Jeff Denson Contrabass Concert - Intranet

Serenade (which was originally written for cello in 1949 and later
arranged for double bass by Lucas Drew, professor of double bass
at the University of Miami in 1981). S. Biagio 9 Agosto ore 1207:
Ricordo per un contrabbasso is a deeply dramatic and lyric piece
that dances on the edge of tonality; flirting with it, but remaining in
the ambiguity of its atonality. The opening four notes of the piece
pose a melancholic query upon which is immediately repeated two
more times (with slight deviation) in order to insure its establishment
as the central motif of the piece. These four pitches (C, D,
F#, and G#) are the 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 5th scale degrees of a whole
tone scale. This harmonically ambiguous set of pitches helps set
the plaintive and mysterious sentiment of the composition. The
first section of the piece (A) comes to an equally mystifying cadence
on a variation of the opening motif. This opening section
(A) is the only section that repeats in the piece, and by doing so,
Henze plants the seeds of a musical memory that’s roots twist and
turn under the body of the piece until it is finally presented for
“recollection” in its whispered finale. While the composition is
atonal, it holds a hierarchical distinction for certain pitch sets, or
intervallic schemes, such as whole tone segments, major sevenths,
and both major and minor thirds (frequently performed as double
stops).
At the top of the score there is a note to the performer,
which reads, “the author begs his collegues bass players to play
the piece in this normal tuning.” “Normal tuning,” refers to the
standard tuning of the double bass in fourths, from lowest string
to highest string: E, A, D, G. This note is meant to dissuade the
performer from using “solo tuning” (which is where each string is
tuned one whole step higher than the standard tuning: F#, B, E, A);
I can only speculate here that his purpose in making this request
was to capitalize on the darker sound that would be attained when
using this standard tuning, as opposed to the brighter and more direct
sound that occurs when the bass is in solo tuning. In contrast
to the dramatic extremes of dynamic markings in this piece (from
pppp to ffff) there are especially subtle changes in tempi that create
an almost subconscious awareness of an ebb and flow of temporal
movement between the sections.