(emotional string music)
- Domenico Dragonetti was a virtuoso double bass soloist.
He came from Venice,
and took the double bass possibility to greater heights.
He met Beethoven, for example, and Haydn.
And up until then, bass lines used to just be
an echo of the cello line, not an individual line.
But when Dragonetti performed to Beethoven to show him
what the double bass could do, suddenly
we were given individual, independent bass lines.
This instrument was left to Prince Albert
in Domenico Dragonetti's will in 1846.
Before Dragonetti owned it, it was owned
by the celebrated English bass singer, Bartleman.
It's wonderful to have even that little bit of lineage
about the instrument, because quite often these days
you only know very, very little.
It made absolute sense for Dragonetti to leave it
to Prince Albert because he played on this instrument to him
in a concert that was part of a series
called The Concerts of Ancient Music,
that was directed by Prince Albert.
It's a very curious instrument
that doesn't really fit into any particular box.
It clearly comes from the violin family,
which is the very beautiful, rounded, shaped shoulders
and the lower body.
It's too big to be a cello,
it's too small to be a double bass.
The double bass family comes from the viol family,
which predates the violin family,
so the closest we could really call it
is a basse do violon, i.e. a double bass
but from the violin family.
- The aim of the restoration of this instrument
was mainly to make it playable in a very immediate future.
We had to make sure that all the old joints
and fractures were glued up.
Although no major cosmetic restoration has been undertaken,
we've made sure that it was in absolute,
perfect playing condition.
We also had to create a new spike for the instrument.
We've also changed a top nut, the ebony nut
at the top of the fingerboard.
The old nut had very low grooves,
which meant that the top part of the string
were in contact with the fingerboard,
which means that as the string was being put in vibration
with the bow, the string would be in contact
in multiple places on the fingerboard
which would therefore create some what we call buzzes sound,
and we wouldn't have a clear note coming out.
We've also had to do the standard set up with the bridge,
the new sound post, which is a piece of spruce
inside the belly of the instrument that is fitted
top and bottom to just behind the bridge
to the back of the instrument and transmit the sound waves
and project the sound out of the instrument.
And of course we have to had
some custom-made gut strings to stay
as original as possible to the instrument.
- There is a spurious label inside
that is dedicated to Guarneri, who was a very well known
Italian maker of the highest echelons,
although there are hints around the F-holes
that show a little bit of English in them
by the great maker Lott,
and a little bit of influence that could be German as well,
because of just of the size of the F-holes.
But when you hear the body of it,
the actual body of the instrument
is a beautiful-sounding instrument.
It actually operates at a pitch
which is in fact cello pitch.
We call that eight-foot pitch.
If you think of an organ pipe
with all the different lengths of pipes,
the eight-foot pipe is the pitch of a cello.
The 16-foot pipe is the pitch of a double bass
Now, this basse de violon is at the eight-foot pitch,
so that's probably why Dragonetti
also referred to it as his violoncello.
Prince Albert gave the instrument to be used
by Queen Victoria's band, which up until this point
was a wind band, which was a very popular kind of band
to have, dating right back to Mozart's day, in fact.
So, when Prince Albert gave the bass
to Queen Victoria's band, it helped to expand the repertoire
immediately by involving stringed instruments.
I think it's only fair, because I'm going to be playing
without any accompaniment, that I should play
something that Dragonetti himself wrote.
(emotional string music)