Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in classical music, he remains one of the most recognised and influential of all composers, his best-known compositions include 9 symphonies. His career as a composer is conventionally divided into early and late periods. Beethoven was born in Bonn the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of the Holy Roman Empire, he displayed his musical talents at an early age and was taught by his father Johann van Beethoven and composer and conductor Christian Gottlob Neefe. At the age of 21 he moved to Vienna, where he began studying composition with Joseph Haydn and gained a reputation as a virtuoso pianist, he lived in Vienna until his death. By his late 20s his hearing began to deteriorate and by the last decade of his life he was completely deaf. In 1811 he continued to compose. Beethoven was the grandson of Ludwig van Beethoven, a musician from the town of Mechelen in the Austrian Duchy of Brabant who had moved to Bonn at the age of 21.
Ludwig was employed as a bass singer at the court of the Elector of Cologne rising to become, in 1761, Kapellmeister and thereafter the pre-eminent musician in Bonn. The portrait he commissioned of himself towards the end of his life remained displayed in his grandson's rooms as a talisman of his musical heritage. Ludwig had one son, who worked as a tenor in the same musical establishment and gave keyboard and violin lessons to supplement his income. Johann married Maria Magdalena Keverich in 1767. Beethoven was born of this marriage in Bonn. There is no authentic record of the date of his birth; as children of that era were traditionally baptised the day after birth in the Catholic Rhine country, it is known that Beethoven's family and his teacher Johann Albrechtsberger celebrated his birthday on 16 December, most scholars accept 16 December 1770 as his date of birth. Of the seven children born to Johann van Beethoven, only Ludwig, the second-born, two younger brothers survived infancy. Kaspar Anton Karl was born on 8 April 1774, Nikolaus Johann, the youngest, was born on 2 October 1776.
Beethoven's first music teacher was his father. He had other local teachers: the court organist Gilles van den Eeden, Tobias Friedrich Pfeiffer, Franz Rovantini. From the outset his tuition regime, which began in his fifth year, was harsh and intensive reducing him to tears, his musical talent was obvious at a young age. Johann, aware of Leopold Mozart's successes in this area, attempted to promote his son as a child prodigy, claiming that Beethoven was six on the posters for his first public performance in March 1778; some time after 1779, Beethoven began his studies with his most important teacher in Bonn, Christian Gottlob Neefe, appointed the Court's Organist in that year. Neefe taught him composition, by March 1783 had helped him write his first published composition: a set of keyboard variations. Beethoven soon began working with Neefe as assistant organist, at first unpaid, as a paid employee of the court chapel conducted by the Kapellmeister Andrea Luchesi, his first three piano sonatas, named "Kurfürst" for their dedication to the Elector Maximilian Friedrich, were published in 1783.
Maximilian Frederick noticed his talent early, subsidised and encouraged the young man's musical studies. Maximilian Frederick's successor as the Elector of Bonn was Maximilian Francis, the youngest son of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, he brought notable changes to Bonn. Echoing changes made in Vienna by his brother Joseph, he introduced reforms based on Enlightenment philosophy, with increased support for education and the arts; the teenage Beethoven was certainly influenced by these changes. He may have been influenced at this time by ideas prominent in freemasonry, as Neefe and others around Beethoven were members of the local chapter of the Order of the Illuminati. In December 1786, Beethoven travelled to Vienna, at his employer's expense, for the first time in the hope of studying with Mozart; the details of their relationship are uncertain, including whether they met. Having learned that his mother was ill, Beethoven returned to Bonn in May 1787, his mother died shortly thereafter, his father lapsed deeper into alcoholism.
As a result, he became responsible for the care of his two younger brothers, spent the next five years in Bonn. He was introduced in these years to several people. Franz Wegeler, a young medical student, intro
Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin was an English comic actor and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent film. He became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, "The Tramp", is considered one of the most important figures in the history of the film industry, his career spanned more than 75 years, from childhood in the Victorian era until a year before his death in 1977, encompassed both adulation and controversy. Chaplin's childhood in London was one of poverty and hardship, as his father was absent and his mother struggled financially, he was sent to a workhouse twice before the age of nine; when he was 14, his mother was committed to a mental asylum. Chaplin began performing at an early age, touring music halls and working as a stage actor and comedian. At 19, he was signed to the prestigious Fred Karno company, he began appearing in 1914 for Keystone Studios. He soon formed a large fan base, he directed his own films and continued to hone his craft as he moved to the Essanay and First National corporations.
