[1]A procedure for obtaining a provisional judgment on urgent cases.
[1]A procedure for obtaining a provisional judgment on urgent cases.
BASQUE PROVINCES(Provincias Vascongadas), a division of north-eastern Spain, comprising the three provinces of Álava, Biscay or Vizcaya and Guipúzcoa. Pop. (1900) 603,596; area 2739 sq. m., the third in density in Spain. The territory occupied by the Basque Provinces forms a triangle bounded on the west and south by the provinces of Santander, Burgos and Logrono, on the east by Navarre, on the north by France and the Bay of Biscay. The French Pays Basque forms part of the arrondissements of Bayonne and Mauléon. For an account of the people, their origin, customs and language, seeBasques. Of the Provinces, Guipúzcoa is the only one which is wholly Basque, Álava is the least so. Its capital, Vitoria, is said to have been founded by the Gothic king Leovigild (581). Older than these divisions, the date of which is uncertain, the ancient limits of the dioceses of Pamplona, Bayonne and Calahorra, probably corresponded more nearly to the boundaries of the ancient tribes, the Autrigones, the Caristi, the Varduli and the Vascones, with their still differing dialects, than do these civil provinces.
Leaving aside the legendary and uncertain portion of their history, we find the Provinces in some districts dependent allies of Navarre, in others of Castile. In Biscay the counts of Haro were lords of Biscay from 1093 to 1350. There was a short union with Castile under Pedro the Cruel, but the definitive union did not take place till 1370. In Álava the ruling power was the confederation of Arriaga (so called after its meeting place), which united the province to the crown of Castile in 1332. Guipúzcoa, which had been dependent sometimes on Navarre, sometimes on Castile, was definitively united to Castile in 1200. From the year 1425 the provinces were desolated by party wars among the lesser nobles (parientes mayores) but these came to an end in 1460-1498, when Henry IV. and Ferdinand the Catholic strengthened the power of the towns and forbade the erection of any fortified house in the country. Though the three Basque Provinces were thus united to the crown of Spain, they still remained a land apart (tierra apartada). Their juntas acted to some extent in common; and although no written federal pact is known to have existed, they employed, as the symbol of their unity, a seal with the wordIruracbat, "The Three One," engraved upon it. They preserved their own laws, customs,fueros(seeBasques), which the Spanish kings swore to observe and maintain. Unless countersigned by the juntas the decrees of Cortes and Spanish legislation or royal orders had no force in the Provinces. In the junta of 1481 Guipúzcoa alone proposed a treaty of friendship, peace and free trade for ten years with England, and this was signed in Westminster, on the 9th of March 1482 (see Rymer,Foedera). The Basques still made their own treaties with England and France and are mentioned apart from Spain in the treaty of Utrecht (1713). They still preserved in their municipal institutions the old style ofrepublicasderived from thecivitatesandrespublicaeof ancient Rome. This kind of independence and autonomy lasted unchallenged until the death of Ferdinand VII. in 1833, when, in default of male heirs, his brother Don Carlos claimed the throne, confirmed the Basquefueros, and raised the standard of revolt against his niece, Isabel II. A seven years' war followed, in which an English legion under Sir George de Lacy Evans and a naval force under Lord John Hay took part. It was ended by the Convenio de Vergara (August 31st, 1839) in which the concession and modification of thefueroswas demanded. The troubled period which followed the expulsion of Isabel II. in 1868 gave opportunity for a second Carlist war from 1872 to 1876. This ended, unlike the former one, in the utter defeat of the Carlist forces, and left the Provinces at the mercy of the government, without terms or agreement. In general government and legislation the Provinces were then assimilated to the rest of the nation. After 1876, the Provincial parliaments (diputaciones) were elected like the other provincial councils of Spain, deprived of many privileges and subjected to the ordinary interference of the civil governors. But their representatives, assisted by the senators and deputies of the Basque Provinces in the Cortes, negotiated successive pacts, each lasting several years, securing for the three Provinces their municipal and provincial self-government, and the assessment, distribution and collection of their principal taxes and octroi duties, on the understanding that an agreed sum should be paid annually to the state, subject to an increase whenever the national taxation of other provinces was augmented. In December 1906, after long discussion, the contribution of the Basque Provinces to the state, according to the law of the 21st of July 1876, was fixed for the next twenty years; for the first ten years at 8,500,000 pesetas, for the next ten an additional 500,000 pesetas, from 31st December 1916 to 31st December 1926, the province of Guipúzcoa paying in addition 700,000 pesetas to the treasury. These pacts have hitherto been scrupulously observed, and as the local authorities levy the contribution after their own local customs, landed property and the industrial and commercial classes are less heavily taxed in these territories than in the rest of Spain. Enough is raised, however, besides the amount handed over to the government, to enable the schools, roads, harbours and public works of every kind to be maintained at a standard which compares very favourably with other parts of Spain. When the three provinces sent in their first contingent of conscripts in 1877, it was found that all but about sixty knew how to read and write, and succeeding contingents have kept up this high standard.
In agriculture the Basque Provinces and the Pays Basque were great cider countries, but during the 19th century this was gradually replaced by wine-growing. The chief industries of the Basque Provinces are the sea fisheries and iron mining. Some of the mines round Bilbao have been worked from prehistoric times. In 1905 the Basque Provinces produced 5,302,344 tons of iron, over five millions of which came from Biscay, out of a total of 9,395,314 tons for the whole of Spain. More than the half of this total 5,845,895 tons, was exported to England. The swords of Mondragon in Guipúzcoa were renowned before those of Toledo. Eibar in the same province has long been a small-arms factory. There in the 19th century Señor Zuloaga successfully revived the artistic inlaying of gold and silver in steel and iron.
Bibliography.—Of older works, though often uncritical, R. P. Henao'sAveriguaciones de las Antiguedades de Cantabria(Salamanca, 1688) is still valuable (new edition, 1894). For all that relates to the manners and customs of the people,Corografía de Guipúzcoa, by R. P. M. de Larramendi, S.J., is indispensable. Written about 1750, it was first printed in Barcelona in 1882 (later edition, San Sebastian, 1896). There are excellent chapters on the Basque Provinces in theIntroduccion a la Historia Natural, y a la Geografía Fisica de España, by D. Guillermo Bowles (Madrid, 1775).El Guipuzcoano instruido(San Sebastian, 1780), in the form of a dictionary, gives full details of the life, the rights, duties and obligations of a Basque citizen of that date. TheDiccionario Geografico-Historico de España, tome i., ii.El Reyno de Navarra Senorio de Vizcaya y Provincias de Álava y Guipúzcoa(Madrid, 1802), is full of local information, but with a strong bias in favour of the central government. The best works on the various editions of thefuerosareHistoria de la Legislacion ... civil de España, by A. Marichalar, Marques de Montesa, and Cayetano Manrique;Fueros de Navarra Vizcaya, Guipúzcoa y Álava(Madrid, 2nd ed., 1868); and theNoticia de las cosas memorables de Guipúzcoa, by D. Pablo de Gorosabel (Tolosa, 1899-1901), the last volume of which by C. de Echegaray, gives the legislative acts down to May 1900.Las Provincias Vascongadas a Fines de la Edad Media, by D. Carmelo de Echegaray (San Sebastian, 1895), is excellent. There is aHistoria de Bizcaya, by Dr E. de Labayru, and aCompendioof the same by Fermin Herran (Bilbao, 1903). D. Carmelo de Echegaray, Cronista de las Provincias Vascongadas, with his colleagues D. Serapio Mugica, F. Soraluce, and other historians, has examined, catalogued and indexed the municipal archives of all the towns, without which no true history can be written. Several discoveries of important missing documents and MSS. were thus made. The development of the Basque mining industry is fully described inLas Minas de hierro de la provincia de Vizcaya, progressos realizados en esta region derde 1870 hasta 1899(Bilbao, 1900).
