Living with Extreme
Instruments #008,
the Subcontrabass Flute
The
relatively recently developed subcontrabass
flute is very heavy, extremely rare,
and requires the lungs of a rhinoceros
and forearms like Popeye to play properly.
It initially attracted me for a number
of reasons. As a composer my ear always
gravitates towards the lowest notes
in an orchestra; the trouser-flapping
bass emerging from a Cavaillé-Coll
organ, or the resonant thud and grind
from horn-loaded loudspeakers. As flautists
however, we’re almost invariably playing
tunes and ‘fannying about’ on top of
the texture, so when I was given the
opportunity to play Friesian flute-maker
Jelle Hogenhuis’ original subcontra
prototype, borrowed from him for a flute
orchestra project, I leapt at the chance.
The thing was made with roughly hewn,
filed and melted plastic; mouse-mat
keypads cut with scissors and screwed
onto plywood, and rusty bent wire keys
and joints held together with twine
and rubber bands. It gave me horrific
internal wrist injuries almost immediately
and trying to wring delicately limpid
Debussy arrangements out of it was a
major challenge, but I loved it nonetheless.
My potential as a multi-instrumentalist
is hampered somewhat by both lack of
available study time and poverty, which
means that I am unlikely ever to learn,
or own, a double-bass, a tuba, or a
Sousaphone. With the subcontrabass flute
having the same fingerings as your standard
flauto grande, all I really
had to do was educate myself on the
various stages of hyperventilation.
My friend Hans Witteman the great bass
clarinet player told me all about this
in the early days, but as he was instructing
me I realised he was only putting into
words what I had experienced already.
The dizziness, stars in front of the
eyes, tingling extremities, ringing
in the ears and ‘the shakes’ are just
preliminary indications: the point at
which one should stop is when you turn
out to be playing completely different
notes to the ones written, and realise
that you have become entirely incapable
of correcting this peculiarity. Developing
the lungs of a rhinoceros and the forearms
and embouchure of Popeye are purely
incidental side-effects. I just apply
the anchor tattoo and take a tin of
spinach before each concert – detail
is everything in contemporary music.
I am frequently to
be seen playing subcontra in the Netherlands
Flute Orchestra. For many years the
orchestra’s principal bottom was a mere
contrabass flute, also built by Jelle
Hogenhuis, which, with a little subtle
amplification, seemed adequate enough.
The addition of the subcontra has however
made a significant difference to the
orchestra’s sound. Comparing recordings
now, it is like the difference between
an organ with 16 foot pedal, and one
with a 32 foot register. Such high artistic
considerations were however secondary
to me at the time. Jelle Hogenhuis makes
his heavy bass flutes from attractively
economic PVC tubes, and all I wanted
was to be ‘the one at the back with
the big heap of drainpipes’. Mine is
numbered SBC 008, and privately I call
it ‘Bill who is Resting’, although ‘Felix
Leiter’ would have been a more recognisable
reference. If I’m too loud, the conductor
gets to ‘Kill Bill’. We do have such
fun.
I started playing the
standard flute at the age of nine after
the traditional recorder initiation
period, and was unaware of any discrimination
against my instrument before moving
to The Netherlands fifteen years later.
My old teacher at the RAM, the late
great Gareth Morris, told me that in
his time flute players were among the
tougher members of the orchestra, often
to be seen playing with smoke rising
from a fag wedged between the fingers,
a skill I later also acquired - pretentiously
and fleetingly - using cigars. In the
1980s in Holland, I heard a now well-known
composer who shall remain nameless stating
that he ‘hated the flute’ after nonetheless
having written a flute piece for one
of those student melting-pot workshop
evenings in a local theatre. "If you
hate it, why write for it?" someone
asked, "I don’t know" was the lame reply,
which followed an equally lame piece.
There seemed to be no real excuse or
reward for prostituting his art to the
loathed tube other than ensuring another
moment in the small-time limelight.
This, to me, seems one of the reasons
we have no-one of the stature of a Beethoven
in our time. OK, Mozart reportedly hated
flutes as well, but what he probably
hated more were flautists who were incapable
of playing in tune with their primitive
pipes. He still managed to create works
of genius for the instrument, even if
it was only because he needed the money.
One of the reasons he spent so much
time in the pub playing billiards and
writing dirty canons might indeed just
have been in order to avoid having to
listen to them.