By 1918, he was one of the best-known figures in the world. In 1919, Chaplin co-founded the distribution company United Artists which gave him complete control over his films, his first feature-length film was The Kid, followed by A Woman of Paris, The Gold Rush, The Circus. He refused to move to sound films in the 1930s, instead producing City Lights and Modern Times without dialogue, he became political, his next film The Great Dictator satirized Adolf Hitler. The 1940s were a decade marked with controversy for Chaplin, his popularity declined rapidly, he was accused of communist sympathies, while he created scandal through his involvement in a paternity suit and his marriages to much younger women. An FBI investigation was opened, Chaplin was forced to leave the United States and settle in Switzerland, he abandoned the Tramp in his films, which include Monsieur Verdoux, Limelight, A King in New York, A Countess from Hong Kong. Chaplin wrote, produced, starred in, composed the music for most of his films.
He was a perfectionist, his financial independence enabled him to spend years on the development and production of a picture. His films are characterized by slapstick combined with pathos, typified in the Tramp's struggles against adversity. Many contain political themes, as well as autobiographical elements, he received an Honorary Academy Award for "the incalculable effect he has had in making motion pictures the art form of this century" in 1972, as part of a renewed appreciation for his work. He continues to be held in high regard, with The Gold Rush, City Lights, Modern Times, The Great Dictator ranked on lists of the greatest films of all time. Charles Spencer Chaplin was born on 16 April 1889 to Charles Chaplin Sr.. There is no official record of his birth, although Chaplin believed he was born at East Street, Walworth, in South London, his mother and father had married four years at which time Charles Sr. became the legal guardian of Hannah's illegitimate son, Sydney John Hill. At the time of his birth, Chaplin's parents were both music hall entertainers.
Hannah, the daughter of a shoemaker, had a brief and unsuccessful career under the stage name Lily Harley, while Charles Sr. a butcher's son, was a popular singer. Although they never divorced, Chaplin's parents were estranged by around 1891; the following year, Hannah gave birth to a third son – George Wheeler Dryden – fathered by the music hall entertainer Leo Dryden. The child was taken by Dryden at six months old, did not re-enter Chaplin's life for 30 years. Chaplin's childhood was fraught with poverty and hardship, making his eventual trajectory "the most dramatic of all the rags to riches stories told" according to his authorised biographer David Robinson. Chaplin's early years were spent with his mother and brother Sydney in the London district of Kennington; as the situation deteriorated, Chaplin was sent to Lambeth Workhouse. The council housed him at the Central London District School for paupers, which Chaplin remembered as "a forlorn existence", he was reunited with his mother 18 months before Hannah was forced to readmit her family to the workhouse in July 1898.
The boys were promptly sent to another institution for destitute children. In September 1898, Hannah was committed to Cane Hill mental asylum – she had developed a psychosis brought on by an infection of syphilis and malnutrition. For the two months she was there and his brother Sydney were sent to live with their father, whom the young boys scarcely knew. Charles Sr. was by a severe alcoholic, life there was bad enough to provoke a visit from the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Chaplin's father died two years at 38 years old, from cirrhosis of the liver. Hannah entered a period of remission but, in May 1903, became ill again. Chaplin 14, had the task of taking his mother to the infirmary, from where she was sent back to Cane Hill, he lived alone for several days, searching for food and sleeping rough, until Sydney – who had enrolled in the Navy two years earlier – returned. Hannah was released from the asylum eight months but in March 1905, her illness returned, this time permanently.
