Cello

From little violone to solo voice

The name is a chain of diminutives. Violone meant a large, bass-pitched viol-like instrument in Italian; violoncello is its little relative, and cello is what remains once the prefix is worn away. The instrument itself took shape in northern Italy during the sixteenth century, as the bass member of the new violin family, built to anchor the lower line of ensembles. Andrea Amati of Cremona, who died around 1578, is associated with some of the earliest survivors, including the instrument known as the King cello, made for the French royal court and painted with arms and mottos linked to Charles IX.

Early cellos were generally larger than today’s, and several sizes coexisted. Historians generally agree that the late seventeenth century was decisive: makers in Bologna and nearby cities began to use strings wrapped in fine metal wire, which allowed a shorter, more agile body to speak a firm low note. Antonio Stradivari’s models from the first decade or so of the 1700s, with a body about 75 centimetres long, became the pattern most makers still follow. Bach’s six suites for unaccompanied cello, composed around 1717–1723, are usually cited among the earliest major solo works written for it.

A box of spruce and maple

A cello is carved, not bent. The top is spruce, arched from a solid piece or two joined halves; the back, ribs, neck and scroll are maple (often called sycamore in Britain), and the fingerboard, pegs and tailpiece are traditionally ebony. Two f-shaped holes let air move in and out of the body. Inside, a bass bar, a strip of spruce glued under the lower-string side of the top, stiffens it, while a slender soundpost wedged between top and back near the other foot of the bridge couples the two plates.

The vibrating length of each string is about 69 centimetres, ending at a bridge that is not glued but held in place by string tension. Gut strings were once universal; modern sets use synthetic or steel cores, often wound with metal. A retractable rod at the base, the endpin, carries the weight to the floor. The bow, usually pernambuco wood strung with horsehair, is shorter and sturdier than a violin’s. Carbon-fibre cellos now exist alongside the traditional wooden design.

Why a string can fill a hall

A drawn bow grips the string, drags it sideways, lets it slip back, and repeats the cycle hundreds of times a second. The string alone barely moves any air; the bridge hands its vibration to the top plate, and through the soundpost to the back, so the whole wooden shell radiates sound. The lowest open string vibrates at roughly 65 hertz. Colour changes with how hard the bow presses, how fast it travels and how close to the bridge it touches, which is why one note can be hushed, nasal or fierce.

Vibrato, a small rocking of the stopping finger that varies the pitch, adds warmth and the vocal quality for which the instrument is known. Many cellos have a characteristic flaw: on some notes the string’s pitch coincides with a strong body resonance, and the tone begins to stutter or growl. Players call this a wolf tone. It is often tamed with a small weight fixed to a string below the bridge, a device that survives among the accessories of a cello made in Edinburgh around the turn of the nineteenth century.

Four strings, four octaves

Open strings are tuned in fifths: C2, G2, D3 and A3, exactly an octave below the viola. In orchestral writing the cello commonly climbs to about A5, and soloists venture higher, using artificial harmonics (notes made by lightly touching a string while stopping it elsewhere) to reach a bird-like register. Its sounding pitch is the written pitch, but music is notated in three clefs: bass clef for the lower range, tenor clef for the middle, and treble clef for the highest passages.

Each string has a personality. The C string is dark and grainy, the G string round, the D string neutral and the A string bright and intense, so a phrase moved from one string to another changes colour even when the pitch is unchanged. Composers exploit this, moving the cello from a bass line under the orchestra to a long singing melody above it within a few bars.

Sitting down to play

The player sits, tilts the instrument against the chest and holds it between the knees, resting its weight on the endpin. The left hand stops the strings against the fingerboard; for high notes the thumb comes round to lie across the string, a technique called thumb position. The right hand draws the bow, and its repertoire of strokes includes legato (smooth, connected), spiccato (a controlled bouncing of the bow), pizzicato (plucking) and col legno (striking with the wooden stick).

Holding practice has changed. Before the nineteenth century many cellists gripped the body with their calves, and the endpin spread only gradually. The Belgian cellist François Servais is often credited as an early adopter because of the size of his instrument, though it was not universal until well into the twentieth century. The modern bow, with its concave stick and adjustable frog, was standardised by François Tourte in Paris in the late 1700s, and it made the sustained, even tone of later cello playing easier to produce.

