High notes on a bass

Press, 30 April 1988, Page 25

High notes on a bass

The Double Bass. By Patrick Suskind. Hamish Hamilton, 1987. 57pp. $34.95.

(Reviewed by J. A. Ritchie) "When Schubert was my age, he was already three years dead.” So announces tije chief and only character in this sad, funny and instructive one-act play in which, one presumes, no properties at all are required while, on the other hand, a radiogram which works, a double bass which is not played, and a nonSpeaking character who just listens (in the setting of a bachelor apartment lounge) would all help. This monologue is a cri de coeur from a professional bass player of symphonic persuasion. It captures the sorrow which underpins his and other bassists’ attitudes to life. It presents a history of the instrument. It explains with fervour the orchestral role of the bass section, “a carpet of sound on which they (Beethoven, etc.), could

arrange their symphonic furniture.” All this, plus pen pictures of numerous musicians, living and dead,

and regular excursions into contemporary problems of noise pollution, laundry bills, and dehydration against the omnipotent background of the bass. Even his relations with women are inhibited by it's "forever watching” — unlike a piano of which "you can put the lid down and forget about it.” It is one of the funniest, loveliest, truest pictures I of a dreadfully underestimated segment of humanity — those men and women for whom virtually only Saint Saens (and possibly an esoteric Mahler), ever did anything to raise an appreciative smile. Hopefully, we shall see it. The play’s first performance in Munich, where Suskind lives, took place in 1981. This English translation by Michael Hofmann surely captures the essentials of the original.