How Many Types of Cello Are There?
Eight in current use. Six suites that were considered worthless for 200 years and are now the summit of solo string playing. One four-stringed instrument whose voice sits closer to the human one than anything else in the orchestra.
Quick Answer
8 types of cello are in working use: modern acoustic, Baroque, electric, piccolo (5-string variant Bach used), modern 5-string, carbon-fibre, travel and silent practice cello. Plus 6 fractional sizes (1/8 through 4/4) for younger players. "Cello" is short for violoncello — Italian for "little big viola". The cello and the upright bass are not the same instrument — different family, different tuning, different size. (Looking for "cello" the Indian household brand? That's near the bottom.)
The same Bach, three hundred years apart
Below: the four open strings of any cello, tuned C-G-D-A (lower than the violin by an octave plus a fifth). Below that: the actual opening of Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 in G major, played two ways — classical legato and modern crossover articulation. Same sixteen notes Bach wrote in Köthen around 1720.
C2 to A3 — almost three octaves below the violin's top string. The C string at 65 Hz is the cello's signature: the deep voice no smaller stringed instrument can reach.
The notes are Bach's. The synthesis is approximate — a real cello has bow texture, body resonance and three centuries of interpretive tradition no oscillator captures. The point is the articulation: the Casals reading is sustained and singing; the crossover reading is punchier, closer to how Hauser and Šulić play the same lines.
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The Bach Cello Suites were considered worthless for 200 years
Bach composed the Six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello — BWV 1007 to 1012 — around 1717 to 1723, while he was Kapellmeister at the court of Prince Leopold in Köthen. They are now the foundational solo cello repertoire. For most of their existence, they were not.
For almost two centuries the Suites were dismissed as dry technical studies — useful for warming up, not music to perform. No major recordings existed. They were not in the public concert repertoire.
In 1890, a 13-year-old Pablo Casals was searching through bins of second-hand music at the Beethoven House music shop on Barcelona's Calle Ancha. He came across a battered printed copy of the Suites. By his own later account, he understood immediately what he was looking at. He spent the next twelve years working through the Suites privately before he felt prepared to perform one publicly. He recorded the complete set for EMI between 1936 and 1939 in London and Paris — sessions broken up by the Spanish Civil War.
Those recordings are still in print. The Suites are now performed and recorded more than any other solo string work in existence. Yo-Yo Ma has recorded them three times. Every serious cellist eventually does at least one. The opening of the G major Suite — the 16 notes the widget above plays — is one of the most-recognised pieces of classical music in the world. None of that was true in 1889.
The 8 cello types in working use
Most professional cellists own one or two of these. The rest are specialist instruments.
| Type | Strings | Where you find it |
|---|---|---|
| Modern acoustic cello | 4 | The default. Symphony orchestras, string quartets, solo recital, chamber music — what 95% of cellos are |
| Baroque cello | 4 | Gut strings, no endpin (held between calves), shorter neck, period bow. Early-music ensembles |
| Electric cello | 4–6 | Solid body, no resonating chamber. Output to amp. Pop, rock, electronic; Apocalyptica's Eicca Toppinen |
| Piccolo cello (violoncello piccolo) | 5 | Smaller body, often 5-stringed adding a high E. Bach's Cello Suite No. 6 was written for one |
| Modern 5-string cello | 5 | Adds the high E above the A string. Used in jazz, fusion and some contemporary classical |
| Carbon-fibre cello | 4 | Made of carbon-fibre composite rather than wood. Luis & Clark, Mezzo-Forte. Weather-stable, robust for touring |
| Travel cello | 4 | Collapsible neck or detachable body. For touring musicians who don't want to buy an airline seat |
| Silent practice cello | 4 | Skeletal frame, no resonating body, headphone output. Apartment practice without enraging neighbours |
Modern cellos also follow several traditional body shapes — the Stradivari pattern, the Montagnana pattern, the Goffriller pattern — each with subtly different tonal character. These are pattern variants of the same instrument, not separate types.
