Contrabass recorder

The contrabass or great bass recorder is a wind instrument in F₂ that belongs to the family of recorders.

Recorders from Michael Praetorius's Syntagma Musicum (1619), with front and back views of the contrabass ("great bass") recorder at the left

Family of neo-baroque recorders, contrabass at left

The contrabass recorder plays an octave lower than the ordinary bass (or "basset") recorder. Until recently, it was the largest instrument in the recorder family, but since 1975 has been exceeded by the sub-great bass recorder (also called "contra-great bass" or simply "contrabass" recorder) in C₂ and the sub-contrabass recorder in F₁.

Due to the length of the instrument, the lowest tone, F, requires a key. On modern instruments, keys may also be provided for low F♯, G, and G♯, and sometimes for C and C♯ as well.

Occasionally, this size of instrument may be equipped with so-called "diapason" keys, which extend its range downward by a perfect fourth to low C₂ (Baines 1967, 248).

In the early 17th century, Michael Praetorius used the diminutive term "basset" (small bass) to describe the recorder that served as the lowest member of the "four-foot" consort, in which the instruments sound an octave higher than the corresponding human voices. Praetorius calls the next-lower instrument (bottom note B♭₂) a "bass", and the instrument an octave lower than the basset (with bottom note F₂) a Großbaß, "great" or "large bass" (Praetorius 1619a, 34, and supplement plate IX; Sachs 1913, 50).

Because Praetorius's term "great bass" today is often applied to the next-smaller size of instrument in C₃, the low-F bass is often designated "contrabass" by modern writers and instrument makers in a (largely futile) attempt to avoid confusion. However, the name "contrabass" is sometimes used for the next-larger size (in C₂), instead (Lasocki 2001). The modern notation for this instrument is usually in the bass clef at sounding pitch, unlike most other sizes of recorders which are notated an octave lower than they sound.

References

• Baines, Anthony C. 1967. Woodwind Instruments and Their History, third edition, with a foreword by Sir Adrian Boult. London: Faber and Faber. Reprinted with corrections, 1977. This edition reissued, Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1991, and reprinted again in 2012. ISBN 978-0-486-26885-9.
• Griscom, Richard W., and David Lasocki. 2013. The Recorder: A Research and Information Guide, third edition. Routledge Music Bibliographies. Routledge. ISBN 9781135839321.
• Lasocki, David. 2001. "Recorder". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers.
• Praetorius, Michael. 1619a. Syntagmatis Musici Michaelis Praetorii C. Tomus Secundus De Organographia. Wolfenbüttel: Elias Holwein, in Verlegung des Autoris.
• Praetorius, Michael. 1619b. Syntagmatis Musici Michaelis Praetorii C. Tomus Tertius. Wolfenbüttel: Elias Holwein.
• Sachs, Curt. 1913. Real-Lexikon der Musikinstrumente, zugleich ein Polyglossar für das gesamte Instrumentengebiet. Berlin: Julius Bard.