(W. We.)
BASQUES,a people inhabiting the three Basque Provinces—Biscay, Álava and Guipúzcoa—and Navarre in Spain, and the arrondissement of Bayonne and Mauléon in France. The number of those who can be considered in any sense pure Basques isprobably about 600,000 in Europe, with perhaps 100,000 emigrants in the Americas, chiefly in the region of La Plata in South America. The word Basques is historically derived fromVascones, which, writtenWascones, has also given the nameGasconsto a very different race. The Basques call themselvesEskualdunak,i.e."those who possess theEskuara," and their country Eskual-Herria.
Language.—The original and proper name of the language is Eskuara (euskara, uskara), a word the exact meaning of which has not yet been ascertained, but which probably corresponds with the idea "clearly speaking." The language is highly interesting and stands as yet absolutely isolated from the other tongues of Europe, though from the purely grammatical point of view it recalls the Magyar and Finnic languages. It is an agglutinative, incorporating and polysynthetic system of speech; in the general series of organized linguistic families it would take an intermediate place between the American on the one side and the Ugro-Altaic or Ugrian on the other.
Basque has no graphic system of its own and uses the Roman character, either Spanish or French; a few particular sounds are indicated in modern writings by dotted or accented letters. The alphabet would vary according to the dialects. Prince L. L. Bonaparte counts, on the whole, thirteen simple vowels, thirty-eight simple consonants. Nasal vowels are found in some dialects as well as "wet" consonants—ty,dy,ny, &c. The doubling of consonants is not allowed and in actual current speech most of the soft consonants are dropped. The letterrcannot begin a word, so thatrationemis written in Basquearrazoin.
Declension is replaced by a highly developed postpositional system; first, the definite article itselfa(pluralak) is a postposition—zaldi, "horse,"zaldia"the horse,"zaldiak, "the horses." The declensional suffixes or postpositions, which, just like our prepositions, may be added to one another, are postponed to the article when the noun is definite. The principal suffixes arek, the mark of the plural, and of the singular nominative agent;n, "of" and "in";i, "to";z, "by";ik, "some";ko, "from," "of" (Lat.a);tik, "from" (Lat.ex);tzat,kotzat,tzako, "for";kin,gaz, "with";gatik, "for the sake of";gana, "towards";ra,rat, "to," "into," "at," &c. Of these suffixes some are joined to the definite, others to the indefinite noun, or even to both.
The personal pronouns, which to a superficial observer appear closely related to those of the Semitic or Hamitic languages, areni, "I";hi, "thou";gu, "we";zu, "you" in modern times,zuhas become a polite form of "thou," and a true plural "you" (i.e.more than one) has been formed by suffixing the pluralizing signk—zuek. The pronouns of the third person are mere demonstratives. There are three:huraorkura, "that";hauorkau, "this";oriorkori, "this" or "that." Other unexplained forms are found in the verbal inflexions,e.g.d,it, andt, "I" or "me";d-akus-t, "it see I" = I see it;d-arrai-t, "it follows me." The demonstratives are used as articles:gazt-en-or, "this younger one";andre-ori, "this lady at some distance." The reflective "self" is expressed byburu, "head." The relative does not exist, and in its place is used as a kind of verbal participle with the endingn: doa, "he goes";doana, "he who is going"; in the modern Basque, however, by imitation of French or Spanish, the interrogativezein,zoin, is used as a relative. Other interrogatives arenor, "who";zer, "what";zembait, "how much," &c.Bat, "one";batzu, "several";bakotch, "each";norbait, "some one";hanitzorhainitz, "much";elkar, "both"; are the most common indefinite pronouns. The numeral system is vicesimal;e.g.34 ishogoi ta hamalaur, "twenty and fourteen." The numbers from one to ten are: 1,bat; 2,bi; 3,hiru; 4,lau; 5,bortzorbost; 6,sei; 7,zazpi; 8,zortzi; 9,bederatzi; 10,hamar; 20,hogoiorhogei; 40,berrogoi(i.e.twice twenty); 100,ehun. There is no genuine word for a thousand.
The genders in Basque grammar are distinguished only in the verbal forms, in which the sex of the person addressed is indicated by a special suffix; so thateztakitmeans, "I do not know it"; but to a woman one says also:eztakinat, "I do not know it, oh woman!" To a man one says:eztakiat(foreztakikat), "I do not know it, oh man!" moreover, certain dialectic varieties have a respectful form:eztakizut, "I do not know it, you respectable one," from which also a childish form is derived,eztakichut, "I do not know it, oh child!"
The Basque conjugation appears most complicated, since it incorporates not only the subject pronouns, but, at the same time, the indirect and direct complement. Each transitive form may thus offer twenty-four variations—"he gives it," "he gives it to you," "he gives them to us," &c., &c. Primitively there were two tenses only, an imperfect and a present, which were distinguished in the transitive verb by the place of the personal subject element:dakigu, "we are knowing it" (gu,i.e.we), andginaki, "we were knowing it"; in the intransitive by a nasalization of the radical:niz, "I am";nintz, "I was." In modern times a conjectural future has been derived by adding the suffixke,dakiket, "I will, shall or probably can know it." No proper moods are known, but subjunctive or conjunctive forms are formed by adding a finaln, asdakusat, "I am looking at it";dakusadan, "if I see it." No voices appear to have been used in the same radical, so that there are separate transitive and intransitive verbs.
In its present state Basque only employs its regular conjugation exceptionally; but it has developed, probably under the influence of neo-Latin, a most extensive conjugation by combining a few auxiliary verbs and what may be called participles, in fact declined nouns:ikusten dut, "I have it in seeing," "I see it";ikusiko dut, "I have it to be seen," "I will see it," &c. The principal auxiliaries are:izan, "to be"; andukan, "to have"; butedin, "to can";eza, "to be able";egin, "to make";joan, "to go";eroan, "to draw," "to move," are also much used in this manner.
