‘The first maker of what is unambiguously a double bass’ | Focus | The Strad 28.07.

23, 13:36

‘The first maker of what is

unambiguously a double bass’
17 NOVEMBER 2021

In this extract from the December 2021 issue, Thomas Martin, George Martin and Martin Lawrence examine
the beginnings of bass making in Venice

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‘The first maker of what is unambiguously a double bass’ | Focus | The Strad 28.07.23, 13:36

Photo: Arpeggio Publishing

A c.1715 instrument by Matteo Gofriller, who can be regarded as the first maker of what is unambiguously a
double bass

The following extract is from The Strad’s December 2021 issue feature ‘The Venetian Double Bass: Venetian
Splendour’. To read it in full, click here to subscribe and login. The December 2021 digital magazine and print
edition are on sale now

At the beginning of the 17th century, Venice was Europe’s second largest city, and had become fabulously
wealthy in the previous centuries as Europe’s main gateway to trade with the Far East. It was home to affluent
merchants who ploughed their riches into all manner of cultural activity, decorating their palaces with the finest
furniture, textiles and paintings and laying on private concerts for their friends. As such it was a place where
there was a great deal of musical activity, providing lucrative employment for musicians and luthiers alike. For

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‘The first maker of what is unambiguously a double bass’ | Focus | The Strad 28.07.23, 13:36

the next 200 years violin making thrived in the city, developing its unique identity and style, but it was perhaps
when the luthiers turned their hand to making double basses that they were at their most unconstrained. This
freedom of style is best seen in the variety of ways that they designed the bass heads.

Among the earliest Venetian instrument makers were the Sellas family. Giorgio Sellas probably arrived in the
city of Venice in the late years of the 16th century having travelled from his native Füssen, where the family
were well established. Although they are not considered as violin makers as such but makers of lutes and
guitars, they brought to Venice the necessary skillset of instrument making and the concepts of running a
successful commercial workshop.

The first Venetian instrument maker known to have made instruments of the violin family is Martin Kaiser. He
was also a native of Füssen, arriving in Venice to work in Sellas’s workshop around 1630. He went on to
establish his own business by 1652.

In 1685 Matteo Gofriller arrived in Venice from Bressanone in the Tyrol region to work for Kaiser, eventually
marrying his daughter, Maddalana and took over the Kaiser workshop upon his father-in-law’s death in the
1690s. Gofriller can be regarded as the first maker of what is unambiguously a double bass. While the
dimensions of his basses are clearly modelled upon those of Gasparo da Salò, he employed a round back with a
break set lower than the Brescian instruments (as opposed to Gasparo’s flat-backed instruments) and the
pegbox is sized to accommodate three or four strings (rather than the six-stringed configuration that Gasparo’s
instruments are assumed to have used). The bottom of the pegbox is formed in the ‘clog heel’ style of the earlier
Brescians although with a vestigial tongue at the bottom of the central spine. The side view of the head with a
very round volute, perched on the pegbox with a minimal throat, was copied by later Venetian double bass
makers, although they often departed from his rather conservative working of the fluting around the front of
the volute and back of the pegbox. The f-holes are a refined interpretation of the Stainer pattern that sweep
gracefully outwards with a delicate lower wing. Again, this style of f-hole was adopted by many of the later
Venetians for their double basses.

Read: The Venetian double bass: Venetian splendour

Read: Bottesini’s 200th anniversary: The world at his feet

Read: The Strad Calendar 2022: Carlo Ferdinando Landolfi double bass c.1770

This article was published in the December 2021

‘Double Basses of Venice’ issue
The north Italian city-state produced some of the country’s finest
instruments . Explore all the articles in this issue

More from this issue…

The Venetian double bass

Celebrating Bottesini’s 200th anniversary
South African cellist, composer and vocalist Abel Selaocoe

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‘The first maker of what is unambiguously a double bass’ | Focus | The Strad 28.07.23, 13:36

Wood treatment on Cremonese instruments

Heifetz as a teacher

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