The Orchestra and Its Instruments

The Orchestra and Its Instruments is by Esther Singleton and carries the date 1917. A chapter on the double-bass lists its strings and compass, its descent from the violone, its voice, how Gluck and Mozart treated it, and how Beethoven makes it a solo instrument. The double-bass plays the lowest notes of all the Strings, doubling in the lower octave the bass part given to the bass voice.

Berlioz is quoted as writing that in pieces of a joyous character the sounds of the second octave are suitable in all their gradations, while the upper notes are excellent fortissimo for violent and tearing effects. The piccolo flute figures in the fourth movement of Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, at one point alone and displayed above the low tremolo of violins and basses, imitating the whistlings of a tempest. The text says there is a tremendous gap between the Eighth and the Ninth Symphonies, and that Beethoven felt instruments were not sufficient to express the ultimate climax of this mighty work, and added human voices to swell the joyous uproar of the last movement.