The syntax is simple, the phrases are short and generally the order of words is: subject, complement, verb. The determining element follows the determined:gizon handia, "man great the"—the great man: the genitive, however, precedes the nominative—gizonaren etchea, "the man's house." Composition is common and it has caused several juxtaposed words to be combined and contracted, so that they are partially fused with one another—a process calledpolysyntheticism; odei, "cloud," andots, "noise," formodots, "thunder";belar, "forehead," andoin, "foot," givebelaun, "knee," front of the foot. The vocabulary is poor; general and synthetic words are often wanting; but particular terms abound. There is no proper term for "sister," butarreba, a man's sister, is distinguished fromahizpa, a woman's sister. We find no original words for abstract ideas, and God is simply "the Lord of the high."
The vocabulary, however, varies extremely from place to place and the dialectic varieties are very numerous. They have been summed up by Prince L. L. Bonaparte as eight; these may be reduced to three principal groups: the eastern, comprising the Souletine and the two lower Navarrese; the central formed by the two upper Navarrese, the Guipúzcoan and the Labourdine; and the western, formed by the Biscayan, spoken too in Álava. These names are drawn from the territorial subdivisions, although the dialects do not exactly correspond with them.
Ethnology and Anthropology.—The earliest notices of the geography of Spain, from the 5th centuryB.C., represent Spain as occupied by a congeries of tribes distinguished mainly as Iberi, Celtiberi and Celts. These had no cohesion together, and unless temporarily united against some foreign foe, were at war with one another and were in constant movement; the ruder tribes being driven northwards by the advancing tide of Mediterranean civilization. The tribes in the south in Baetica had, according to Trogus and Strabo, written laws, poems of ancient date and a literature. Of this nothing has reached us. We have only some inscriptions, legends on coins, marks on pottery and on megalithic monuments, in alphabets slightly differing, and belonging to six geographical districts. These still await an interpreter; but they show that a like general language was once spoken through the whole of Spain, and for a short distance onthe northern slope of the Pyrenees. The character of the letters is clearly of Levant origin, but the particular alphabets, to which each may be referred, and their connexion, if any, with the Basque, are still undetermined. It was early remarked by the classical scholars among the Basques after the Renaissance that certain names in the ancient toponymy of Spain, though transcribed by Greek and Latin writers,i.e.by foreigners, ignorant of the language, yet bear a strong resemblance to actual place-names in Basque (e.g.Iliberis, Iriberry); and in a few cases (Mondiculeia, Mendigorry; Iluro, Oloron) the site itself shows the reason of the name. Andres de Poza (1587), Larramendi (1760), Juan B. Erro (1806) and others had noted some of these facts, but it was W. von Humboldt (1821) who first aroused the attention of Europe to them. This greater extension of a people speaking a language akin to the Basque throughout Spain, and perhaps in Sicily and Sardinia, has been accepted by the majority of students, though some competent Basque scholars deny it; and the certain connexion of the Basques, either with the Iberians or Celtiberians, whether in race or language, cannot be said to be conclusively proved as long as the so-called Celtiberian inscriptions remain uninterpreted. (See alsoIberians.)
After so many centuries of close contact and interpenetration with other peoples, we can hardly expect to find a pure physical type among the present Basques. All that we can expect is to be able to differentiate them from their neighbours. The earliest notice we have of the Basques, by Einhard (778), speaks of their wonderful agility. The next, the pilgrim of the Codex Calixtinus (12th century), says the Basques are fairer in face (facie candiliores) than the Navarrese.
Anthropologists no longer rely solely on craniology, and the measurement of the skull, to distinguish race. The researches of Aranzadi (1889 and 1905) and of Collignon (1899) show them as less fair than northern Europeans, but fairer than any of the southern races; not so tall as the Scandinavians, Teutons or British, but taller than their neighbours of southern races. There is no tendency to prognathism, as in some of the Celts. The profile is often very fine; the carriage is remarkably upright. Neither markedly brachycephalous nor dolichocephalous, the skull has yet certain peculiarities. In the conjunction of the whole physical qualities, says Collignon, there is a Basque type, differing from all those he has studied in Europe and northern Africa. There are differences of type among themselves, yet, when they emigrate to South America, French and Spanish Basques are known simply as Basques, distinct from all other races.
On the origin of the Basques, the chief theories are:—(1) that they are descended from the tribes whom the Greeks and Latins called Iberi; (2) that they belong to some of the fairer Berber tribes ("Eurafrican," Hervé) and through the ancient Libyans, from a people depicted on the Egyptian monuments; (3) the Atlantic theory, that they belong to a lost Atlantic continent, whose inhabitants were represented by the Guanches of the Canary Islands, and by a fair race on the western coast of Africa; (4) that they are an indigenous race, who have never had any greater extension than their present quarters.
The remains of prehistoric races hitherto discovered in Spain throw little light on the subject, but some skulls found in southeastern Spain in the age of metal resemble the Basque skulls of Zaraus.
The megalithic remains, the dolmens, menhirs, cromlechs and stone circles are said to resemble more closely those of northern Africa than the larger remains of Brittany and of the British Isles. Aristotle tells us that the Iberi fixed obelisks round the tomb of each warrior in number equal to the enemies he had slain (Polit.vii. c. 2. 6), but proof is wanting that these Iberi were Basques.
Iberian inscriptions have been found on the so-calledtoros de guisando, rude stone bulls or boars, on other monuments of northern Spain and in ancient sepulchres; some of these figures,e.g.at theCerro de los Santosin Murcia, recall the physical type of the modern Basques, but they are associated with others of very varied types.
Of the religion of the Basques anterior to Christianity, little is certainly known. The few notices we have point to a worship of the elements, the sun, the moon and the morning star, and to a belief in the immortality of the unburnt and unburied body. The custom of thecouvade, attributed by Strabo to the Cantabri, is unknown among the modern Basques. As elsewhere, the Romans assimilated Basque local deities to their own pantheon, thus we find DeoBaicorrixo(Baigorry) andHerauscorrtsehein Latin inscriptions. But the name which the Basques themselves give to the Deity isJaincoa,Jaungoikoa, which may mean lord or master, Lord of the high; but in the dialect of Roncal,Goikoameans "the moon," andJaungoikokoawould mean "Lord of the moon." The termJaun, lord or master,Etcheko Jauna, the lord or master of the house, is applied to every householder.