"There was nothing we could do but accept poor mother's fate", Chaplin wrote, a
Paris is the capital and most populous city of France, with an area of 105 square kilometres and an official estimated population of 2,140,526 residents as of 1 January 2019. Since the 17th century, Paris has been one of Europe's major centres of finance, commerce, fashion and the arts; the City of Paris is the centre and seat of government of the Île-de-France, or Paris Region, which has an estimated official 2019 population of 12,213,364, or about 18 percent of the population of France. The Paris Region had a GDP of €681 billion in 2016, accounting for 31 percent of the GDP of France, was the 5th largest region by GDP in the world. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit Worldwide Cost of Living Survey in 2018, Paris was the second most expensive city in the world, after Singapore, ahead of Zurich, Hong Kong and Geneva. Another source ranked Paris as most expensive, on a par with Singapore and Hong-Kong, in 2018; the city is a major rail and air-transport hub served by two international airports: Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly.
Opened in 1900, the city's subway system, the Paris Métro, serves 5.23 million passengers daily, is the second busiest metro system in Europe after Moscow Metro. Gare du Nord is the 24th busiest railway station in the world, the first located outside Japan, with 262 million passengers in 2015. Paris is known for its museums and architectural landmarks: the Louvre was the most visited art museum in the world in 2018, with 10.2 million visitors. The Musée d'Orsay and Musée de l'Orangerie are noted for their collections of French Impressionist art, the Pompidou Centre Musée National d'Art Moderne has the largest collection of modern and contemporary art in Europe; the historical district along the Seine in the city centre is classified as a UNESCO Heritage Site. Popular landmarks in the centre of the city include the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris and the Gothic royal chapel of Sainte-Chapelle, both on the Île de la Cité. Paris received 23 million visitors in 2017, measured by hotel stays, with the largest numbers of foreign visitors coming from the United States, the UK, Germany and China.
It was ranked as the third most visited travel destination in the world in 2017, after Bangkok and London. The football club Paris Saint-Germain and the rugby union club Stade Français are based in Paris; the 80,000-seat Stade de France, built for the 1998 FIFA World Cup, is located just north of Paris in the neighbouring commune of Saint-Denis. Paris hosts the annual French Open Grand Slam tennis tournament on the red clay of Roland Garros. Paris will host the 2024 Summer Olympics; the 1938 and 1998 FIFA World Cups, the 2007 Rugby World Cup, the 1960, 1984, 2016 UEFA European Championships were held in the city and, every July, the Tour de France bicycle race finishes there. The name "Paris" is derived from the Celtic Parisii tribe; the city's name is not related to the Paris of Greek mythology. Paris is referred to as the City of Light, both because of its leading role during the Age of Enlightenment and more because Paris was one of the first large European cities to use gas street lighting on a grand scale on its boulevards and monuments.
Gas lights were installed on the Place du Carousel, Rue de Rivoli and Place Vendome in 1829. By 1857, the Grand boulevards were lit. By the 1860s, the boulevards and streets of Paris were illuminated by 56,000 gas lamps. Since the late 19th century, Paris has been known as Panam in French slang. Inhabitants are known in French as Parisiens, they are pejoratively called Parigots. The Parisii, a sub-tribe of the Celtic Senones, inhabited the Paris area from around the middle of the 3rd century BC. One of the area's major north–south trade routes crossed the Seine on the île de la Cité; the Parisii minted their own coins for that purpose. The Romans began their settlement on Paris' Left Bank; the Roman town was called Lutetia. It became a prosperous city with a forum, temples, an amphitheatre. By the end of the Western Roman Empire, the town was known as Parisius, a Latin name that would become Paris in French. Christianity was introduced in the middle of the 3rd century AD by Saint Denis, the first Bishop of Paris: according to legend, when he refused to renounce his faith before the Roman occupiers, he was beheaded on the hill which became known as Mons Martyrum "Montmartre", from where he walked headless to the north of the city.
Clovis the Frank, the first king of the Merovingian dynasty, made the city his capital from 508. As the Frankish domination of Gaul began, there was a gradual immigration by the Franks to Paris and the Parisian Francien dialects were born. Fortification of the Île-de-la-Citie failed to avert sacking by Vikings in 845, but Paris' strategic importance—with its bridges prevent
The cello or violoncello is a string instrument. It is played by bowing or plucking its four strings, which are tuned in perfect fifths an octave lower than the viola: from low to high, C2, G2, D3 and A3, it is the bass member of the violin family, which includes the violin and the double bass, which doubles the bass line an octave lower than the cello in much of the orchestral repertoire. After the double bass, it is the second-largest and second lowest bowed string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra; the cello is used as a solo instrument, as well as in chamber music ensembles, string orchestras, as a member of the string section of symphony orchestras, most modern Chinese orchestras, some types of rock bands. Music for the cello is written in the bass clef, but both tenor clef and treble clef are used for higher-range parts, both in orchestral/chamber music parts and in solo cello works. A person who plays the cello is called a violoncellist. In a small classical ensemble, such as a string quartet, the cello plays the bass part, the lowest-pitched musical line of the piece.
