Of all forms of classical music making, chamber music is one of the most intensive, and one of the most rewarding. Rather than in the orchestra, where the individual musician is a small part of a far greater whole which is determined by the interpretation of the conductor, chamber music has a small group of musicians arrive at an interpretation together, as equals, with no one to rely on during the performance except each other.
Playing chamber music is an experience to be treasured, and as a result, chamber music pieces should be treasured as well, as they represent opportunities to partake in this art in various forms, instrumentations, and varieties of musical expression. Players of some instruments have been handed down more pieces to choose from than others; the double bass is middling in this regard, featuring in far fewer pieces than the other strings, the piano, and the most common woodwinds, but more than brasses (besides the horn) and percussionists – and all of these and their players have plenty to offer through the medium of chamber music.
Catalogs of chamber music featuring a double bass already exist - such as Paul Nemeth's Chamber Music Database, or by using the tagging system here at IMSLP. But chamber music pieces are not of equal value, both in terms of the artistry which the composer was able to muster, as well as the effective use of the instruments and the double bass in particular. The ideal of chamber music is arguably one where each musician has a unique voice and is able to express their musicality, which they've trained so long and hard to hone – like a conversation between musicians, as chamber music is sometimes described – whereas many pieces have the double bass reprise its orchestral role of mostly doubling other instruments to deepen the overall soundscape. That said, there are far more pieces of all levels of quality than most people realize, and it is our duty to rediscover and utilize them before we complain about a dearth of material to play.
Finding and navigating this corpus can be a challenge. To that end, I would like to focus on ten pieces in particular (while still mentioning many others), ranked in a deliberate but entirely subjective order, taking into account my opinion on their overall musical value, equitability of the parts and the effective treatment of the double bass in particular, accessibility (basically whether the piece is prohibitively difficult when not justified musically), and personal taste. It is a ranking of pieces in order of my gladness that they exist. Each piece will be placed in its proper context, and I will outline what it is about these pieces that I appreciate, highlighting selected passages in the process. There will be an arbitrary, though not absolute, preference for pieces that have been recorded (as listening to a recording makes it easier to form an opinion about the piece) and pieces in the public domain (which can be present and linked to here on IMSLP); this latter criterion incidentally disadvantages modern works, which are highly valuable contributions, in favor of the heritage of pieces from previous periods. Lastly, there will be only one piece per composer and per musical style if possible in order to underscore the variety of pieces that exist.
This article concerns itself with one of the most common chamber music instrumentations featuring the double bass: pieces consisting of a piano, a violin, a viola, a cello, and a double bass, called a piano quintet, though the pieces themselves don't necessarily need to be labeled as such. The inclusion of a piano has a fundamental impact, as this instrument can take on the force of an entire orchestra, let alone a handful of string players; as a result, the piano is usually not written as one equal among the others, but as an equal and contrasting force to all the others combined, and in larger constellations, this can lead to a piece becoming more like a miniature piano concerto with rote accompaniment by a small string orchestra, such as in the Piano Sextet by Mendelssohn and the Grand Sextet by Glinka, rather than the interplay of musicians that we like to see and hear in chamber music. Piano quintets of the present kind started out this way, the first one – the Piano Quintet by Dussek – probably having included a double bass with the specific purpose of creating a feeling of orchestral depth to accompany the piano (or perhaps in order to feature the very popular bassist Domenico Dragonetti), but the grouping can be and has been used for much more. Smaller variants including a double bass, meanwhile, are vanishingly rare, with the Piano Quartet by Henri Louis Martin de Villers as an example.
The far more common and better known kind of piano quintet, featuring a piano, two violins, a viola and a cello, is far more logical under traditional notions of balance, with the violin doubled as in the string quartet and the orchestra and the piano perfectly capable of providing the deep bass. With just a single violin, the present quintet has more in common with the conventional piano quartet, which is then made more bottom-heavy. Let me posit that this imbalance can encourage the abandonment of orchestral reasoning and lead to more inventive use of the available parts; for instance, the viola has a larger role to play as an inner voice in lack of a second violin, and the cello is freed up to play more soaring tenor lines. Some of the best pieces also regularly showcase four-part harmony with the four different string instruments, a unique texture that is rarely heard otherwise.
Almost all of the ten pieces listed here all happen to be more or less from the romantic era. This is because the form started in that era (Dussek's quintet just barely remains in the 18th century but it is romantic in style), peaked during it and seems to have gone terminally out of fashion by the time modernity rolled in, recent resurgences notwithstanding. That said, this limitation still leaves plenty to discover, and the 19th century is a golden age for chamber music in general, many of the most beloved chamber music pieces having been written during this period, when the genre was given a new dimension by the emergence of a market among amateur musicians enriched by the industrial revolution.
