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Who lives in the basement? No treble? To the window and to the wall, no one gets lower than the bass. Russian choral music, Pentatonix, and the Grinch all show up today.
Howdy, howdy, howdy! I’m Solomon Reynolds, and this is: Saturday Morning Car Tunes! This morning…
You can’t meet the Grinch or go caroling without lying low. But do bass voices only come out during Christmastime?
The word bass comes from the Latin bassus, meaning low, thick, or fat. In the 1500s, bassus meant the lowest part in a composition. Basses are the foundation that music and harmony are built on. In opera, basses are usually gods and kings—figures of authority. Monteverdi thought Pluto, the God of the Underworld, should have a low voice.
Deep voices also showed wisdom. That must make Sarastro from Mozart’s The Magic Flute suuuper wise. The lower your voice, the older the character you played, like the miserable old man in Verdi’s opera Ernani. Besides kings or noblemen, sometimes a villain might be a bass. A favorite type of song is the rage aria, where an angry character sings large leaps or fast notes, like this one by Handel.
The basso buffo is a comical bass, who sings really fast in a funny way called patter. This is a patter aria from Rossini’s The Barber of Seville.
A favorite role for the bass is the Devil himself, like in Berlioz’ The Damnation of Faust. Or in Gounod’s Faust. Wagner used the term “Hoher bass” to describe the sound of the bass-baritone: they can sing up high, but also sound deep and resonant down low. Wotan from Wagner's Ring cycle is this type of bass.
An oktavist is very rare basso profundo who can sing an octave below the normal bass part. Russian composers love oktavists, like in Rachmaninoff’s Vespers. The Russian bass Fyodor Shalyapin made the bass voice in opera as dramatic as the higher voices. He was also a famous art and Russian folk song performer. Here he is singing Balakirev’s "Song of the Volga Boatmen."
Ezio Pinza was an Italian bass who, after retiring from 22 seasons at the Metropolitan Opera, crossed over into musical theatre. He became a national celebrity for his original role in South Pacific. Paul Robeson was an American bass-baritone and activist who spoke out on behalf of the poor and racially oppressed. Here he is singing "Joe Hill," a song he would sing to British mining communities, encouraging them to unionize.
Basses can be hot, too! A lot of you wouldn’t be around without the smooth resonance of Grammy Award winner Barry White.
Basses shine when they go low.
I’m Solomon Reynolds. I write and produce Saturday Morning Car Tunes with research assistant Carolina Correa and audio engineer Stephen Page, only on Classical California. Tune in—or out of your car—next Saturday morning!