In an orchestra of the Baroque era and Classical period, the cello plays the bass part doubled an octave lower by the double basses. In Baroque-era music, the cello is used to play the basso continuo bassline along with a keyboard instrument or a fretted, plucked stringed instrument. In such a Baroque performance, the cello player might be joined or replaced by other bass instruments, playing bassoon, double bass, viol or other low-register instruments; the name cello is derived from the ending of the Italian violoncello, which means "little violone". Violone was a large-sized member of the violin family; the term "violone" today refers to the lowest-pitched instrument of the viols, a family of stringed instruments that went out of fashion around the end of the 17th century in most countries except England and France, where they survived another half-century before the louder violin family came into greater favour in that country as well. In modern symphony orchestras, it is the second largest stringed instrument.
Thus, the name "violoncello" contained both the augmentative "-one" and the diminutive "-cello". By the turn of the 20th century, it had become common to shorten the name to'cello, with the apostrophe indicating the missing stem, it is now customary to use "cello" without apostrophe as the full designation. Viol is derived from the root viola, derived from Medieval Latin vitula, meaning stringed instrument. Cellos are tuned in fifths, starting with C2, followed by G2, D3, A3, it is tuned in the same intervals as the viola. Unlike the violin or viola but similar to the double bass, the cello has an endpin that rests on the floor to support the instrument's weight; the cello is most associated with European classical music, has been described as the closest sounding instrument to the human voice. The instrument is a part of the standard orchestra, as part of the string section, is the bass voice of the string quartet, as well as being part of many other chamber groups. Among the most well-known Baroque works for the cello are Johann Sebastian Bach's six unaccompanied Suites.
The cello figures as a member of the basso continuo group in chamber works by Francesca Caccini, Barbara Strozzi with pieces such as Il primo libro di madrigali, per 2–5 voci e basso continuo, op. 1 and Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre who wrote six sonatas for violin and basso continuo. From the Classical era, the two concertos by Joseph Haydn in C major and D major stand out, as do the five sonatas for cello and pianoforte of Ludwig van Beethoven, which span the important three periods of his compositional evolution. A Divertimento for Piano, Clarinet and Cello is among the surviving works by Duchess Anna Amalia of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. A review of compositions for cello in the Romantic era must include the German composer Fanny Mendelssohn who wrote the Fantasy in G minor for cello and piano and a Capriccio in A-flat for cello. Other well-known works of the era include the Robert Schumann Concerto, the Antonín Dvořák Concerto as well as the two sonatas and the Double Concerto by Johannes Brahms.
Compositions from the late-19th and early 20th century include three cello sonatas by Dame Ethel Smyth, Edward Elgar's Cello Concerto in E minor, Claude Debussy's Sonata for Cello and Piano, unaccompanied cello sonatas by Zoltán Kodály and Paul Hindemith. Pieces including cello were written by American Music Cente founder Marion Bauer and Ruth Crawford Seeger. Polish composer Grażyna Bacewicz was writing for cello in the mid 20th century with Concerto No. 1 for Cello and Orchestra, Concerto No. 2 for Cello and Orchestra and in 1964 composed her Quartet for four cellos. The cello's versatility made it popular with many male composers in this era as well, such as Sergei Prokofiev, Dmitri Shostakovich, Benjamin Britten, György Ligeti, Witold Lutoslawski and Henri Dutilleux. Well-known cellists include Jacqueline du Pre, Raya Garbousova, Zara Nelsova, Hildur Gudna
The violin, sometimes known as a fiddle, is a wooden string instrument in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body, it is highest-pitched instrument in the family in regular use. Smaller violin-type instruments exist, including the violino piccolo and the kit violin, but these are unused; the violin has four strings tuned in perfect fifths, is most played by drawing a bow across its strings, though it can be played by plucking the strings with the fingers and by striking the strings with the wooden side of the bow. Violins are important instruments in a wide variety of musical genres, they are most prominent in the Western classical tradition, both in ensembles and as solo instruments and in many varieties of folk music, including country music, bluegrass music and in jazz. Electric violins with solid bodies and piezoelectric pickups are used in some forms of rock music and jazz fusion, with the pickups plugged into instrument amplifiers and speakers to produce sound. Further, the violin has come to be played in many non-Western music cultures, including Indian music and Iranian music.
