What is a double bass?
The double bass has many names: bass, double bass, bass violin, upright bass and bass, to name a few. The earliest known double bass-type instrument dates back to 1516. Domenico Dragonetti was the instrument's first major virtuoso and largely responsible for the double bass who joined the orchestra. The double bass is the largest and lowest bow string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra.
Michael Praetorius
The history of the double bass has its origins in a distant period when music was linked to the ordinary and extraordinary events of everyday life in the noble houses and in the beautiful chapels. Players and composers arrived in Italy in search of fame and glory, and easy earnings. The word “double bass” had several meanings at the beginning: it indicated a “register of the voice” or “part of a composition with different voices”. But the meaning that refers to the instrument as we know it today arose when it was mentioned by the German music theorist. Michael Praetorius in his Sintagma Musicum (1616-1620). This text describes musical life in the fifteenth century and contains detailed drawings in a reduced version of the instruments of that period. Praetorius wrote that each stringed instrument had a corresponding instrument in the “low register”.
