The Contrabassoon

The contrabassoon is the orchestra’s deepest woodwind — a bassoon descended an octave, but transformed in the descending. Its bore, unfolded, would stretch the length of a small room; its lowest note lies a tone beneath the lowest pitch of a five-string bass; and its sound, at the foot of the orchestra, has a peculiar gravity that no other instrument quite supplies.

It is, in temperament, a creature apart from the bassoon. Where the bassoon confides, the contrabassoon mutters. Where the bassoon sings, the contrabassoon broods. Composers reach for it when the music must sit deeper than the basses themselves — Brahms in the first symphony, Ravel in Ma mère l’Oye, Strauss almost everywhere — and ask of it not melody, as a rule, but ground.

The instrument is built of maple, like the bassoon, but on a scale that requires four folds rather than two — so that an eighteen-foot column of air may be carried by a single seated player. A long, sweeping bocal rises from the side of the body to receive the reed, which is broader and softer than the bassoon’s. The bell most often turns downward, toward the floor, though older models and some modern variants direct it upward or sideways.

The keywork descends from Heckel’s designs of the late nineteenth century, and the modern instrument is, in essence, his. A spike at the foot bears the considerable weight; the player sits behind the instrument rather than holding it, and reads — by long convention — from a part written one octave above sounding pitch, to spare the page a forest of ledger lines.

The contrabassoon is, at its lowest, less a pitch than a vibration. Its fundamental tones can be felt in the body before they are heard in the ear, and a quiet pedal in the deepest register has the effect of darkening every other instrument that sounds above it. Higher in its compass — where it overlaps with the ordinary bassoon — it loses much of this peculiar quality and becomes a paler, throatier version of its cousin.

Like the bassoon it has its comic side, and Ravel knew it best: the Beast of Ma mère l’Oye is at once grave, courteous, and absurd — a portrait drawn in three minutes that no other instrument could have provided. But its native register is solemn. Treat it as the orchestra’s pedal point, and it will repay you.

“A useful instrument, especially in a piano passage, where it lends the bass a heaviness that nothing else can give.”

— paraphrase, after Berlioz

The contrabassoon will rarely lead. Ask it instead to anchor — and the anchor it provides will steady everything written above it.

The contrabassoon punishes inattention more than most. A handful of habits, observed, will keep the line playable and the player your friend.

• i.Write it an octave high. The part is by convention notated one octave above sounding pitch. Mark it clearly, and the player will thank you.
• ii.Give the low notes time. The bottom octave speaks slowly — the longer the bore, the more air it asks for. Quick passagework in the depths is rarely effective.
• iii.Use it as a foundation, not a soloist. The instrument doubles cellos and basses at the octave below to magnificent effect. Solo writing is possible, but choose the moment.
• iv.Avoid the highest reaches. Above the staff the tone thins and the intonation grows unreliable. Leave the upper register to the bassoon proper.
• v.Mind the breath, more than ever. An eighteen-foot bore drinks air. Phrases must be cut to a length the lungs can sustain — and a quiet rest must always be near.

Beyond these few rules, write to the instrument’s nature. The contrabassoon is not a small bassoon, and asking it to behave like one is to waste the gift it actually offers.

A short, partial list — five places to begin if one wishes to know what the contrabassoon can do, and what it has been asked to do by composers who understood it.

1. № 01

   Ravel — Ma mère l’Oye

   Les entretiens de la Belle et de la Bête

   The Beast itself, lumbering up from below — perhaps the most famous solo ever written for the instrument.

   Listen on Spotify
2. № 02

   Brahms — Symphony No. 1

   First movement, opening

   A pulse low beneath the timpani, lending the introduction its terrible weight.

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3. № 03

   Dukas — L’apprenti sorcier

   Brooms unleashed

   Sharing in the bassoons’ famous staccato — but a register lower, and twice as comic for it.

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4. № 04

   Strauss — Salome

   Dance of the Seven Veils

   A sinister growl beneath the orchestra, audible as much through the floor as through the air.

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5. № 05

   Mahler — Symphony No. 5

   Fifth movement

   Doubling the cellos and basses at the octave below — the rumbling foundation of the rondo.

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Further entries will be added as our study deepens.

The contrabassoon’s ancestry runs back to the late seventeenth century, when German makers — chief among them Andreas Eichentopf of Leipzig — first attempted to extend the bassoon downward by an octave. The early instruments were ungainly, uncertain in pitch, and difficult to play; but they worked, and by the early eighteenth century the contrabassoon had begun to find a place at the bottom of the wind band.

Bach and Handel both wrote for it sparingly. Haydn used it in The Creation and The Seasons, where its low pedals underwrite the choruses with a peculiar grandeur. Beethoven took it up enthusiastically — the fifth, ninth, and the late masses all call for the instrument, and its lowest notes provide some of the characteristic darkness of those scores.

The instrument as we know it owes its existence chiefly to Wilhelm Heckel of Biebrich, who in 1879 produced the design that has been the standard ever since. Heckel’s contrabassoon — eighteen feet of maple folded four times, with the bell turning toward the floor — replaced a long line of less satisfactory predecessors and is, in its essentials, the instrument every orchestra plays today.

The decades after Heckel’s redesign were the contrabassoon’s greatest. Brahms, Mahler, Strauss, and Wagner all wrote for it habitually; Ravel gave it, in Ma mère l’Oye, the most beloved solo in its repertory; Stravinsky and Schoenberg used it with care, and the modernists have not abandoned it. It is now a permanent member of the symphony orchestra.

Modern makers have refined the keywork, extended the range — many instruments now reach down to a low A₀ — and experimented with materials, but the silhouette and the voice remain Heckel’s. A contrabassoonist trained in Vienna or Berlin, sat down before a score by Strauss, plays the instrument the composer imagined. There are not many orchestral instruments of which this is still true.

Specifications

A summary, for the composer’s desk.