There is no aid to be got from folk-tales; none can be considered exclusively Basque and the literature is altogether too modern. The first book printed in Basque, theLinguae Vasconum Primitiae, the poems of Bernard d'Echepare, is dated 1545. The work which is considered the standard of the language is the Protestant translation of the New Testament made by Jean de Liçarrague, under the auspices of Jeanne d'Albret, and printed at La Rochelle in 1571. Thepastoralesare open-air dramas, like the moralities and mysteries of the middle ages. They are derived from French materials; but a dancing chorus, invariably introduced, and other parts of themise-en-scène, point to possibly earlier traditions. No MS. hitherto discovered is earlier than the 18th century. The greater part of the other literature is religious and translated. It is only recently that a real literature has been attempted in Basque with any success.
In spite of this modernity in literature there are other matters which show how strong the conservatism of the Basques really is. Thus, in dealing with the language, the only true measure of the antiquity of the race, we find that all cutting instruments are of stone; that the week has only three days. There are also other survivals now fast disappearing. Instead of the plough, the Basques used thelaya, a two-pronged short-handled steel digging fork, admirably adapted to small properties, where labour is abundant. They alone of the peoples of western Europe have preserved specimens of almost every class of dance known to primitive races. These are (1) animal (or possibly totem) dances, in which men personate animals, the bear, the fox, the horse, &c.; (2) dances to represent agriculture and the vintage performed with wine-skins; (3) the simple arts, such as weaving, where the dancers, each holding a long coloured ribbon, dance round a pole on which is gradually formed a pattern like a Scotch tartan; (4) war-dances, as the sword-dance and others; (5) religious dances in procession before the Host and before the altar; (6) ceremonial dances in which both sexes take part at the beginning and end of a festival, and to welcome distinguished people. How large a part these played in the life of the people, and the value attached to them, may be seen in the vehement defence of the religious dances by Father Larramendi, S.J., in hisCorografia de Guipúzcoa, and by the large sums paid for the privilege of dancing the firstSaut Basqueon the stage at the close of aPastorale.
The old Basque house is the product of a land where stone and timber were almost equally abundant. The front-work is of wood with carved beams; the balconies and huge over-hanging roof recall the Swiss chalet, but the side and back walls are of stone often heavily buttressed. The cattle occupy the ground-floor, and the first storey is reached often by an outside staircase. The carven tombstones with their ornaments resemble those of Celtic countries, and are found also at Bologna in Italy.
In customs, in institutions, in administration, in civil and political life there is no one thing that we can say is peculiarly and exclusively Basque; but their whole system taken together marks them off from other people and especially from their neighbours.
Character.—The most marked features in the Basque character are an intense self-respect, a pride of race and an obstinate conservatism. Much has been written in ridicule of the claim of all Basques to be noble, but it was a fact both in the laws ofSpain, in thefuerosand in practice. Every Basque freeholder (vecino) could prove himself noble and thus eligible to any office. They are not a town race; a Basque village consists of a few houses; the population lives in scattered habitations. They do not fear solitude, and this makes them excellent emigrants and missionaries. They are splendid seamen, and were early renowned as whale fishermen in the Bay of Biscay. They were the first to establish the cod-fishery off the coast of Newfoundland. They took their full part in the colonization of America. Basque names abound in the older colonial families, and Basque newspapers have been published in Buenos-Aires and in Los Angeles, California. As soldiers they are splendid marchers; they retain the tenacity and power of endurance which the Romans remarked in the Iberians and Celtiberians. They are better in defence than in attack. The failure to take Bilbao was the turning-point in both Carlist wars. In civil institutions and in the tenures of property the legal position of women was very high. The eldest born, whether boy or girl, inherited the ancestral property, and this not only among the higher classes but among the peasantry also. In thefuerosan insult done to a woman, or in the presence of a woman, is punished more severely than a similar offence among men. This did not prevent women from working as hard as, or even harder than, the men. All authors speak of the robust appearance of the women-rowers on the Bidassoa, and of those who loaded and unloaded the ships in Bilbao.
Institutions.—In their municipal institutions they kept the old Roman termrespublicafor thecivitasand the territory belonging to it. All municipal officers were elective in some form or other, and there is hardly any mode of election, from universal suffrage to nomination by a single person chosen by lot, that the Basques have not tried. The municipalities sent deputies to the juntas or parliaments of each province. These assemblies took place originally in the open air, as in other parts of the Pyrenees, under trees, the most celebrated of which is the oak of Guernica in Biscay, or under copses, as the Bilzaar in the French Pays Basque. The cortes of Navarre met at Pamplona. Delegates from the juntas met annually to consider the common interests of the three provinces. Besides the separate municipalities and the juntas, there were often associations and assemblies of three or five towns, or of three or four valleys, to preserve the special privilege or for the special needs of each. Hence was formed a habit of self-government, the practice of legislative, judicial and administrative functions, which resulted gradually in a code of written or unwritten laws embodied in thefuerosorforsof each province, and thecartas-pueblosof the towns. In form thesefuerosor charters are often grants from the lord or sovereign; in reality they are only a confirmation or codification of unwritten customary laws in practice among the people, the origin of which is lost in antiquity. The kings of Castile, of Spain and of Navarre were obliged at their accession, either in person, or by deputy, to swear to observe thesefueros; and this oath was really kept. While the cortes were trampled upon and absolutism reigned both in Spain and in France, the Basquefueroswere respected; in Spain to the middle of the 19th century and in France down to the Revolution. Thefuerosthus observed made the Basque provinces a land apart (una tierra apartada), a self-governing republic (una verdadera autonomia), under an absolute monarchy, to which, however, they were always loyal. And this independence was acknowledged, not only in local, but also in international and European treaties, as in art. 15 of the treaty of Utrecht 1713. So the act of the 3rd of June 1876, which assimilated the Basque Provinces to the rest of Spain, acknowledged the true self-government which they had enjoyed for centuries.
The circumstances and methods which enabled the Basques to preserve this independence were, first, the isolation caused by their peculiar language; next, the mountainous and easily-defended nature of the country, its comparative poverty and the possession of a sea-board. Then there were the rights and the safeguards which thefuerosthemselves gave against encroachments. The rights were:—freedom of election to all offices and to the juntas; exemption from all forced military service except for the defence of the country and under their own officers; and payment beforehand exacted for all service beyond their own frontiers (this did not of course exclude voluntary service of individuals in the Spanish or French armies). Then there was free trade with foreign nations, and especially between the Basques of both nations. The customs' frontier of Spain really began on the Ebro. Then no decree or sentence of the royal authorities could have effect in the provinces except countersigned by the junta. Otherwise the resisting and even the killing of a royal officer was no murder. But chiefest of all the safeguards was the provision that no tax or contribution should be levied or paid to the crown till all petitions had been heard and wrongs redressed; that such a vote should be the last act of the junta or cortes, and the money should be paid not as a demand of right or a tax, but as a free gift and above all a voluntary one. It was paid in a lump sum, and the repartition and levying were left entirely in the hands of the junta and the municipalities.
