Carousing with the Contrebasses

Ho-hum! So, what else is new? is the bored reaction of the cynic to everything under the sun.

No one has expressed cynicism in poetry with more eloquence – and venom – than John Donne when he wrote a list of impossible things:

Go and catch a falling star,

Get with child a mandrake root,

Tell me where all past years are,

Or who cleft the devil’s foot;

Teach me to hear mermaids singing,

Or to keep off envy’s stinging,

And find

What wind

Serves to advance an honest mind.

And in the next stanza, he added one more item to his list: a faithful woman.

There is no more cynical species on this planet than the denizens of the press, this moonlighting critic included. They know that a press release sent to their paper is self-serving and can’t be gospel-truth.

Consider this item from the French Embassy about a double-bass orchestra from Paris which is to perform at the Mandarin Oriental, Manila:

"They have created a very personal type of music, with multiple inspirations ranging from soul music and jazz to Latino. Bowing techniques are even more dynamic, jostled by the rhythms, haunted by the melodies and liberated in their improvisations, with a mastery of the vibrato and the extreme spectrum of the instrument."

The musicians are also doing a special number – a ballet – with their instruments as dancing partners. It promises something out of Disney’s Fantasia – ostriches, elephants and hippopotami tripping the light fantastic, if my reader will pardon the cliché.

I suppose the double bass will make as ungainly a ballerina as a pachyderm.

The Harvard Brief Dictionary of Music gives this information about the biggest member of the string family: "The largest of the stringed instruments, also known as bass viol. Both names are abbreviations of the original name, double-bass viol. This instrument has retained certain characteristics of the old viols, especially the sloping shoulders at the top of the body. Formerly equipped with three strings, it now usually has four strings tuned in fourths (E1, A1, D, G) to which occasionally a fifth string is added below, tuned to C1. The music is notated an octave higher than it sounds."

Trust the French to try something as revolutionary as the Orchestre de Contrebasses. That the French Embassy in the Philippines and Alliance Française de Manille, with the participation of Association Française d’Action Artistique, are not playing a post-April Fool’s joke when they chose this unusual ensemble to open their "French Spring in Manila 2001" attests to the seriousness of their intention.

As a preview for the press of the gala concert of the Double Bass Orchestra at the Grand Ballroom of the Mandarin Oriental Manila for the members of the diplomatic corps and other dignitaries, the musicians presented a sampling of their musical creations at the Captain’s Bar.

The limitations of the venue did not allow the group to demonstrate the total impact of their performance as originally conceived. The lighting effects and the choreography had to be minimized. But the program presented by the ensemble was sufficient to give their audience an idea of what a fully conceptualized concert was like. The limited space of the Captain’s Bar allowed the press to observe the performers at close range.

The orchestra members are Christian Gentet, Xavier Lugue, Olivier Moret, Etienne Roumanet, Yves Torchinsky and Jean-Philippe Viret. The five numbers they perform are their own compositions. Each piece is introduced and annotated by its composer.

The initial impression is one of showmanship – these men and their music making can command the full attention of any crowd – from patricians to commoners. The second element is that of improvisation, like jazz, which springs from deep within and pours forth like a geyser. The third is technical mastery and control which is firmly rooted on classical training. The last is vision, a gift that leads them into unchartered regions. They dare exhaust the possibilities of their medium and venture into the unknown. One can recognize various influences – jazz, soul, Latino, Iberian, Celtic – but these have all been transfigured into music that is highly original and personal.

The piece de resistance of the Orchestre de Contrebasses is Bass, Bass, Bass, Bass, Bass & Bass, an opus that fuses music, choreography, live mobile sculpture of antedeluvian creatures, theatrical lighting, all the possible sounds that can be fiddled, beaten, squeezed, scraped, wrung from six double basses and shaped into a unique post-modern work of art, which is unlike anything that has been known before.

Trust the French to create something like this oddity. They are masters of the art of revolution. They had marched to the Bastille shouting "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite," dispatched their monarchs and aristocrats to the guillotine and empowered the masses. Their Manet, Monet, Renoir, Gauguin and Cezanne, their De Maupassant, Flaubert and Zola, and their Debussy and Ravel dethroned the weepy Romantics and crowned the Realists and Impressionists.

Trust the French with their joie de vivre, their art, their wines, their cuisine to rid us of our cynicism and pessimism – damn Donne and his ilk! – and make us feel alive again.

Vive la France!

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