The name fiddle is used regardless of the type of music played on it. The violin was first known in 16th-century Italy, with some further modifications occurring in the 18th and 19th centuries to give the instrument a more powerful sound and projection. In Europe, it served as the basis for the development of other stringed instruments used in Western classical music, such as the viola. Violinists and collectors prize the fine historical instruments made by the Stradivari, Guarneri and Amati families from the 16th to the 18th century in Brescia and Cremona and by Jacob Stainer in Austria. According to their reputation, the quality of their sound has defied attempts to explain or equal it, though this belief is disputed. Great numbers of instruments have come from the hands of less famous makers, as well as still greater numbers of mass-produced commercial "trade violins" coming from cottage industries in places such as Saxony and Mirecourt. Many of these trade instruments were sold by Sears, Roebuck and Co. and other mass merchandisers.
The parts of a violin are made from different types of wood. Violins can be strung with Perlon or other synthetic, or steel strings. A person who makes or repairs violins is called a violinmaker. One who makes or repairs bows is called an bowmaker; the word "violin" was first used in English in the 1570s. The word "violin" comes from "Italian violino, diminutive of viola"; the term "viola" comes from the expression for "tenor violin" in 1797, from Italian viola, from Old Provençal viola, Medieval Latin vitula" as a term which means "stringed instrument," from Vitula, Roman goddess of joy... or from related Latin verb vitulari, "to exult, be joyful." The related term "Viola da gamba" means "bass viol" is from Italian "a viola for the leg"." A violin is the "modern form of the smaller, medieval viola da braccio." The violin is called a fiddle, either when used in a folk music context, or in Classical music scenes, as an informal nickname for the instrument. The word "fiddle" was first used in English in the late 14th century.
The word "fiddle" comes from "fedele, fidel, earlier fithele, from Old English fiðele "fiddle,", related to Old Norse fiðla, Middle Dutch vedele, Dutch vedel, Old High German fidula, German Fiedel, "a fiddle. As to the origin of the word "fiddle", the "...usual suggestion, based on resemblance in sound and sense, is that it is from Medieval Latin vitula." The earliest stringed instruments were plucked. Two-stringed, bowed instruments, played upright and strung and bowed with horsehair, may have originated in the nomadic equestrian cultures of Central Asia, in forms resembling the modern-day Mongolian Morin huur and the Kazakh Kobyz. Similar and variant types were disseminated along East-West trading routes from Asia into the Middle East, the Byzantine Empire; the direct ancestor of all European bowed instruments is the Arabic rebab, which developed into the Byzantine lyra by the 9th century and the European rebec. The first makers of violins borrowed from various developments of the Byzantine lyra.
