Basso profondo (Italian: "deep bass"), sometimes basso profundo, contrabass or oktavist, is the lowest
bass voice type.
![Basso profondo voice range on keyboard](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b2/Basso_profondo_voice_range_on_keyboard.svg)
While ''
The New Grove Dictionary of Opera
''The New Grove Dictionary of Opera'' is an encyclopedia of opera, considered to be one of the best general reference sources on the subject. It is the largest work on opera in English, and in its printed form, amounts to 5,448 pages in four volu ...
'' defines a typical bass as having a range that is limited to the second E below middle C (
E2),
[; ''The Oxford Dictionary of Music'' gives E2 to E4 or F4] operatic bassi
profondi can be called on to sing low C (
C2), as in the role of Baron Ochs in ''
Der Rosenkavalier
(''The Knight of the Rose'' or ''The Rose-Bearer''), Op. 59, is a comic opera in three acts by Richard Strauss to an original German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. It is loosely adapted from the novel ''Les amours du chevalier de Faublas'' ...
''. Often
choral composers make use of lower notes, such as G
1 or even F
1; in such rare cases the choir relies on exceptionally deep-ranged bassi profondi termed oktavists or octavists, who sometimes sing an
octave below the bass part.
Bass singer
Tim Storms
Tim Storms (born August 28, 1972) is an American singer and composer. He holds the Guinness World Record for both the "lowest note produced by a human" and the "widest vocal range".
Musical career
Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Storms was raised in W ...
holds the
Guinness World Record for the "lowest note produced by a human".
Definition
![Bass C to F](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/Bass_C_to_F.svg)
According to
Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (, ; 28 June 1712 – 2 July 1778) was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer. His political philosophy influenced the progress of the Age of Enlightenment throughout Europe, as well as aspects of the French Revolu ...
(1775): "Basse-contres – the most profound of all voices, singing lower than the bass like a
double bass
The double bass (), also known simply as the bass () (or by other names), is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed (or plucked) string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra (excluding unorthodox additions such as the octobass). Similar i ...
, and should not be confused with
contrabasses, which are instruments."
Oktavist
An oktavist is an exceptionally deep-ranged basso profondo, especially typical of
Russian Orthodox
Russian Orthodoxy (russian: Русское православие) is the body of several churches within the larger communion of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, whose liturgy is or was traditionally conducted in Church Slavonic language. Most ...
choral music
A choir ( ; also known as a chorale or chorus) is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform. Choirs may perform music from the classical music repertoire, which s ...
. This
voice type
A voice type is a group of voices with similar vocal ranges, capable of singing in a similar tessitura, and with similar vocal transition points ('' passaggi''). Voice classification is most strongly associated with European classical music, ...
has a vocal range which extends down to A (an
octave below the baritone range) and sometimes to F (an octave below the
bass staff
A clef (from French: 'key') is a musical symbol used to indicate which notes are represented by the lines and spaces on a musical stave. Placing a clef on a stave assigns a particular pitch to one of the five lines, which defines the pit ...
) with the extreme lows for oktavists, such as
Mikhail Zlatopolsky
Mikhail Mikhailovich Zlatopolsky (Russian language, Russian: Михаил Михайлович Златопольский, born Motya Moiseyevich Zlotopolsky, Russian: Мотя Моисеевич Злотопольский; 15 August 1934 – 7 Ma ...
or Alexander Ort, reaching C.
Slavic choral composers sometimes make use of lower notes such as B
1 as in
Rachmaninoff
Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff; in Russian pre-revolutionary script. (28 March 1943) was a Russian composer, virtuoso pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one o ...
's ''
All-Night Vigil The All-night vigil is a service of the Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic churches consisting of an aggregation of the canonical hours of Compline (in Greek usage only), Vespers (or, on a few occasions, Great Compline), Matins, and the F ...
'', G in "Ne otverzhi mene" by
Pavel Chesnokov
Pavel Grigorievich Chesnokov (Russian: Пáвел Григóрьевич Чеснокóв) (24 October 1877, Voskresensk, Zvenigorodsky Uyezd, Moscow Governorate – 14 March 1944, Moscow, also transliterated ''Tschesnokoff'', ''Tchesnokov'', ...
, or F
1 in "Kheruvimskaya pesn" (Song of Cherubim) by
Krzysztof Penderecki
Krzysztof Eugeniusz Penderecki (; 23 November 1933 – 29 March 2020) was a Polish composer and conductor. His best known works include ''Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima'', Symphony No. 3, his '' St Luke Passion'', '' Polish Requiem'', ' ...
, although such notes sometimes also appear in repertoire by non-Slavic composers (e.g. B
1 appears in
Gustav Mahler's
Second and
Eighth Symphonies).
See also
*
Bass
*
Fach
The German system (; literally "compartment" or "subject of study", here in the sense of "vocal specialization") is a method of classifying singers, primarily opera singers, according to the range, weight, and color of their voices. It is used ...
*
Vocal weight Vocal weight refers to the perceived "lightness" or "heaviness" of a singing voice. This quality of the voice is one of the major determining factors in voice classification within classical music. Lighter voices are often associated with the term ...
References
Further reading
*
*
*Morosan, Vladimir ''Choral Performance in Pre-revolutionary Russia'', UMI Research Press, 1986.
*
*
*
External links
*
oktavism.com website dedicated to the oktavist voice
{{Range (music)
Voice types
Italian opera terminology
Bass (sound)