and masterful power to bring out its admirable qualities. We learn from M. Van der Heyden, an intimate friend of the artist, that Servais did not master it without a struggle. […] Servais had only to see it to fall in love with it, as it was peculiarly suited to himself (he was a man of large frame and tall stature).4
Apart from cutting down the size of the instruments, the luthiers also changed the setup. For instance, in the case of the Servais, which wasn´t down, Servais himself may have added an extended end-pin to his cello so that the quality of his playing would not be affected by the unsteadiness of this large cello.
One of the sorrows of reducing the size of these big instruments was the loss of all the decoration that inlayed on them. In the previous chapter I gave the King by Amati as one example of this loss, but there are many more cases, such as the cello in the Royal Palace of Madrid which lost some of the scrollwork from its sides.
The third factor concerns the 16' violone. It was during the eighteenth century when that the double bass was incorporated into the French Opera. The public liked its big, resonant sonority. According to Michael D. Greenberg in his article Perfecting the Storm: The Rise of the Double Bass in France, 1701–1815,5 the first double bass player in the Opera of France, Michel Pignolet de Montéclair, might have entered in 1699, as part of the Petit Chœur, while there were still basses de violons in that ensemble.
Greenberg quotes a phrase by Evrard Titon du Tillet concerning Michel Pignolet de Montéclair, in his Suite du Parnasse François jusqu’en 1743, that describes perfectly what the public must have been feeling towards the double bass:
Michel Pignolet de Montéclair was the first there to play the double bass, an instrument that makes such a great effect in the choruses and the airs of magicians, demons, and storms.6
At the beginning, the double bass was mainly used for the storm scenes of operas. An example of a piece which includes the double bass is Arion (1714), by Jean- Baptiste Matho, the double bass plays its distinctive part, different from the ones for the basse de violon or the cello. The main difference between using a double bass and or a basse de violon in the orchestra was that the first one could have a well-articulated bow stroke, nearly impossible for the other, being better able to keep better the tempo and become the heartbeat of the orchestra.