As a further precaution against the inroads of absolutism, no lawyer was allowed to be a deputy to the junta and all clergy were likewise excluded. The Basques considered that men of these professions would be always on the side of tyranny. One lawyer (letrado) was present at the juntas for consultation on the points of law, but he was not allowed to vote. So strictly was this observed that after the battle of Vitoria in 1813, when it was difficult to get together a quorum for the reorganization of the country, theletrado, though one of the most active and influential members in consultation, was not allowed to vote.
The relations between Church and State among the Basques have been very remarkable. They are a highly religious people, eminently conservative in their religious practices. In religion alone, through Ignatius de Loyola of Guipúzcoa and Francis Xavier of Navarre, they have left their mark upon Europe. They have kept the earliest form of Christian marriage and of the primitive order of deaconesses, forgotten elsewhere in the West. The feast of Corpus Christi instituted by Pope Urban IV. (1262) still appears in Basque almanacs asPhesta-berria, the New Feast. The earliest notice that we have of them speaks of their liberality to the clergy; yet with all this religious conservatism they have never allowed themselves to be priest-ridden. They constantly resisted the attempts of the crown to force upon them the authority of the Spanish bishops. When Ferdinand the Catholic came to Biscay in 1477 to swear to thefueros, he was compelled to send back the bishop of Pamplona whom he had brought with him. No strange priest could enter the town when the junta was sitting, and in some places if a deputy was seen speaking to a priest before a session he lost his vote for that day. The bishops had no share in ecclesiastical patronage in Guipúzcoa; all was in the hands of the king, of the nobles or of the municipalities, or else the priests were chosen by competitive examination or elected by the people. They would not allow the priest to interfere with the games or dances, and when the drama was forbidden in all Spain in 1757 by the authority of the Spanish bishops, the cortes of Navarre compelled the king to withdraw the order.
For a stranger coming from lands of larger farms and apparently higher cultivation, the agriculture of the Basques seems poor, but the old scattered homesteads show a sense of security that has been lacking in many parts of Spain; and the Basques have shown great adaptability in suiting their agriculture to new conditions, helped by the presence of the courts at San Sebastian and Biarritz. When the old self-sufficient village industries declined, in consequence of the invention of machinery and manufacture elsewhere, the Basques entered at once upon emigration to the agricultural parts of the Americas, and the result has been that the Basque Provinces and the Pays Basque probably have never been more prosperous than they are now, and perhaps a new Eskual-herria and a new Eskuara are being built up in the distant lands to which they are such valued immigrants.
Bibliography.—For so restricted a literature theEssai d'une bibliographie de la langue basque, by Julien Vinson (Paris, 1891), with the volume of additions and corrections, 1898, is practically exhaustive, and is a mine of information on the principal works. See also for the language, A. Oihenart,Notitia utriusque Vasconiae(Paris. 1638 and 1656), 4to., ch. xiv.; Fl. Lecluse,Manuel de lalangue basque(Toulouse, 1826); C. Ribary,Essai sur la langue basque(1866), translated from the Hungarian by Julien Vinson (Paris, 1877); W. J. Van Eys,Grammaire comparée des dialectes basques(Paris, London, Amsterdam, 1879); Prince L. L. Bonaparte,Le Verbe basque en tableaux(London, 1864-1869); J. Vinson, articles inRevue de linguistique(Paris, 1867-1906); L'Abbé Ithurry,Grammaire basque(Bayonne, 1895-1906); Dr H. Schuchardt,Die Entstehung der Bezugsformen des Baskischen(Wien, 1893); W. J. Van Eys,Dictionnaire basque-français(Paris, 1873); R. M. de Azkue,Diccionario vascongado español-français(Tours, 1906);Monumenta Linguae Ibericae, edidit Aemilius Hubner, fol. (Berlin, 1893) (texts and introduction good; analysis and interpretation faulty). Other works of interest on various subjects are:—Wentworth Webster,Basque Legends(London, 1877 and 1879); Puyol y Camps, "La Epigraphia Numismatica Iberica," in tomo xvi. ofBoletin de la Real Academia de la Historia(Madrid, 1890), (for geographical distribution of the alphabets); T. de Aranzadi,El Pueblo Euskalduna. Estudio de Antropologia(San Sebastian, 1889); and the same author'sExiste una raza Euskara? Sus caracteres antropologicos(1905);La Tradition au pays basque(Paris, 1899), (a collection of papers by local authorities); Julien Vinson,Les Basques et le pays basque(Paris, 1882), a sufficient survey for the general reader; the same author'sLe Folk-Lore du pays basque(Paris, 1883), treats of the Pastorales and embraces the whole Folk-Lore;Le Codex de Saint-Jacques de Compostella, lib. iv. (Paris, 1882), by R. P. F. Fita and J. Vinson, gives the first Basque vocabulary;Les Coutumes générales gardées et observées au pais & baillage de Labourt(Bordeaux, 1700); G. Olphe-Galliard,Le Paysan basque à travers les âges(Paris, 1905); Pierre Yturbide,Le Pays de Labourd avant 1789(Bayonne, 1905), (for the time of the English domination); Henry O'Shea,La Tombe basque(Pau, 1889), (valuable for the comparison of Basque and Celtic sepulchral ornament). See also the bibliography toBasque Provinces.
(W. We.; J. Vn.)
BASRA(written alsoBusra,BassoraandBussora), the name of a vilayet of Asiatic Turkey, and of its capital. The vilayet has an area of 16,470 sq. m., formed in 1884 by detaching the southern districts of the Bagdad vilayet. It includes the great marshy districts of the lower Euphrates and Tigris, and of their joint stream, the Shatt el-Arab, and a sanjak on the western shore of the Persian Gulf. A settled population is found only along the river banks. Except the capital, Basra, there are no towns of importance. Korna, at the junction of the two great rivers; Amara on the Tigris; Shatra on the Shatt el-Haï canal, connecting the Tigris and Euphrates; Nasrieh, at the junction of that canal with the Euphrates and Suk esh-Sheiukh, on the lower reaches of the Euphrates, are the principal settlements, with a population varying from 3000 to 10,000 or somewhat less. Along the Shatt el-Arab and the lower reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates there are vast plantations of date-palms, which produce the finest dates known. Here and there are found extensive rice-fields; liquorice, wheat, barley and roses are also cultivated in places. But in general the ancient canals on which the fertility of the country depends have been allowed to go to ruin. The whole land is subject to inundations which render settled agriculture impracticable, and the population consists chiefly of nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes whose wealth consists in herds of buffaloes, horses, sheep and goats. The principal exports are wool, dates, cereals, gum, liquorice-root and horses. The climate is humid and unhealthy. The population is estimated at about 200,000 almost exclusively Moslems, of whom three-quarters are Shi‛ites. There are about 4000 Jews and perhaps 6000 Christians, among whom are reckoned the remains of the curious sect of Sabaeans or Mandaeans, whose headquarters are in the neighbourhood of Suk esh-Sheiukh.
