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75 Years on 4 Strings: The Music and Life of Fran�ois Rabbath by Hans Sturm (review)

2023; Music Library Association; Volume: 79; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/not.2023.a897463

1534-150X

Jeff Schwartz,

Musicology and Musical Analysis

Reviewed by: 75 Years on 4 Strings: The Music and Life of François Rabbath by Hans Sturm Jeff Schwartz 75 Years on 4 Strings: The Music and Life of François Rabbath. By Hans Sturm. Lincoln, NE: Avant-Bass, 2022. [xix, 283 p. ISBN 9798985305715 (commemorative hardcover), $75; ISBN 9798985305739 (hardcover), $50; ISBN 9798985305708 (paperback), $30; ISBN 9798985305722 (e-book), price varies]. Illustrations, appendixes, footnotes, index. Now in his nineties and almost completely retired from public performance, François Rabbath (b. 1931) is one of the most influential and controversial virtuosos and pedagogues in the history of the double bass. 75 Years on 4 Strings is his authorized biography, based on extensive interviews and drawing from his unfinished memoir. It covers his youth in Syria, teaching himself to play the bass, performing with his family's band (first in local clubs, then internationally), moving to Paris, being admitted to the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique in Paris only to leave almost immediately to work with French pop stars such as Charles Aznavour and Edith Piaf, and becoming a successful solo artist and studio musician. In 1977, he published the first volume of his Nouvelle technique de la contrebasse: Méthode complète et progressive (Paris: Alphonse Leduc), documenting his innovative approach to the instrument, and in 1980 he won a "super soloist" position with the Orchestre de l'Opéra national de Paris. After retiring, he toured widely, performing and giving master classes, and trained a younger generation of important instructors, including Paul Ellison, George Vance, Frank Proto, David Allen Moore, Lynn Seaton, Peter Lloyd, and my main teacher, David Young. Author Hans Sturm, of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, is a Rabbath protégé who produced two DVDs using motion capture to document and analyze his technique: The Art of the Bow (Lincoln, NE: Avant-Bass, 2005) and The Art of the Left Hand (Lincoln, NE: Avant-Bass, 2010). Avant-Bass, the publisher of these DVDs as well as this book, is Sturm's multimedia label focused on Rabbath, jazz singer Jackie Allen (Strum's wife), and Sturm's own music. Libraries at schools with active bass studios should not hesitate to acquire this high-quality publication, which engagingly relates the remarkable story of one of the most important figures in the instrument's history. Rabbath is portrayed as a Paganini-like character whose uncanny abilities are matched by his powerful will and eccentric personality. It is written primarily for Rabbath's admirers, who are its most likely readers, and this probably accounts for its lack of specific description of his technical innovations, which can be found in his method books and DVDs. Nor does it contain analysis of his compositions, most of which are readily accessible in print. Appendixes include a list of recordings and publications, brief comments from Rabbath on many of his compositions, and a chronology [End Page 612] of solo performances. A full-fledged discography would have been a welcome addition: the text refers to some studio sessions with Rabbath as accompanist that are not on the works list, and the list does not include helpful details such as that his 1963 debut album, The Sound of a Bass (Philips, France, 840.532 BY), was retitled Bass Ball (Philips, PHM-200-128) for its US release in 1964. (Both titles are used in the body of the book.) Readers will likely want to stream or collect Rabbath's recordings, which a more complete catalog would aid. Strum emphasizes Rabbath's uniqueness, but this book is also a potential foundation for cultural studies and musicological works that would place him among peers and in larger contexts. Rabbath was not alone in the transformation of the bass after World War II. Recording technologies changed how people listened, gut strings were supplanted by metal and synthetic varieties that produce a wider frequency range and can be set at a much lower height to allow greater agility, and composers wrote more complex parts, among other factors. Besides Rabbath, Gary Karr (b. 1941) promoted his own distinctive technical and timbral ideas, and pedagogues a generation younger, including Silvio de la Torre, Mark Morton, and Joel Quarrington, have presented...