The 6 sizes — and the 7/8 oddity
Cellos come in fractional sizes for younger players. The 7/8 size is a recent addition — for smaller adults who can't comfortably reach across a full 4/4.
| Size | Body length | Typical age |
|---|---|---|
| 1/8 | ~52 cm | 4–6 years |
| 1/4 | ~58 cm | 6–8 years |
| 1/2 | ~64 cm | 8–10 years |
| 3/4 | ~69 cm | 11–13 years |
| 7/8 | ~73 cm | Smaller adult players |
| 4/4 (full) | ~75 cm | Most teens and all adults |
All sizes tune to the same C-G-D-A and read the same music. Switching between sizes is a matter of physical reach, not technique.
Cello vs upright bass — they are not the same instrument
They look similar from across a concert hall — both large stringed instruments held vertically. They are not the same. They are not even from the same family.
| Cello | Upright bass | |
|---|---|---|
| Family | Violin family | Viol family (older) |
| Body length | ~75 cm | ~115 cm |
| Strings | Always 4 | 4 (sometimes 5) |
| Tuning | Fifths: C-G-D-A | Fourths: E-A-D-G |
| Played | Seated, between knees | Standing or on a high stool |
| Shoulders | Rounded | Sloping (a viol trait) |
| Music written | Bass clef (sometimes tenor or treble) | Bass clef, sounding an octave lower |
| Bow | Short, heavier | Shorter still, two grip styles (French / German) |
The single biggest tell is the shoulders. Look where the body meets the neck. The cello has rounded shoulders (a violin-family feature). The upright bass has sloped, angled shoulders — a holdover from its ancestor the violone, which is from the older viol family. After you see this once, you cannot un-see it.
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The six players who built the cello's reputation
From the player who rescued Bach to the player who took the cello onto a Royal Wedding global broadcast. Tap a card to read more.
What "cello" actually means
The full name is violoncello. It is Italian, and it is built from two parts: violone, meaning "big viola" — which was a name for the early double bass — and the diminutive suffix -cello, meaning "little." So violoncello is literally "little big viola." A smaller version of the largest viola. The word made sense in the early 17th century and has carried the same weird logic ever since.
"Violoncello" was the standard name until the 1800s. Through the 19th century it shortened to "'cello" with an apostrophe (marking the dropped syllables), then dropped the apostrophe entirely through the 20th century. The instrument itself emerged in northern Italy around 1535–1550, almost certainly developed by the Amati family in Cremona. Andrea Amati's earliest surviving cello dates from about 1538.
Not the instrument?
Cello (the brand) — a large household-goods conglomerate based in India, founded in the early 1970s. Cello World makes plastic kitchenware, bottles and storage products; Cello Pens is a separate but related stationery firm based in Mumbai. These are the searches behind "cello bag," "cello gift wrap" and "cello jeans" — Cello-brand products, not music gear.
Cello (cellophane wrapping) — "cello bag" and "cello wrap" are also general terms for cellophane or BOPP-film clear bags, the kind used for sweet packets and gift baskets. Common in catering and gift-shop supplies.
"-cello" (Italian suffix) — the same suffix that names the instrument also appears at the end of liqueur names: limoncello (lemon), arancello (orange), crema di mirto cello. The suffix means "little" or, in food, "drink" — derived from cellula, a small cell or container.
Sources
- Robin Stowell (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Cello (Cambridge University Press, 1999) — the modern academic reference, covering historical instruments, repertoire and performance practice.
- H.L. Kirk, Pablo Casals: A Biography (Holt Rinehart Winston, 1974) — definitive account of the Bach Suite discovery, the 1936–1939 EMI sessions and Casals's political exile.
- Albert E. Wier, The Macmillan Encyclopedia of Music and Musicians — primary source on the 18th–19th century shift from "violoncello" to "cello."
- Elizabeth Wilson, Jacqueline du Pré: Her Life, Her Music, Her Legend (Faber, 1998) — detailed account of the 1965 Elgar recording sessions with Barbirolli.
- EMI / Warner Classics — original 1936–1939 Casals Bach Suite recording sessions documentation.
- The Strad magazine, archives 1890–present — surviving Amati, Stradivari and Montagnana cellos, attribution and provenance.
- 2Cellos official discography (Sony Masterworks, 2011–present) and YouTube view-count records — "Smooth Criminal" release context.
- Cello World Limited and Cello Pens — corporate filings on the Mumbai-based household and stationery brands.
Continue exploring
Four strings, three centuries, and one set of six Suites a teenager rescued from a thrift-shop bin. The cello still doesn't fit through a normal car door — and still gets carried anyway.