The capital of the vilayet, also called Basra, is situated in 47° 34′ E. long. and 32° N. lat., near the western bank of the Shatt el-Arab, about 55 m. from the Persian Gulf. The town proper lies on the canal el-‛Assar about 1½ to 2 m. W. of the Shatt el-Arab. There are no public buildings of importance. The houses are meanly built, partly of sun-dried and partly of burnt bricks, with flat roofs surrounded by parapets. The bazaars are miserable structures, covered with mats laid on rafters of date trees. The streets are irregular, narrow and unpaved. The greater part of the area of the town is occupied by gardens and plantations of palm-trees, intersected by a number of little canals, cleansed twice daily with the ebb and flow of the tide, which rises here about 9 ft. These canals are navigated by small boats, calledbellem(plur.ablam), resembling dug-outs in form, but light and graceful. At high-tide, accordingly, the town presents a very attractive appearance, but at low-tide, when the mud banks are exposed, it seems dirty and repulsive, and the noxious exhalations are extremely trying. The whole region is subject to inundations. The town itself is unhealthy and strangers especially are apt to be attacked by fever. Basra is the port of Bagdad, with which it has steam communication by an English line of river steamers weekly and also by a Turkish line. The Shatt el-Arab is deep and broad, easily navigable for ocean steamers, and there is weekly communication by passenger steamer with India, while two or more freight lines, which also take passengers, connect Basra directly with the Mediterranean, and with European and British ports. It is the great date port of the world, and the dates of Basra are regarded as the finest in the market. Besides dates the principal articles of export are wool, horses, liquorice, gum and attar of roses. The annual value of the exports is approximately £1,000,000 and of the imports a little more. The foreign trade is almost exclusively in the hands of the English, but of late the Germans have begun to enter the market, and the Hamburg-American line of steamers has established direct communication. Since 1898 there has been a British consul at Basra (before that time he was a representative of the Indian government). France and Russia also maintain consular establishments at Basra. The settled population of Basra is probably under 50,000, but how much it is impossible to estimate. It is a heterogeneous mixture of all the nations and religions of the East—Turks, Arabs, Persians, Indians, Armenians, Chaldaeans and Jews. Of the latter there are about 1900, engaged in trade and commerce. Fewest in number are the Turks, comprising only the officials. Most numerous are the Arabs, chiefly Shi‛ites. The wealthiest and most influential personage in the capital and the vilayet is thenakib, or marshal of the nobility (i.e.descendants of the family of the prophet, who are entitled to wear the green turban). Basra is a station of the Arabian mission of the Dutch Reformed Church of America.
History.—The original city of Basra was founded by the caliph Omar inA.D.636 about 8 m. S.W. of its present site, on the edge of the stony and pebbly Arabian plateau, on an ancient canal now dry. The modern town of Zobeir, a sort of health suburb, occupied by the villas of well-to-do inhabitants of Basra, lies near the ruin mounds which mark the situation of the ancient city. In the days of its prosperity it rivalled Kufa and Wasit in wealth and size, and its fame is in the tales of theArabian Nights. With the decay of the power of the Abbasid caliphate its importance declined. The canals were neglected, communication with the Persian Gulf was cut off and finally the place was abandoned altogether. The present city was conquered by the Turks in 1668, and since that period has been the scene of many revolutions. It was taken in 1777 after a siege of eight months by the Persians under Sadik Khan. In about a year it fell again into the hands of the Turks, who were again deprived of it by the sheikh of the Montefik (Montafiq) Arabs. The town was in the October following recovered by Suleiman Pasha, who encountered the sheikh on the banks of the Euphrates and put him to flight; it has since remained in the hands of the Turks.
(J. P. Pe.)
BASS,the name of a family of English brewers. The founder of the firm, William Bass (b. 1720), was originally a carrier, one of his chief clients being Benjamin Printon, a Burton-on-Trent brewer. By 1777 Bass had saved a little money, and seeing the growing demand for Burton beer he started as a brewer himself. The principal market for Burton beer at that time was in St Petersburg, whither the beer could be sent by water direct from Burton via the Trent and Hull, and William Bass managed to secure a tolerable share of the large Russian orders. But in 1822 the Russian government placed a prohibitory duty on Burton ales, and the Burton brewers were forced into cultivating the home market. William Bass opened up a connexion with London, and established a fairly profitable home trade. A misunderstanding between the East India Company and the London brewers who were the proprietors of Hodgson's IndiaPale Ale, at that time the standard drink of Englishmen in the East, resulted in Bass being asked to supply a beer which would withstand the Indian climate and be generally suitable to the Indian market. After a series of experiments he produced what is still known as Bass's pale ale. This new and lighter beer at once became popular all over India, and Bass's firm became the largest in Burton. After William Bass's death the business was carried on by his son, M. T. Bass, and then by his grandson, Michael Thomas Bass (1799-1884). In 1827 a vessel laden with Bass's beer was wrecked in the Irish Channel. A large proportion of the cargo was however salved and sold at Liverpool, where it met with great approval in the local market, and through this chance circumstance the firm opened up a regular trade in the north-west of England and Ireland. "Bass" was, however, little drunk in London till 1851, when it was supplied on draught at the Exhibition of that year, since which time its reputation has been world-wide. In 1880 the business was turned into a limited liability company. Michael Thomas Bass, besides actively conducting and extending the firm's operations, was a man of great public spirit and philanthropy, and the towns of Burton and Derby are largely indebted to his munificence. He took a keen interest in all questions affecting the welfare of the working classes, and was largely instrumental in securing the abolition of imprisonment for debt. On his death, prior to which he had taken into partnership Messrs Ratcliff and Gretton, two of the leading officials of the brewery, converting the business into a limited company known as Messrs Bass, Ratcliff & Gretton, Ltd., the control of the firm passed to his sons, Michael Arthur Bass and Hamar Bass (d. 1898). Michael Arthur Bass (1837-1909), after twenty-one years in parliament as member first for Stafford, then for two divisions of Staffordshire, was in 1886 raised to the peerage as Baron Burton; by a special patent of 1897 the peerage descended to his daughter, Nellie, the wife of Mr J. E. Baillie of Dochfour, the baronetcy descending to his nephew W. A. Hamar Bass (b. 1879).
BASS(the same word as "base," and so pronounced, but influenced in spelling by the Ital.basso), deep, low; especially in music, the lower part in the harmony of a composition, the lowest male voice, or the lowest-pitched of a class of instruments, as the bass-clarinet.
Bass or bast (a word of doubtful origin, pronouncedbăs) is the fibrous bark of the lime tree, used in gardening for tying up plants, or to make mats, soft plaited baskets, &c. Basswood is the American lime-tree, Tilia Americana; white basswood is T. heterophylla.
The name bass is also given to a fish closely resembling the perch.
