Dragonetti's Accomplishments

Dragonetti spent much of his life experimenting on the bass, working to perfect its capabilities. In his younger days he had sampled both the four string and the three string basses but preferred the three string which he would tune in various ways. He was one of the first to drop the tuning from A- D- G to G- D- G, giving him access to lower pitches. When he played Der Freischütz he would lower the A string down to F# for the first two movements. His hard work and experimentations with the bass yielded the Dragonetti Bow. The bow looks like a hybrid of the German bow and the old style viol bow. It has a large deep frog and is held underhand, but has a convex shape and tension is governed by pressure directly on the hair with a finger. The Dragonetti bow contributed much to his sound that other composers loved; from audiences he evoked thunderous applause. Rossini was so fond of his playing that in 1824 he composed a duet for Dragonetti and the amateur cellist David Salomons. Throughout the19th century several attempts were made to improve the bass. Dragonetti created an eight and a half foot tall bass, Bottesini had …show more content…
In his two volume books, New Method for the Double Bass, Simandl breaks down the bass neck into hand positions, designates the first, second, and fourth fingers for playing in the low register (the third and fourth working as one), and introduces the thumb position; using the thumb, first, second, and third finger, along with harmonics to play solo passages in the high register. His writings include the two volume method book, Gradus ad Parnasum: 24 studies for String Bass, and 30 Etudes for String Bass. Simandl’s legacy lives on with his books remaining a standard for study for double bass players to this