Instead of playing across four strings, I have tried to establish a pattern that allows for

a punchy rhythmic drive, accentuating the bass notes. Incidentally, using a four-string
bass will allow you to “dig in” a bit more when you have bass notes on the IVth string.
On a five-stringer your power on the IVth string will be slightly more limited because
the low Vth string gets in the way.

As you can see in the passage, I often use the 4th finger in a barré (sort of, anyway. It
depends on how big/long your 4th finger is. You might be obliged to slide it a bit, up
and down across the strings. This is something to be practiced with care. Don’t
overdo it because you might hurt something. With a low string action, frets, and light
gauge strings this works quite well, but on a “normal” bass you should be very
careful).

Note that in the third line (bar 78) Dittersdorf does something very special: there is no
longer a strong first or third beat, but he does accentuate beats two and four by using
a strong bass note. This gives the passage a sudden syncopated feel, after the regular
strong notes on every single beat in the previous bars. And then, in the last line, he
goes back to the previous pattern.

As for bowing direction, I greatly prefer starting down-bow, but do try it both ways,
if only to experience for yourself what works. Theoretically, an up-bow pattern would
be preferable because it minimizes right arm movement. This makes the sound more
precise. But since I really want to bring out the bass notes, on the main beats, and
since I consider the remaining notes as mere color, clarity is not very important here.
On the contrary, I like the sound of the chord notes bleeding into each other. It sounds
less prissy, more generous. If I compare it to pictural arts, I would say that in this case
I prefer a generous brush stroke, rather than a precisely penciled line. The important
elements are twofold: rhythmical drive and harmonic color (not unlike heavy metal
guitar shredding). The drive is easier to obtain with the down-bow pattern. But by
any means, do try both ways and decide for yourself.

With the fingering I prefer, avoiding crossings over more than three strings, I need
lots of extensions. When using frets, this is the best way. Without frets it’s a bit
harder to do. Passages such as this clearly demonstrate that frets are a must for this
style of music – at least for me personally. If you happen to have huge hands, you
may not need the frets so much.

The word “extension” is actually often inaccurate for this technique: in fact it’s a
fluid combination of “stretching towards” the notes, sliding from one note to the
next, pivoting between notes. Only from time to time do we use “real”, fixed
extensions. When you look at extensions this way, they become a lot easier.

! Z_"!
Be careful: not every player has hands that stretch easily. Some players with rather
small hands (like myself) are lucky enough to have a wide stretch between the thumb
and the little finger: I can stretch nearly horizontally, in a straight line from the tip of
the thumb to the tip of my little finger. But I have had several students who couldn’t
make even the simplest extension, even with bigger hands. It’s no use forcing things.
“Pivoting” and sliding can help, but always be careful not to hurt yourself.

(By the way, this whole passage seems to be an indication of “bad” writing for the
instrument. Dittersdorf was a very good violinist (he said so himself !), but he didn’t
know the bass very well. I couldn’t imagine for a second that Sperger would have
written a clumsy passage like this. It seems very violinistic, and I suppose that it
would be easy enough to bring out all the notes on a violin. On a bass, there is no
straightforward way to get all the single notes to speak clearly. So I believe the
passage isn’t meant to sound nice and clear: it’s just harmonic “noise”, as I argued
before. In Josef Focht’s “Der Wiener Kontrabass”, the author gives a few examples
of passages from the Viennese repertoire where clarity in the solo bass voice is
compromised, but where the composers were clever enough to either double the solo
bass line in another instrument of the orchestra, or where they “covered” it so that it
didn’t really need to be heard clearly).

After the storm, something more lyrical:

In the next passage, I like to start up-bow. Here the music is more thematic, it’s not
only color. It needs to be played more precisely. I need a little trick in the
articulations to make sure I arrive up-bow in bar 2 as well: the middle two eighth-
notes of the bar are slurred in the manuscript, but I add the last eighth-note, with a
slight separation, in the same down-bow, so that I have an up-bow at the beginning of
the next bar again.

Z_S!!
The fingering here may seem more difficult than necessary: no open f#, for instance.
But this solution allows for a nice, regular bowing pattern.

After the re-exposition we arrive at this:

In the last bar, see below, I add a few notes so as to have a series of double stops
instead of single notes: f#-a / d-f# / a-d / a-c# / d-d. It sounds more powerful if you
end this way:

In the next sample, we see a few original articulations. In Vanhal’s and Sperger’s
music, the notation of articulations is quite clear (see elsewhere in this book for a
thorough explanation). In this concerto, there is some doubt. In the last bar of line 1
and the first bar of line 2, the slurs seem to comprise only the last three 8th-notes.
Both figures seem to be 1+3: one note separated, three notes slurred.

! Z_Z!
If this were a Sperger piece or the Vanhal concerto, this way of writing would
indicate four slurred notes, not three. The separated note would be indicated with a
dot or a dash. I’m not a hundred percent sure what to do here, so I compared the
notation with other slurs in the concerto. In the second movement, Adagio, I find
these:

They’re not very clear either, are they? Three notes slurred, or four?

