Teppo Hauta-aho: Two Dances for double bass quartet

About the Composition

A prize winner in the 1999 BIBF Composition Competition, Two Dances displays two different sides of the composer's character and personality. The first dance is waltz-like, within a modern and rhythmic idiom, contrasted by a reggae-like dance which has proved a great success in performance - particularly when Bass 3 was played by the composer!

Both dances utilize the entire range of the bass ensemble and would be accessible for any adventurous intermediate double bass quartet. The composer explores and exploits a wide palette of colors in music which has spirit and drive, alongside musical and technical challenges for each bassist. The quartet is both player and audience friendly demonstrating the many sound worlds and tone colors available to the modern double bass quartet.

Dance No. 1 has a constant and repetitive high harmonic waltz-like rhythm against which the other basses weave their independent lines of melody and accompaniment, gradually fading away and ending simply and effectively.

Dance No. 2 has been performed across the world and its 'reggae groove' from basses 3 and 4, produce a unique work of imaginative inspiration. The melodic interest is provided by basses 1 and 2, throughout the solo register, and there is vast scope to explore the sonorities and dramatic moods of the bass quartet medium.

"A clever and charming piece." [Double Bassist]

"Two Dances, from Finland's most prolific double bass composer, displays uncommonly good quartet-writing for basses: clear textures and a good choice of sonorities which allow each part to come through without any suggestion of heaviness. The upper two parts are often in the solo register, the lower two don't go above third position, though with some double stops. The first Dance is a lively yet sparse waltz-like melody set against high harmonics; the second, using similar melodic material, is supported by an effective reggae-style accompaniment from players 3 and 4. This is an entertaining and very approachable quartet." [ESTA - News & Views]

About the Composer

Teppo Hauta-aho was born in 1941 and studied double bass with Orvo Hyle and Oiva Nummelin in Finland, and František Pošta in Prague. He played with the Helsinki Philharmonic between 1965 and 1972, and the Finnish Opera Orchestra from 1975 to 2000. Teppo Hauta-aho was an active recitalist, both classical and jazz, gave more than 300 recitals with his duo partner, Carita Holmström, and was at the cutting edge of modern improvisation - performing with leading improvisers throughout the world, for many years.

Finnish composer Harry Wessman writes: "As a composer, Teppo Hauta-aho has always been his own teacher, basing his technical knowledge on his wide practical musicianship as an orchestral player, chamber and jazz musician. It would not be an exaggeration to claim that he was the jazz bassist most in demand in Finland in the 1970s, and a few of his works are pure jazz compositions. But the compositional techniques and musical means used in the majority of his works originate in an unusual openness for any devices. Along with modern techniques, his source of inspiration includes all the previous stylistic periods in European music, impulses from Oriental music and, of course, jazz. His own instrument, the double bass, has profited especially from his rich inventiveness in finding new means to conjure forth unusual sounds from the instrument, and in applying them in an artistically meaningful and striking way."

Teppo Hauta-aho's music has been performed extensively in Finland and abroad, notably in America, Britain, Germany, France, Czech Republic, Soviet Union, Australia and Switzerland. He died in Helsinki on 27 November 2021.