These included the lira da braccio. The violin in its present form emerged in early 16th-century northern Italy; the earliest pictures of violins, albeit with three strings, are seen in northern Italy around 1530, at around the same time as the words "violino" and "vyollon" are seen in Italian and French documents. One of the earliest explicit descriptions of the instrument, including its tuning, is from the Epitome musical by Jambe de Fer, published in Lyon in 1556. By this time, the violin had begun to spread throughout Europe; the violin proved popular, both among street musicians and the nobility. One of these "noble" instruments, the Charles IX, is the oldest surviving violin; the finest Renaissance carved and decorated violin in the world is the Gasparo da Salò owned by Ferdinand II, Archduke of Austria and from 1841, by the Norwegian virtuoso Ole Bull, who used it for forty years and thousands of concerts, for i
Éric Alfred Leslie Satie, who signed his name Erik Satie after 1884, was a French composer and pianist. Satie was an influential artist in the late 19th- and early 20th-century Parisian avant-garde, his work was a precursor to artistic movements such as minimalism, repetitive music, the Theatre of the Absurd. An eccentric, Satie was introduced as a "gymnopedist" in 1887, shortly before writing his most famous compositions, the Gymnopédies, he referred to himself as a "phonometrician", preferring this designation to that of "musician", after having been called "a clumsy but subtle technician" in a book on contemporary French composers published in 1911. In addition to his body of music, Satie was "a thinker with a gift of eloquence" who left a remarkable set of writings, having contributed work for a range of publications, from the dadaist 391 to the American culture chronicle Vanity Fair. Although in life he prided himself on publishing his work under his own name, in the late 19th century he appears to have used pseudonyms such as Virginie Lebeau and François de Paule in some of his published writings.
Erik Satie was born on 17 May 1866, the son of Alfred Satie and his wife Jane Leslie, born in London to Scottish parents. Erik was born at Honfleur in Normandy; when Satie was four years old, his family moved to Paris, his father having been offered a translator's job in the capital. After his mother's death in 1872, he was sent, together with his younger brother, back to Honfleur to live with his paternal grandparents. There he received his first music lessons from a local organist. In 1878, when he was 12 years old, his grandmother died, the two brothers were reunited in Paris with their father, who remarried shortly afterwards. From the early 1880s onwards, Satie started publishing salon compositions by his step-mother and himself, among others. In 1879, Satie entered the Paris Conservatoire, where he was soon labelled untalented by his teachers. Georges Mathias, his professor of piano at the Conservatoire, described his pupil's piano technique in flatly negative terms, "insignificant and laborious" and "worthless".
Émile Decombes called him "the laziest student in the Conservatoire". Years Satie related that Mathias, with great insistence, had told him that his real talent lay in composing. After being sent home for two and a half years, he was readmitted to the Conservatoire at the end of 1885, but was unable to make a much more favourable impression on his teachers than he had before, and, as a result, resolved to take up military service a year later. However, Satie's military career did not last long. Satie moved from his father's residence to lodgings in Montmartre in 1887, when he became 21. By this time he had started what was to be an enduring friendship with the romantic poet Patrice Contamine, had his first compositions published by his father, he soon integrated with the artistic clientele of the Le Chat Noir Café-cabaret, started publishing his Gymnopédies. Publication of compositions in the same vein followed. In the same period he befriended Claude Debussy, he moved to a smaller room, still in Montmartre, in 1890.
By 1891 he was the official composer and chapel-master of the Rosicrucian Order "Ordre de la Rose-Croix Catholique, du Temple et du Graal", led by Sâr Joséphin Péladan, which led to compositions such as Salut drapeau!, Le Fils des étoiles, the Sonneries de la Rose+Croix. Satie gave performances at the Salon de la Rose + Croix, organized by Péladan. By mid-1892, Satie had composed the first pieces in a compositional system of his own making, provided incidental music to a chivalric esoteric play, had his first hoax published, broken from Péladan, starting that autumn with the Uspud project, a "Christian Ballet", in collaboration with Contamine de Latour. While the comrades from both the Chat Noir and Miguel Utrillo's Auberge du Clou sympathised, a promotional brochure was produced for the project, which reads as a pamphlet for a new esoteric sect. Satie and Suzanne Valadon began an affair early in 1893. After their first night together, he proposed marriage; the two did not marry. Satie became obsessed with her, calling her his Biqui and writing impassioned notes about "her whole being, lovely eyes, gentle hands, tiny feet".