Quintets from the first wave, starting with the aforementioned Dussek, are largely solo pieces for the piano with a small and economical accompaniment, and they all seem to begin in the same way. There will be a flourish in a forte dynamic with all five players, then the piano answers in a piano dynamic, and then the first movement is kicked off, consisting of piano solos interspersed with basic string passages, accompanied by the piano so heavily that it never really leaves the foreground. This goes on more or less for the rest of the piece. The quintets by Limmer, Hummel, Nowakowski and several others follow this pattern. Many of the them have been recorded on period instruments by the Nepomuk Fortepiano Quintet (essentially an extended showcase for the pianist Riko Fukuda), and among them is a fine recording of the present quintet by Ferdinand Ries.
Ries' quintet was written, performed and published in London, by Clementi. As was usual for the time, there is no full score included as the piano part is just the piano, which is difficult to work with for modern performers. Thankfully, Wollenweber and Peters offer modern editions. The London publication is titled as a "Grand Quintetto for the Piano Forte", "With accompaniments for" the string players, so it is largely more of the same. But it does mix up the formula a bit. The first movement gets a slow and brooding introduction, where the only rhythmic pulse is given by pizzicato double bass:
A few piano cadenzas later, the strings slowly bring the piece to a brighter and more forceful state, as if straining to pry it open, supported by tremolos from the piano. In moments like these, Ries shows more creativity in combining the strings and the piano to create an atmosphere than in the average piano quintet from this period. When the first movement kicks off in earnest, the strings are largely relegated to the background, albeit with occasional moments that show their effective use to contrast with the piano.
In the second movement (larghetto), the strings play a slightly more prominent role. The cello opens with a short but effective solo, after which the piano takes over. Halfway through the movement, there is a sudden key change, and the upper strings introduce a which is a true earworm:
This melody ends up getting passed between the violin and the cello, modulating across various keys in the process. The entire episode adds up to something quite memorable.
In line with tradition, the last movement is a rondo. I tend to strongly dislike rondos because they are - by necessity - quite repetitive, and because early romantic composers seem to use the most vapid material they can muster for the main theme. This rondo is sadly no exception, although the strings introduce the second theme quickly enough.
Halfway through this movement, too, does a change in key and atmosphere occur. Now the piano dialogues with strings that are pizzicato throughout.
This is again a memorable and welcome deviation from the rest of the movement. On the whole, despite still being essentially a miniature piano concerto, Ries' quintet shows a greater awareness that he is writing for five different musicians with distinct instruments, and a willingness to experiment with the strings and their timbre as a contrasting force, as well as being competently written overall and featuring a few surprising and unique moments. These qualities might make it worth staging the quintet if there is a desire to highlight the pianist while having a bit of effective ensemble playing sprinkled in to keep things interesting. At any rate, it earns Ries a meritorious tenth place on this list.
Georges Onslow, unlike his far more famous namesake from Keeping Up Appearances, was a French composer, although his English surname is no accident, as his family was forced to emigrate from Britain because of a homosexual scandal his father was apparently involved in. Irrelevant anecdotes aside, Onslow was an early romantic amateur composer based in Paris with a prolific output in several genres, including a large body of chamber music. As with other Parisian composers of this period, the double bass is amply represented in these chamber works, likely due to the inspiring presence of bassist Achille Gouffé in the musical scene - and herein lies a great contradiction in the repertoire of chamber music with double bass, as so much of it stems from early 19th century Paris where it was reviled by audiences who were instead pining for Italian operas. Thankfully, Onslow did not rely on composition for his income, so he was able to continue writing these works, even having them published at his own expense.
Onslow's chamber works are impressively written, being densely packed with counterpoint, tense and fast-paced harmonic progressions, and virtuosic part writing. They were highly lauded in Onslow's time and found their footing abroad where they could not do so in France. After his death, however, he more or less fell into oblivion, his pieces only being revived recently. Personally, I can sympathize with those who forgot him, as I have great difficulty enjoying Onslow's music beyond an appreciation for its craftmanship; I find him exhausting to listen to with how much is almost constantly going on at any given time, and I can't seem to connect with the music, expressive though it may try to be. Others have called his style academic, which I can understand, although Onslow certainly wasn't trying to be academic. I think the fundamental issue for me is that Onslow's language doesn't seem to allow for ambiguity, fondly looking backward at classical calculatedness while seeking new romantic extremes of expression. The result is music that doesn't breathe. That said, what doesn't work for some may work for others, and there is more to performing or listening to a piece of music than its immediate emotional effect. With that in mind, let's see what Onslow has done with the medium of the piano quintet.