Of course there are musical differences. In these Adagio passages, the notes lie really
close together, they’re very connected tonally. In the first movement, the first notes of
each group are very far removed from the next note: f# to c#, and b to f#. So there is a
separation already, regardless of the articulation. But further on in the piece there are
plenty more examples of incomplete slurs that are clearly meant to include more
notes than one would think at first sight, so I usually opt for four slurred notes here as
well: it’s more fluid, more singing, less angular. When I look at what comes before
and after, it makes sense to have something nice, warm, cantabile here.

(If I really wanted a separation in 1+3, I would rather make this division within the
same bow: 1+3 in a down-bow, and the next 1+3 in one up-bow, with a slight and
gentle separation that I articulate within the same bowing. This gives a smoother
separation. Smooth Separator, as it were:)

Decisions like these, that seem to be, at first sight, about technique (to slur or not to
slur), are in fact about musicality. How does a passage fit into the whole? What is the
atmosphere at any given moment, what is the Affekt? How can we help the piece by
giving it three dimensions rather than just two?

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Here is the end of the first movement then:

I chose this peculiar fingering for the ascending thirds because it allows for more
drive. Each note-pair in its own position:

! Z_]!
Second Movement: Adagio

It’s obvious that this movement needs more slurs than are indicated in the manuscript.
The dashes/dots, if they’re original, don’t necessarily mean “short”. They are only
there to warn against slurring these particular notes, which a player would otherwise
probably do. In other words, when there are no such dots, the performer is free to add
slurs if she feels the music calls for them.

After the orchestral introduction we have the first solo theme. Here is the fingering I
use at the moment. Instead of staying in position for the first two notes g-d (which
would oblige me to cross over three strings) I prefer a position change (I see it as a
very wide extension, pivoting around the thumb) because there is no risk of touching
an unwanted string. The second “d” I then take over with the 1st finger:

The next bit I will use as an example to show how many different fingering
options we always have in Viennese Tuning. Most passages are playable
in many different ways, and finding one that suits all the different musical
and technical parameters is one of the great joys of this tuning. I would
encourage the player to do this kind of “homework” for all the pieces, for
every passage. Never be content with the first solution that comes to mind.

Z_b!!
 And here’s a fifth one, all on one string, with extensions:

As you can see, there are many possibilities, more than the five I have
shown. Try to come up with a few of your own, and “taste” the different
color and feel, the different story each one tells. You can combine, for
instance, different elements from the ones shown above. Also experiment
with bowing directions. I prefer to play the up-beat down-bow, and I
always slur the first four notes of the last bar. Also, in this last bar I make
the first note (the appoggiatura “d”) a little longer. According to Quantz
this was the customary way to play such figures. It sounds a lot better than
four equal notes.

I approach the remainder of the movement in the same spirit of curiosity and of the
search for what serves the musical narrative the best. I will only highlight a few
special passages that merit a little more attention.

For instance, there is this:

! Z_d!
It’s entirely playable on a single string of course, and that’s a good option too. In fact,
when it comes back a little later, on the D-string, I do play it on a single string:

I would also add slurs to the triplets in the repeated bars. Or maybe you could slur the
first bar the first time, and the second bar the second time. Use some imagination.

But let’s go back a little, and have a look at this written-out “trill-before-the-trill”:

Isn’t this a lot more interesting than the boring “normal” trill in the Schott version?
The expressive “d#” is unexpected and gives a special color. It’s good, or even
imperative, to play along with the tutti in the following interlude: the trill is not the
end yet. There are another two full bars to close this first part of the movement.

Further on, we find these barriolage figures:

One fingering that I like very much is this one:

Z_^!!
I start in a “normal” position, over the top three strings. For the “g” I then have to
change positions. Instead of going back again for the repeat of the exact same figure,
I stay where I am, and I play across strings II, III, and IV. In the next bar, lazy as I
am, I just stay put for the first figure. Only in the repeat of this arpeggio do I go down
again.

Here too, I like to play the figure a bit irregularly: not six equal notes, but with
something of a lilt to its gait. Again, don’t overdo it, and don’t make the irregularity
regular. In other words, don’t make it systematic or predictable. Otherwise you may
as well play it straight.

I also like to vary the articulations a little: slurred, staccato, all depending on the
mood of the piece, of the concert, the acoustics, the atmosphere.

In the next sample, notice how the original differs from the modern version (bars
between brackets). Here there is a clear separation in the middle of the bar, there is
even a “keil” or slash on the “a” that clearly sets I apart from what precedes and
follows it.

The last tricky bit is at the very end. It took a while to find a fingering that worked
well. The tonality of G can be a bit hard in Viennese Tuning. Finally, I came up with
this:

The trill needs an ending “g-a”, which I play on the IIIrd string with fingers 1 and 4.
Then comes the arpeggio:

! Z_f!
In the second part of the bar (second rectangle) I stay in thumb position with a faux
barré over the top three strings, with fingers 2, 3, and 4. It’s a position I often use for
these notes. There are quite a few examples in Vanhal and Sperger where this
solution is very practical.

Z"_!!