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https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/apr/06/australia-oldest-musical-instrument>
"“Was it love at first sight?” asks Max Bibeau. “I would say no.”
The relationship between a musician and their instrument is always complicated.
But for Bibeau and his double bass – tall, heavy and dark, with a distinctive
mottled patina and floral carvings – it was a long journey from introduction to
intimacy.
“I don’t think the instrument’s been played much at all in its life, except for
now,” he says. “It took quite a while to wake it up.”
For many years, the bass was hidden away in an abbey in northern Italy, home
for centuries to an Augustinian order of monks. German bass player, Prof Günter
Klaus, found it in the late 1960s, and convinced the monks to sell it to him.
Klaus “knew it was a nice instrument”, Bibeau says, but it was “in a state of
disrepair and completely black with soot”. It wasn’t until later that he
learned it was crafted in about 1580 by Gasparo da Salò, a master luthier and
one of the first to ever make double basses.
There are only a handful like it in the world."
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