Of the three piano quintets Onslow left us, Op.70 is an original piano quintet, Op.76 is actually a transcription of his Symphony No.4 and Op.79 is a transcription of his Septet for piano, winds and double bass. The Op.76 is actually quite interesting in its own right, featuring a "coup de vent" movement with whirlwinds in the form of sound. That said, it is probably more enjoyable as long as you're not aware that it's actually a transcription of a symphony, as the austere opening notes of the piano in the piece's opening become a bit off-putting when you realize that they are a stand-in for what were originally trumpet calls. Moreover, I want to shy away from transcriptions in this list, so we will now examine Onslow's originally conceived piano quintet.
The quintet is titled "Quintetto pour Piano, Violon, Alto, Violoncelle et Contrebasse" in the edition by Kistner, but there is an alternative "Violoncello Secondo" part to optionally replace the bass, and the cello part is accordingly headed "Violoncello Primo". Some authors are overly cautious when à defaut parts for the double bass are encountered in Onslow works, and don't dare to assume that the work was originally conceived with a double bass. Here, it should be fairly obvious, rather than Onslow deciding that a piano quartet needed a second cello. The alternative part was likely a compromise asked for by the publisher to make the work more attractive abroad and to amateurs, where Achille Gouffé - or a proficient bassist in general - might not be available. As usual, the older editions include no full score, but performers can get a modern edition from SJ Music.
Onslow, being a cello player, approaches the medium differently than the virtuoso pianist-composers did, but the work is still very piano-heavy with near constant florid passages throughout. A key difference is that the other four players now get difficult parts to match, including the double bass, of which the entire standard register is consistently utilized. It might just mean that the work becomes less accessible while still not being to one's tastes, though on the other hand, it can only be a benefit to the music when all players are being challenged musically and technically.
The first movement (Allegro grandioso e non troppo presto) begins with the formulaic "piano quintet opening" discussed previously, and the movement is stormy and relentless as per Onslow's usual fashion. The four string parts are independent, the cello and bass sometimes playing runs of tasty thirds, and there is four-part harmony in tuttis where the bass often doubles the left hand of the piano, sometimes oddly in its upper register:
The cello is often written in treble clef transposed at the octave as was usual for the period, so read the notes down an octave to get the sounding pitches. They are still very high!
Sometimes, the piano takes a step aside to make room for an interesting passage in the strings, like this dialogue between the skittering upper strings and the piano which plays only in octaves (a device that is amply used in another quintet discussed further along this list):
Sometimes, the piano even mercifully takes a short break to let the strings do something truly special:
Like with Ries, the second movement (Andantino cantabile) begins with a cello solo, presenting a charming and wistful melody which is developed for a little while:
Unfortunately, it doesn't take long for the movement to launch into its protracted middle section, which is again very stormy and "con tutta forza". Eventually, the melody returns, being played by the strings while being torn asunder by all sorts of runs in the piano, and vice versa. Gradually, the movement calms down until it reaches its end with some warm, repeated chords. The formal development here is interesting and well-executed, but in the context of the quintet, it just feels like yet more overexcitement after having just had the first movement, and a missed opportunity to settle down and explore something more tranquil. Maybe tranquil just isn't Onslow's strong suit.
True to form, the third and final movement is a rondo, and the theme that is endlessly repeated this time is - by Onslow's standards - surprisingly light and coquettish, perhaps even elegant.
As required by the rondo form, this theme is developed and contrasted skillfully using all the available instruments and with fine articulations. Onslow does bring in some of the drama as the movement progresses, but it feels well-integrated and kept under control. Some of these variations treat the listener to some nice and clever counterpoint:
Towards the end, Onslow deliberately ratchets up the excitement until the piece reaches its inexorable conclusion. I find this rondo the most enjoyable of the three movements, but they are all meticulously and skillfully crafted, featuring challenging and worthwhile parts for all players which combine into rich textures that have the double bass weave through using its full register. My only fear is that, if the listeners feel the same way about Onslow's music as I do (and I have seen many opinions that are similar to mine), then this piece will wear down their patience well before the third movement rolls around to set some things right. That aside, it's clear that Onslow's quintet is a serious and fully realized effort in which he developed strategies to deal with the ensemble in his own characteristic way, and the piano quintet repertoire is all the richer for it.