BASSA,a province of the British protectorate of Northern Nigeria, occupying the angle made by the meeting of the Benue river with the Niger. It has an area of 7000 sq. m., with a population estimated at about one and a half millions. It is bounded N. by the Benue, W. by the Niger, S. by the frontier of Southern Nigeria, and E. by the province of Muri. The province is heavily forested, and is estimated to be one of the richest of the protectorate in natural products. It has never been penetrated by Moslem influence, and is inhabited in the greater part by warlike and unruly pagans. Early in the 16th century the Igbira (Okpoto or Ibo) were one of the most powerful pagan peoples of Nigeria and had their capital at Iddah. At a later period the Bassas conquered the western portion of the state and the Munshis the eastern, while the Okpoto still held the south and a wedge-shaped district partially dividing the Munshis and Bassas. The Bassas are a very remarkable pagan race who permeate the entire protectorate of Northern Nigeria, and are to be found in small colonies in almost every province. They are clever agriculturists, naturally peaceful and industrious. The Munshis, though also good agriculturists, are a warlike and most unruly race, as are also the Okpoto.
The districts which now comprise the province of Bassa came nominally under British control in 1900, but up to the year 1903 administrative authority was confined to the western half with Dekina (in 7° 3′ E., 7° 41′ N.) for its capital. In December of 1903 a disturbance resulting in the murder of the British resident led to the despatch of a military expedition, and as a result of the operations the frontiers of the districts under control were extended to the borders of the Munshi country in about 8° E. The western portion of the province, occupied by friendly and peaceful tribes upon the Niger, has been organized for administration on the same system as the rest of the protectorate. Courts of justice are operative and taxes are peacefully collected. The Okpoto, however, remain turbulent, as do their neighbours the Munshis. Spirits, of which the importation is forbidden in Northern Nigeria, are freely smuggled over the border from Southern Nigeria. Arms and powder are also imported. The slave-trade is still alive in this district, and an overland route for slaves is believed to have been established through eastern Bassa to the Benue. In consequence of the natural wealth of the province, there are trading establishments of the Niger Company and of Messrs Holt on the Niger and Benue, and colonies of native traders have penetrated the country from the north. Roman Catholic and Protestant missions are established at Dekina and Gbebe.
BASSANO, JACOPO DA PONTE(1510-1592), Venetian painter, was born at Bassano. He was educated by his father, who was himself an artist, and then completed his studies at Venice. On the death of his father he returned to Bassano and settled there. His subjects were generally peasants and villagers, cattle and landscapes, with some portraits and historical designs. His figures are well designed, and his animals and landscapes have an agreeable air of simple nature. His compositions, though they have not much eloquence or grandeur, have abundance of force and truth; the local colours are well observed, the flesh-tints are fresh and brilliant, and his chiaroscuro and perspective are unexceptionable. He is said to have finished a great number of pictures; but his genuine works are somewhat rare and valuable—many of those which are called originals being copies either by the sons of Bassano or by others. Bassano's style varied considerably during his lifetime. He naturally was at first a copier of his father, but his productions in this style are not of great value. He was then strongly attracted by the lightness and beautiful colouring of Titian, and finally adopted the style which is recognized as his own. Although he painted few great pictures, and preferred humble subjects, yet his altar-piece of the Nativity at Bassano is estimated highly by the best judges, and in Lanzi's opinion is the finest work of its class.
BASSANO,a city of Venetia, Italy, in the province of Vicenza, 24 m. N.E. of Vicenza and 30 m. N. of Padua by rail, at the foot of the Venetian Alps. Pop. (1901) town, 7553; commune, 15,097. It is well situated upon the Brenta, which is here spanned by a covered wooden bridge, and commands fine views. The castle, erected by the Ezzelini in the 13th century, lies in the upper portion of the town, above the river; a tower, erected by a member of the same family, is a conspicuous feature. The museum and cathedral and some of the other churches contain pictures by the da Ponte family (16th and early 17th century), surnamed Bassano from their birth-place; Jacopo is the most eminent of them. The museum also contains drawings and letters of the sculptor Antonio Canova. The church of S. Francesco, begun in the 12th century in the Lombard Romanesque style, was continued in the 13th in the Gothic style. Some of the houses have traces of paintings on their façades. In the 11th century Eccelin, a German, obtained fiefs in this district from Conrad II. and founded the family of the Ezzelini, who were prominent in the history of North Italy in the 13th and 14th centuries. Bassano apparently came into existence aboutA.D.1000. Its possession was disputed between Padua and Vicenza; it passed for a moment under the power of Gian Galeazzo Visconti of Milan, who fortified it. At the beginning of the 15th century it went over to Venice; its industries flourished under Venetian government, especially its printing-press and manufacture of majolica, the latter of which still continues. On the 8th of September 1796 an action was fought here between the French and the Austrians, in which the French were victorious.
(T. As.)
BASSARABorBassaraba, the name of a dynasty in Rumania, which ruled Walachia from the dawn of its history until 1658.The origin of the name and family has not yet been explained. It undoubtedly stands in close connexion with the name of the province of Bessarabia, which oriental chroniclers gave in olden times to the whole of Walachia. The heraldic sign, three heads of negroes in the Bassarab shield, seems to be of late western origin and to rest on a popular etymology connecting the second half of the word with Arabs, who were taken to signify Moors (blacks). The other heraldic signs, the crescent and the star, have evidently been added on the same supposition of an oriental origin of the family. The Servian chroniclers connect its origin with their own nationality, basing this view upon the identification of Sarab with Sorb or Serbia. All this is mere conjecture. It is, however, a fact that the first appearance of the Bassarabs as rulers (knyaz,banorvoivod) is in the western part of Rumania (originally called Little Walachia), and also in the southern parts of Transylvania—the old dukedoms of Fogarash and Almash, which are situated on the right bank of the Olt (Aluta) and extend south to Severin and Craiova. Whatever the origin of the Bassarabs may be, the foundation of the Walachian principality is undoubtedly connected with a member of that family, who, according to tradition, came from Transylvania and settled first in Câmpulung and Tîrgovishtea. It is equally certain that almost every one of the long line of princes and voivods bore a Slavonic surname, perhaps due to the influence of the Slavonic Church, to which the Rumanians belonged. Starting from the 13th Century the Bassarabs soon split into two rival factions, known in history as the descendants of the two brothers Dan and Dragul. The form Drakul—devil—by which this line is known in history is no doubt a nickname given by the rival line. It has fastened on the family on account of the cruelties perpetrated by Vlad Drakul (1433-1446) and Vlad Tsepesh (1456-1476), who figure in popular legend as representatives of the most fiendish cruelty. The feud between the rival dynasties lasted from the beginning of the 15th century to the beginning of the 17th.