During their relationship, Satie composed the Danses gothiques as a means of calming his mind, Valadon painted a portrait of Satie, which she gave to him. After six months she moved away. Afterwards, he said that he was left with "nothing but an icy loneliness that fills the head with emptiness and the heart with sadness", it is believed this was the only intimate relationship Satie had. In 1893, Satie met the young Maurice Ravel for the first time, Satie's style emerging in the first compositions of the youngster. One of Satie's own compositions of that period, was to remain undisclosed until after his death. By the end of the year he had founded the Église Métropolitaine d'Art de Jésus Conducteur; as its only member, in the role of "Parcier et Maître de Chapelle", he started
The double bass, or the bass, is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra. It is a standard member of the orchestra's string section, as well as the concert band, is featured in concertos and chamber music in Western classical music; the bass is used in a range of other genres, such as jazz, 1950s-style blues and rock and roll, psychobilly, traditional country music, bluegrass and many types of folk music. The bass is a transposing instrument and is notated one octave higher than tuned to avoid excessive ledger lines below the staff; the double bass is the only modern bowed string instrument, tuned in fourths, rather than fifths, with strings tuned to E1, A1, D2 and G2. The instrument's exact lineage is still a matter of some debate, with scholars divided on whether the bass is derived from the viol or the violin family; however the body shape where it curves into the neck matches the viol family whereas in the rest of the violin family, the body meets the neck with no blending curve.
The double bass is played by plucking the strings. In orchestral repertoire and tango music, both arco and pizzicato are employed. In jazz and rockabilly, pizzicato is the norm. Classical music uses the natural sound produced acoustically by the instrument, as does traditional bluegrass. In jazz and related genres, the bass is amplified; the double bass stands around 180 cm from scroll to endpin. However, other sizes are available, such as a 1⁄2 or 3⁄4, which serve to accommodate a player's height and hand size; these sizes do not reflect the size relative to 4⁄4 bass. It is constructed from several types of wood, including maple for the back, spruce for the top, ebony for the fingerboard, it is uncertain whether the instrument is a descendant of the viola da gamba or of the violin, but it is traditionally aligned with the violin family. While the double bass is nearly identical in construction to other violin family instruments, it embodies features found in the older viol family. Like other violin and viol-family string instruments, the double bass is played either with a bow or by plucking the strings.
In orchestral repertoire and tango music, both arco and pizzicato are employed. In jazz and rockabilly, pizzicato is the norm, except for some solos and occasional written parts in modern jazz that call for bowing. In classical pedagogy all of the focus is on performing with the bow and producing a good bowed tone. Bowed notes in the lowest register of the instrument produce a dark, mighty, or menacing effect, when played with a fortissimo dynamic. Classical bass students learn all of the different bow articulations used by other string section players, such as détaché, staccato, martelé, sul ponticello, sul tasto, tremolo and sautillé; some of these articulations can be combined. Classical bass players do play pizzicato parts in orchestra, but these parts require simple notes, rather than rapid passages. Classical players perform both bowed and pizz notes using vibrato, an effect created by rocking or quivering the left hand finger, contacting the string, which transfers an undulation in pitch to the tone.
Vibrato is used to add expression to string playing. In general loud, low-register passages are played with little or no vibrato, as the main goal with low pitches is to provide a clear fundamental bass for the string section. Mid- and higher-register melodies are played with more vibrato; the speed and intensity of the vibrato is varied by the performer for an emotional and musical effect. In jazz and other related genres, much or all of the focus is on playing pizzicato. In jazz and jump blues, bassists are required to play rapid pizzicato walking basslines for extended periods; as well and rockabilly bassists develop virtuoso pizzicato techniques that enable them to play rapid solos that incorporate fast-moving triplet and sixteenth note figures. Pizzicato basslines performed by leading jazz professionals are much more difficult than the pizzicato basslines that Classical bassists encounter in the standard orchestral literature, which are whole notes, half notes, quarter notes, occasional eighth note passages.
In jazz and related styles, bassists add semi-percussive "ghost notes" into basslines, to add to the rhythmic feel and to add fills to a bassline. The double bass player stands, or sits on a high stool, leans the instrument against their body, turned inward to put the strings comfortably in reach; this stance is a key reason for the bass's sloped shoulders, which mark it apart from the other members of the violin family—the narrower shoulders facilitate playing the strings in their higher registers. The double bass is regarded as a modern descendant of the string family of instruments that originated in Europe in the 15th century, as such has been described as a bass Violin. Before the 20th century many double basses had only three strings, in contrast to the five to six strings typical of instruments in the viol family or the four strings of instruments in the violin family; the double bass's proportions are di