Cimbasso
Cimbasso is now called a bass or double bass valve trombone with 4 to 5 cylinder or rotary valves in Eb, F, C or Bb. The cimbasso has roughly the range of a bass tuba , but it mixes better with the trombones. The sound of a cimbasso might most likely be reminiscent of a mixture of tuba and (bass) trombone.
use
Valve trombones are common in wind music , including the Italian banda , which often appears as stage music in operas . The modern cimbasso is a German further development of the low valve trombone and is often used in opera orchestras for Italian operas of the 19th and 20th centuries. Its use from the perspective of historically informed performance practice is, however, controversial.
Furthermore, the cimbasso is increasingly used today in film music, where it also serves to supplement the deep sheet metal register.
history
The word cimbasso appears for the first time in opera scores by Bellini ( Norma , 1831) and Verdi . Verdi uses this name, originally c. in basso ( corno in basso, corno inglese di basso ) means, as a collective term for the common deep conical wind instruments of the time such as bass horn ("Russian bassoon"), serpent or the more modern ophicleide . The bombardon, a Viennese further development of the ophicleide with valves (an early form of the bass tuba ) also performed the cimbasso part. - There is no indication that there was an instrument called the cimbasso at that time. It is simply meant the deepest voice of the brass while the specific instrument was changing.
There is, however, one sign that the later Verdi valued the trombone sound in the bass: When he was considering his ideal idea of an orchestral line-up during his time in Milan, he wanted a bass trombone and a double bass trombone in Bb, which he had bought from the Milan company, in addition to the two tenor trombones G. Pelitti had it built. Verdi prescribes this trumpet setting in his operas Otello , Falstaff and in the Sacri Pezzi . He does not designate the fourth voice as cimbasso, but as “trombone basso”.
The trombone contrabbasso with four rotary valves , made by various instrument makers in Italy, such as G. Palmisano in Verona, was often called the cimbasso because the instrument performed the deepest voice.
present
Today the “cimbasso” part of those operas is often played by tuba players on what is now known as the cimbasso, which is equipped with a kettle mouthpiece . This instrument has a cylindrical bore, so it belongs to the trumpet instruments. Hector Berlioz is not yet familiar with any bass trombone with valves in his instrumentation theory (1844). It is therefore an instrument that is fundamentally different from historical instruments in the function of the cimbasso in order to satisfy the orchestral sound of the 20th century, in which the trombones in particular have a considerably stronger sound than in the orchestra of the 19th century, in which the so-called baroque trombones still predominated for a long time .
The modern instrument called Cimbasso was developed by the German instrument expert Hans Kunitz in the 1950s. The Kunitz bass trombone was still a slide trombone with two valves to facilitate the chromatic passages in Verdi. It was manufactured by the Alexander Mainz brothers from 1959 under the name Cimbasso bass trombone. The Thein family of instrument makers in Bremen then developed a pure valve bass trombone in F with five cylinder valves, which they also called Cimbasso.
literature
- Renato Meucci : The Cimbasso - no longer a mystery of the line-up in the Italian orchestra. In: Claudio Bacciagaluppi, Martin Skamletz, Daniel Allenbach (eds.): Romantic brass - a look back into the 19th century. Symposium 1 , Ed. Argus, Schliengen 2015, ISBN 978-3-931264-84-0 , pp. 188–198 ( hkb-interpretation.ch [PDF; 303 kB; accessed on September 17, 2018]).
- Anthony Baines: Brass Instruments, Their History and Development, New York: Dover 1993. ISBN 978-0-486-27574-1
- Clifford Bevan: Cimbasso Research and Performance Practice. An Update , in: Stewart Carter (Ed.): Perspectives in Brass Scholarship: Proceedings of the International Historic Brass Symposium, Amherst 1995 , Hillsdale (NY): Pendragon 1997, pp. 289-299. ISBN 0-945193-97-1
