The double bass is a strange instrument!

We are part of the string family when it suits our smaller instrumental cousins and excluded when it doesn’t. Not that anything has changed during my 41-year career as a professional bassist.

Many Heads of Strings have been wonderful to work with, some less so, and my final one always thought I should know my place…which I most certainly didn’t and never have! Looking back, I have had to fight my corner many times so that my students have the same opportunities as violinists, violists and cellists.

Chamber music is an essential part of the education of young string players and double bassists are no different. The enlightened institutions realise that a happy double bass teacher creates a happy double bass department and do include chamber music for bassists, usually a double bass quartet, as part of the music programme.

When I first started to organise double bass workshops I quickly realised that the published quartets bore no resemblance to the ability levels of the bassists who were taking part, hence the need to arrange music for massed basses and also to commission new pieces. Quartets can often be played by massed forces and over the years I have arranged and commissioned hundreds of pieces for three or more bassists. The Elephant, Can-Can and Pizzicato Polka are three of my favourite transcriptions.

Recital Music has an unrivalled catalogue of double bass trios, quartets, quintets and more, for most ability levels, and a current project is to create new repertoire for the youngest bassists, enabling chamber music to be part of the learning process from the earliest lessons. We now publish a number of trios and quartets by Michael Montgomery (USA) and David Heyes (UK) which only use open strings and easy bass percussion, all in 4/4 time, using both arco and pizzicato.

The second part of the project features music for a slightly more advanced level, but only using 1st position, bass percussion and a few easy harmonics in 4th position to add height and clarity. Completed works to date include suites of pieces inspired by The Wind in the Willows, Moby Dick, Big Bad Wolf (aka Little Red Riding Hood) and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and these will be published imminently.

Aesop’s Fables are being raided by English composer-bassist Christopher Field for the project and future ideas will possibly include The Jungle Book, Alice in Wonderland, Pinocchio and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

I love nothing more than a new project and the present one to create a new repertoire for beginner bassists is one I am relishing. It’s amazing how things have changed over the past 40 years, which is surely a Golden Age for the double bass, and how exciting to be part a tiny part of this revolution.

The double bass quartet as a music ensemble only dates back to the early 1930s and 90 years later young bassists are now able to be join this amazing world of chamber music. Onwards and upwards.

David Heyes (2 December 2024)