Heritage Bass Quartet Bundle

About the Collection

The Heritage Bass Quartet Bundle brings together four significant works from the advanced and intermediate double bass repertoire, edited by David Heyes. Designed for intermediate to advanced players, this collection offers a rich exploration of styles, techniques, and sonorities unique to the double bass quartet.

Together, these four works celebrate the versatility of the double bass, offering players and audiences alike a journey through diverse eras and compositional voices. Perfect for study, performance, and broadening ensemble experience, the Heritage Bass Quartet Bundle stands as a vital contribution to the chamber repertoire of the double bass.

The Bundle Includes:

1. Bernhard Alt - Suite for double bass quartet

Bernhard Alt’s Suite is fun, stylish, charming, elegant and rhythmic, and would have been a revelation to audiences in the 1930s. Alt composed music which is always entertaining, with no movement outstaying its welcome, and is an effective, accessible and light-hearted addition to any quartet programme, even into the 21st- century.

2. Theodor Albin Findeisen - Quartet Suite Op.26 for double bass quartet

Findeisen’s Quartet Suite Op.26 was probably composed in 1933/34 and is aimed at the advanced quartet. In four contrasting movements, the composer uses two tunings - solo tuning for basses 1 & 2 and orchestral for basses 3 & 4 - exploiting the entire range of the double bass.

3. Arcady Dubensky - Prelude & Fugue for double bass quartet

Prelude & Fugue is aimed at the advanced bass quartet with effective interplay and dialogue between the four players, creating a colorful and inventive work which exploits the entire range of the double bass. Each player remains within its own range, helping to create clear and open textures with effective technical and musical challenges throughout.

4. Joseph Lauber - Quartet for 4 double basses

The music of Joseph Lauber is known to bassists thanks to his double bass quartet, a significant work in the history of the quartet medium. Composed in June 1942 for the bass quartet of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, this important four movement work, alongside the quartets by Bernhard Alt (1903-1945), Arcady Dubensky (1890- 1966) and Th.A. Findeisen (1881-1936) a decade earlier, demonstrate the many possibilities and great potential of the bass quartet.