To quote the disgraced but eternally funny Bill Cosby: "I told you that story to tell you this one."
After listening to the below (assuming you did), you may be wondering (or not) "En, why don't we hear more of the bass as a solo instrument?" After all, you can't swing a catgut string without garroting a hundred pianists, six dozen violinists, a score of cellists, a couple of trumpet players, and a few (but never, ever enough) tenors.
In fact, during the 17th and early 18th centuries, the violone was considered as viable a solo instrument as almost anything else. There are scores of concertos, sonatas, and solo works from that time frame; Franz Joseph Hadyn actually started drafting a concerto (devastatingly, no more than a sketch), and as late as 1791 Mozart composed a concert aria,
Per Questa Bella Mano, for baritone solo, small orchestra, and violone obbligato. Only in the later ages of 'Classical' music (more on the use and misuse of that term later) has the bass dropped out of sight, to only now gradually start returning to the concert stage,
Which brings us back to the differences between bass and 'cello, and all of its stringed cousins.
The first and most obvious one is simply size. The bass is the largest orchestral string instrument, and one of the largest man-portable strings you'll see anywhere; only the
octobass, a horrific invention of the mid-XIXth century, exceeds it in all dimensions, and only the harp and the
theorbo, a plucked instrument of the early-mid Baroque challenge it in length/height.
They say size doesn't matter- and there are a number of modern players, especially from Eastern Europe who can almost make you believe it- but consider these facts. An average hand on a piano can cover an octave; with modest training, tenths are reasonably easy. On violin, the span of the fingers on a single string can cover a sixth without strain, and across strings, octaves and tenths are commonplace. Viola is close to the same, though a bit more of a reach, and on 'cello, one is trained to reach a major third.
On bass? Fingers 1-4 give you a single whole step*. This means, no matter how objectively fast your reaction time, you have to move enormously more often to cover groups of notes the other instruments can ofttimes play with a single finger extension.
With size, of course, come also issues of mass and response. Bass players are divided into two roughly equal camps as to the bowing technique they favor: French, which is an overhanded grip with the index finger somewhat extended, in the same basic configuration as the other strings; and German, which is related to the grip used by gamba players, the gamba family being the linear antecedents of both violone and double bass. This style uses a bow with a much wider frog- the part of the bow where the hand rests and the rearmost part of the hair is anchored- around which the middle fingers of the left hand are loosely cradled, with the thumb underneath and the first and second fingers forming sort of a shelf for the stick to rest against.
Regardless of bow style, we're faced with the challenge of exciting strings of much greater mass and thickness. As a result, bass bows are noticeably shorter and heavier than their upper string counterparts, and are less capable, both in themselves and because of the mass of the strings they are meant to move, to carry out some of the bowing gymnastics that mark the typical Romantic virtuoso style.
Length of string plus mass (plus tension, but let's keep it simple) equal pitch. The bass is not only the largest, but also the lowest sounding of the strings, and again shares its throne with only a handful of other instruments insofar as 'the lowest EVAR': primarily tuba, contrabassoon, and keyboards such as piano and organ. It's also the only string instrument that transposes: though we often play from the same parts as cellists, the resulting notes sound an octave lower (twice as low).**
This produces some interesting byproducts. First, simply starting the note, the 'attack' can be an iffy thing when you're dealing with that mass and range. Secondly, the very low sounding range means that the upper harmonics of each note (y'all took basic physics, right? You know that a vibrating string actually vibrates in sections of specific ratios, rather than a single pure note?) are often in the audible range. This means that double stops- playing two notes simultaneously- a staple of other strings, can sound janky. You get clashes.
Just one geeky example. Suppose you are playing a piece in Eb major. The key or 'tonic' chord would be built out of the notes Eb-G-Bb.
There would be nothing more normal in the world to play the Eb and the G together as a double stop, for a ringing effect to reinforce the key.
Except...
When you play the G, you are also producing the natural overtones of G: G an octave higher, the D above that, another G...and then a B
natural. That B natural will audibly clash with the B
flat that is an overtone of the Eb you are playing. Likewise, the upper Eb partial will conflict with the D in the G overtone series, and so on. It won't sound the same as if you mashed 2 keys side by side on a piano, because the clashing overtones are high enough that they're not carrying the much power. But the ear is aware of it as a sort of roughness or harshness, a quality you won't hear if a violin does the same thing- because in that case the overtones are high and weak enough to be more or less inaudible.
What it really comes down to, though, in the end is: volume. For all the size of the instrument, and for all everyone's used to feeling the bass at an arena show try to stop their heart...the upright bass is very, very, very soft in comparison to basically anything else except acoustic guitar. It shares with viola an acoustic imperfection: the bodies of both instruments are not large enough in proportion to their tessitura (basic playing range) to produce a volume of sound similar to 'cello and violin. For the bass to carry as well as a 'cello, the body would have to be unmanageably mammoth (though never so much so as the octobass, which requires 2 people to play).
Back in 'the day', when orchestras were comparatively tiny, everyone was using gut strings, concerts were intimate affairs, and louder instruments such as oboes and trumpets were most often used as a sort of 'spice', it didn't matter. A violone could compete without stress. But as orchestras and halls grew larger, pitch rose (News flash! 'Perfect" pitch really isn't! Film at 11!) requiring innovations in body bracing and strings, as more instruments were developed and added, and everything got bigger...and louder...AND LOUDER (thanks, Ludwig van. I blame YOU!), the bass couldn't keep up. Oh, we adapted some, and there are some excellent pieces from the Age of Virtuosity, but nothing like the city-drowning swarms of music for nearly every other instrument save perhaps bassoon, trombone, and tuba.
Finally, all of this plays into your average orchestra manager's
cowardice conservatism. If xhe hasn't heard a bass concerto- because few have- and the composer isn't familiar- because they never get programmed (see the recursion coming?), it's far more likely that they'll slot a Beethoven piano concerto or the Mendelssohn violin concerto (again and again and f'ing
again) into a program, on the assumption that the audience can't possibly ever want to hear anything new, and if you gave them something other than vanilla you will be reading in the paper next day of the number of old ladies trampled as the concertgoers bolted for the fire doors...
So, children, that's how the Deep State of geometry and physics meets with the Fake News of ticket salesmanship to deprive you of all the cool bass music that's out there! Write your Congresscritter!
*Electric bass uses a 1-2-3-4 fingering system, like 'cello, instead of the standard 1-2-4 of upright bass, giving you a reach of a minor third- but string lengths are far more standardized, and an amplified instrument of that sort requires next to no strength to depress the strings. There is a similar system that is used at times for upright, but it's best employed in the mid-range- or on a very small axe- because of the finger strength issues involved.
**Tuba parts in the same range are written where the notes actually sound, so you get to read lots of chicken scratch below the staff. Several older Italian editions of bass music adopted the same system of writing 'at pitch'. Lucky us!