Older cousins and newer relatives

The Baroque cello is the same design as a modern one in its essentials but with gut strings, a lighter set-up, often no endpin and a bow with a convex stick; its softer, speech-like articulation suits the music it was made for. A five-string instrument, the violoncello piccolo, is associated with some eighteenth-century scores, and the sixth Bach suite is often thought to call for one. A small cello played resting on the shoulder, the violoncello da spalla, has been revived, though scholars continue to debate how the term was used in the period.

Children learn on fractional sizes so that the hand can reach the notes. Some modern makers build five-string cellos with an added E string above the A. Electric cellos, with a solid or skeletal body and pickups instead of a resonating chamber, allow silent practice and amplified performance.

Bass, tenor and soloist

An orchestra usually seats eight to twelve cellos at the front of the stage, commonly on the audience’s right, sharing the bass line with the double basses and playing melodies that the violas and violins cannot match in depth. The string quartet gives the cello its most intimate role as the foundation of four equal voices, and the piano trio pairs it with violin and Piano. Haydn, Schumann, Dvořák and Elgar each wrote concertos that are still central to the solo repertoire.

Outside concert halls the cello appears wherever a warm middle-to-low voice is wanted: in film and television scores, in folk groups, and in rock and pop arrangements that add a bowed line below the guitars. Cello ensembles, from four players to dozens, exploit a range that spans bass, tenor and soprano, so identical instruments can sound like a full choir.

Keeping a wooden shell in tune

Wood swells and shrinks with humidity and temperature, and a cello reacts quickly. A hard case, steady room conditions and a humidifier in dry seasons help prevent open seams and cracked tops. The bridge and soundpost are held by pressure alone, so a knock or a sudden change of weather can shift them; a cello that sounds dull or buzzes after transport should be examined before anything is adjusted.

Routine care is simple. Rosin dust builds up on the strings and top under the bowing area and is wiped away with a soft cloth after playing. Strings wear and lose their tone over months of use. The hair on the bow stretches and wears and is periodically replaced, and a luthier (a maker and repairer of string instruments) checks the bridge curve, the soundpost position and the fingerboard surface once a year or so.

Odd facts and curiosities

• The King cello by Andrea Amati is often described as the oldest surviving cello; it was originally a larger instrument and was later cut down, and it is now held by the National Music Museum in South Dakota.
• An Edinburgh cello by Daniel Dewar carries a handwritten repair note dated 1890 and was once played by the scholar Lyndesay Langwill, before he switched to the bassoon around 1930.
• Bach’s unaccompanied cello suites survive only in copies made by others; the composer’s own manuscript is lost.

Terms used in this entry

bass bar

A long strip of spruce glued inside the top plate under the lower strings, stiffening it and spreading their vibration.

endpin

A retractable rod at the bottom of the cello that rests on the floor and carries the instrument’s weight.

pernambuco

A dense, springy Brazilian wood traditionally used to make bow sticks.

soundpost

A slim wooden dowel wedged inside the body between top and back, which links the plates and shapes the tone.

spiccato

A bowing style in which the bow bounces lightly off the string, producing short, separated notes.

tenor clef

A way of notating pitch that places middle C on the fourth line of the staff, used to avoid many ledger lines in the cello’s middle and upper range.

thumb position

A left-hand technique for high notes in which the thumb moves onto the string alongside the fingers.

wolf tone

An unstable, growling sound heard on notes whose pitch matches a strong resonance of the cello body.

Browse the full glossary

References

1. Philharmonia Orchestra. Cello | Philharmonia. philharmonia.co.uk/resources/instruments/cello
2. University of Edinburgh (St Cecilia’s Hall collections). Violoncello (Daniel Dewar). collections.ed.ac.uk/stcecilias/record/95846
3. University of Edinburgh (St Cecilia’s Hall collections). Violoncello (English School, c. 1670). collections.ed.ac.uk/stcecilias/record/96175
4. BBC Music Magazine. What is the history of the cello?. classical-music.com/articles/what-is-the-history-of-the-cello

Sources were consulted for facts and context; the text is original. See Sources and Methodology.