all about the bass

It emerged recently that Cowley Orchestra owns a double bass, which had been lent out to members of another orchestra and forgotten about. Now it has been returned and as I vaguely remember I had double bass lessons for a few years, forty years ago, I offered to host it until we’ve figured out what to do with it. Conceivably, if any bass player came to Oxford without a bass, they could borrow it and hopefully play with us on Wednesdays.

So, well, the instrument looks like this (adding bass-holder to the many uses of a cajón):

and it came with a whole bag of sheet music and learning material like this one copyright 1949:

Some of these are marked and dated by Captain E. W. Geidt who lived in Bradmore Road, North Oxford, with dates between 1957 and 1961. I am told that he used to move the double bass around in a wheelbarrow and that his daughter also played with Cowley before my time, so either of them appears to have donated / bequeathed the instrument to us. The internet seems to think EW stands for Edward Wollaston, but as these are also the middle names of the eponymous ethics advisor to a disgraced former prime minister, we’ll just have to call the bass “the Captain”.

The instrument looks in good shape for its age, and appears to be well made and still solid throughout. There are even purfling-style inlays running up its neck which look like a luxury feature to me:

I am not quite happy with the bow though, which appears to be breaking up:

and the frog is too small for the German-style bow hold which I prefer. The green book shown above calls this style the Bottesini bow and the kind I used way back when the Dragonetti bow, adding that the latter "is not much used in this country."

Other accessories that came with it include a very lovely home-made wooden spike holder:

as well as five packs of rosin probably dating from as many different decades, guarded by a dead beetle (could be a maybeetle/cockchafer, not sure?):

I tried playing a few lines of the Simandl etudes which I played a lot back in the days, but realised it’s pretty exhausting, so I guess I won’t try to play this at orchestra …

Here it is then, waiting for a more energetic player and just about fitting in the cello corner (the cello found space in a different corner):