Our Dutch composer
was in fact more probably reacting against
the romantic French style and repertoire
often represented by willowy girls in
today’s Conservatoires. The Hogenhuis
subcontrabass flute is by far the least
flute-like of any of the Boehm-system
flutes currently made, and to me is
the 1950s flute-cred equivalent of performing
with a smouldering Churchill in one
hand: eccentric and extrovert, but undeniably
making a statement - that statement
possibly either being "what smoking
ban?" or "I can play the flute and do
you a small barbecue at the same time."
It has the same sounding range as a
properly tuned five-string double bass,
and with Jelle Hogenhuis’s wide-bore
drainpipe proportions the lower range
has a punch and weight which even satisfies
most down-to-earth Dutchmen and even
some jazz musicians. It also features
a cleverly reversed key mechanism in
order to cope with the U-bend, something
guaranteed to break the ice at flute
conventions. I have to admit that it’s
probably the only kind of flute on which
you can play Louis Andriessen’s ‘Worker’s
Union’ in an ensemble of amplified guitars
and power brass without sounding impossibly
twee and silly. You can play
almost anything written for the flute
on the subcontra, but its low tessitura
and the size of its noisy keys flapping
like a seal’s flippers safely remove
this instrument from effectively performing
Berbiguier Etudes or the fast bits in
Kuhlau. Attempts to do so result in
a clattering, asonorous soundness and
either acute repetitive strain injury
or Popeye forearms. I have recently
started sitting in with a new band called
The Hague Improviser’s Orchestra, and
discover new things about both myself
and the instrument at each rehearsal
and concert. The key thuds can give
a good slap-bass imitation, or can take
on almost any percussion instrument
you can name. The bizarre effects from
singing into and around the thing can
create a zoo of animals, or shifts in
perspective which beg for a new Sequenza.
Oom-pah basses are of course highly
effective fun, but if you take over
the melody in a sweetly elegant salon
waltz it creates complete collapse in
both the audience and the other ensemble
members, such is the gruffly humorous
rendition which inevitably emerges:
imagine the Flower Duet sung
by Tom Waits and the late Arthur Mullard,
and you’ll be somewhere close.
In its own right the
subcontrabass flute is capable of surprisingly
mellifluous expressiveness – especially
in the upper registers. Variety of colour
and dynamic range are available throughout
the whole scale, even if some party-trick
fingerings are required toward the extreme
heights of middle C. My good friend
Richard Sims has been ‘writing’ a live
electronics piece for me and my instrument
for many years now, and at an early
stage reported that the overtones and
harmonics of the subcontra are similar
in timbre and richness to a great Prague
bell he sampled for some of the effects
used. Without circular breathing there
are limitations to the length of legato
passages playable, but achieving true
continuous power is troublesome. I swelled
with pride when, during one of his excellent
classes, Robert Dick complimented me
on my repertoire of grunts, squafs and
plorks on the thing – helpfully pointing
out to the assembled willowy girls how
very difficult the thing was to play.
He had previously bought an earlier
example of the Hogenhuis subcontra but
ended up selling it in frustration,
seeing it as having broken the law of
diminishing returns. To him the most
notable thing about the instrument was
its huge case, which "was like having
your grandmother’s coffin leant against
a wall in your room." He liked my more
recent example however, making it sound
like a mechanically enhanced didgeridoo
with his effortless circular breathing,
simultaneously deflating my ego and
inspiring me on the spot.
Few will admit this,
but showing off is all part of being
the full-fat bass in any orchestra,
and being the one at the back with the
big heap of drainpipes has great attention-grabbing
potential – the charm of which is somewhat
cancelled out at close range by the
Popeye embouchure and forearms, and
that last bit of spinach stuck in the
teeth. When someone points at your instrument
case and says "wow, that’s a big one"
there’s something spiritually satisfying
about being able to reply, "yes, but
that’s only the head-joint." What Gerard
Hoffnung would have made of it we can
only speculate, but I like to think
he would have loved the thing and ordered
one on the spot.
There is never a dull
moment with a subcontrabass flute. I
shall however spare you tales of the
specialist vehicles and whale harpooner’s
upper-body strength required for transporting
such an instrument, or how I once knocked
an unfortunate woman under a train at
Utrecht Central Station with it - no
serious injuries to the flute, I hasten
to add...
Dominy Clements
