Václav House

Biography

Unfortunately, there exists very little biographical information regarding House’s life. Václav House was born in 1764 in Rauditz, a town founded alongside the Elbe River in Czechia. House, according to Jonas Lohse, “first worked as an assistant teacher, and from 1792 on as a violinist in the chapel of Prince Lobkwitz. Later he was hired as a double bassist at the Prague Estates Theatre, where he made a name for himself as a virtuoso.” Despite the claim that House demonstrated great skill as a bassist before his time at the Prague Conservatory, very little exists that points us towards the source of House’s virtuosity. Much of the information on House exists from the educational materials he published as a professor at the Prague Conservatory, where he served as a bass instructor for 32 years between 1811 and 1843. These surviving materials include four collections of exercises for the double bass, and his “Complete Method for the Double Bass”, which was published in two parts, the first in 1828, and the second a year later in 1829. This helps elucidate some of the performance practices of bass players in Central Europe in the early 19th century, specifically what House saw as challenges for the bassist.