The most prominent members of the family were Mircea (1386-1418), who accepted Turkish suzerainty; Neagoe, the founder of the famous cathedral at Curtea de Argesh (q.v.); Michael, surnamed the Brave (1592-1601); and Petru Cercel, famous for his profound learning, who spoke twelve languages and carried on friendly correspondence with the greater scholars and poets of Italy. He was drowned by the Turks in Constantinople in 1590 through the intrigues of Mihnea, who succeeded him on the throne of Walachia. The British Museum possesses the oldest MSS. of the Rumanian Gospels, once owned by this Petru Cercel, and containing his autograph signature. The text was published by Dr M. Caster at the expense of the Rumanian government. Mateiu Bassarab (1633-1654) established the first printing-press in Rumania, and under his influence the first code of laws was compiled and published in Bucharest in 1654. The Bassarab dynasty became extinct with Constantine Sherban in 1658. SeeRumania:Language and Literature.
(M. G.)
BASS CLARINET(Fr.clarinette basse; Ger.Bass-Klarinette; Ital.clarinetto bassoordarone), practically the A, B♭or C clarinet speaking an octave lower; what therefore has been said concerning the fingering, transposition, acoustic properties and general history of the clarinet (q.v.) also applies to the bass clarinet. Owing to its greater length the form of the bass clarinet differs from that of the clarinets in that the bell joint is bent up in front of the instrument, terminating in a large gloxinea-shaped bell, and that the mouthpiece is attached by means of a strong ligature and screws to a serpent-shaped crook of brass or silver. The compass of the modern orchestral bass clarinet is in the main the same as that of the higher clarinets in C, B♭and A, but an octave lower, and therefore for the bass clarinet in C isNotation: E2 B5.; for the bass clarinet in B♭the real sounds are one tone, and for the bass clarinet in A 1½ tone lower, although the notation is the same for all three.
Sometimes the treble clef is used in notation for the bass clarinet. It must then be understood that the instrument in C speaks an octave lower, the bass clarinet in B♭a major ninth and the bass clarinet in A a minor tenth lower. The tenor clef is also frequently used in orchestral works.
The quality of tone is less reedy in the bass clarinet than in the higher instruments. It resembles the bourdon stop on the organ, and in the lowest register, more especially, the tone is somewhat hollow and wanting in power although mellower than that of the bassoon. In the lowest octave the instrument speaks slowly and is chiefly used for sustained bass or melody notes; rapid passages are impossible.
The modern orchestral model may be fitted with almost every kind of key-mechanism, including the Boehm, and the degree of perfection and ingenuity attained has removed the all but insuperable difficulties which stood in the way of the original inventors who, not understanding key-work, made many futile attempts to bridge the necessarily great distance between the finger-holes by making the bore serpentine, boring the holes obliquely, &c.
The low pitch of the bass clarinet (8 ft. tone) contrasted with the moderate length of the instrument—whose bore measures only some 42 to 43 inches from mouthpiece to bell, whereas that of the bassoon, an instrument of the same pitch, is twice that length—is a puzzle to many. An explanation of the fact is to be found in the peculiar acoustic properties of the cylindrical tube played by means of a reed mouthpiece characterizing the clarinet family, which acts as a closed pipe speaking an octave lower than an open pipe of the same length, and overblowing a twelfth instead of an octave. This is more fully explained in the articlesClarinetandAulos.
The construction of the bass clarinet demands the greatest care. The bore should theoretically be strictly cylindrical throughout its length from mouthpiece to bell joint; the slightest deviation from mathematical accuracy, such as an undue widening of the bell from the point where it joins the body to the mouth of the bell, would tend to muffle the lower notes of the instrument and to destroy correct intonation.
The origin of the bass clarinet must be sought in Germany, where Heinrich Grenser of Dresden, one of the most famous instrument-makers of his day, made the first bass clarinet in 1793. The basset horn (q.v.) or tenor clarinet, which had reached the height of its popularity, no doubt suggested to Grenser, who was more especially renowned for his excellent fagottos, the possibility of providing for the clarinet a bass of its own. One of these earliest attempts in the form of a fagotto, stamped "A. Grenser, Dresden," with nine square-flapped brass keys working on knobs, is in the Grossherzogliches Museum at Darmstadt and was lent to the Royal Military Exhibition, London 1890.[1]Two other early specimens,[2]belonging originally to Adolphe Sax and to M. de Coussemaker, are now respectively preserved in the museums of the Brussels Conservatoire and of the Berlin Hochschule (Snoeck Collection). The tubes are of great thickness and the holes are bored obliquely through the walls. Both instruments are in A.
Attempts were made in Italy to overcome the mechanical difficulties by making the bore of the bass clarinet serpentine. A specimen by Nicolas Papalini of Pavia[3]in the museum of the Brussels Conservatoire has the serpentine bore pierced through two slabs of pear-wood; the two halves, each forming a vertical section of the instrument, are fitted together with wooden pins. The outside length is only 2 ft. 3½ in. and there are nineteen finger-holes.
Joseph Uhlmann of Vienna[4]constructed a bass clarinet, also termed "bass basset horn," with twenty-three keys and a compass from B♭through four complete octaves with all chromaticsemitones. These instruments resemble the saxophones (q.v.), having the bell joint bent up in front and the crook almost at right angles backwards, but the bore of the saxophone is conical.
Georg Streitwolf (1779-1837), an ingenious musical instrument-maker of Göttingen, produced in 1828 a bass clarinet with a compass extending from A♭to F, nineteen keys and a fingering the same as that of the clarinet with but few exceptions. In form it resembled the fagotto and had a crook terminating in a beak mouthpiece. The Streitwolf bass clarinet was adopted in 1834 by the Prussian infantry as bass to the wood-wind.[5]Streitwolf's first bass clarinets were in C, but later he constructed instruments in B♭as well. Like the basset horn, Streitwolf's instruments had the four chromatic open keys extending the compass downwards to B♭. The tone was of very fine quality. One of these instruments is in the possession of Herr C. Kruspe of Erfurt,[6]and another is preserved in the Berlin collection at the Hochschule.
It was, however, the successive improvements of Adolphe Sax (Paris, 1814-1894), working probably from Grenser's and later from Streitwolf's models, which produced the modern bass clarinet, and following up the work of Halary and Buffet in the same field, he secured its introduction into the orchestra at the opera. The bass clarinet in C made its first appearance in opera in 1836 in Meyerbeer'sHuguenots, Act V., where in a fine passage the lower register of the instrument is displayed to advantage, and later inDinorah(Le pardon de Ploermel). Two years later (1838) at the theatre of Modena a bass clarinet by P. Maino of Milan, differing in construction from the Sax model, was independently introduced into the orchestra.[7]Wagner employed the bass clarinet in B♭and C inTristan und Isolde,[8]where at the end of Act II. it is used with great effect to characterize the reproachful utterance of King Mark, thus: