And they all played F

[Sam Gnagey]

It was a great conference that Tim Olt put together over the last weekend at Bowling Green. I was honored to be a part of a discussion group on teaching. Thanks Tim, for a great service to all of us who were there.

However I made a troubling observation about the many excellent performances that took place there: Every one that performed a solo did it on an F or Eb bass tuba. And that's what I do to perform solos also.

Is the contrabass tuba now considered to be inappropriate for solo playing? If so, this is a disturbing situation. It seems that composers are most generally writing solos with the bass tuba in mind. I believe that when it comes to solo literature things are out of balance. We all know that nearly all high school and undergraduate students are equipped only with contrabass tubas. It is a necessity, because, as a rule, their performance duties are with a large ensemble which demands the depth of a contrabass. My concern is that these players are forced into either playing literature that was not intended for the instrument in their hands or they must procure a bass tuba somehow for solos.

Frankly, being primarily an orchestral tubist, I don't keep abreast of new solo literature too carefully, so I'm asking:
Are there solo pieces being written that use the best qualities of the contrabass? Should we think about commissioning works that fit this genre? I look at my state's required list for solo tuba; there is the old stuff that works on contra and the new stuff that almost demands the bass. In the real world most of us make our living playing contra. It's great to have an etude book or two for lyrical and technical playing in that instrument's money range. What about some solos that do the same? How about some concertos for contrabass a la Prokofief or Lebedev? Maybe competitions should start requiring a solo performance for contrabass as well as bass for all contestants.

[JHardisk]

Sam:

It was great to meet you and pick your brain about Rudy tubas/play your creations. I'd like to point out... during the teaching roundtable discussion, I was doing a recital. I pulled out my 5/4 Rudy CC to play the RVW 6 Studies in English Folk Song. Granted, it's not a substantial concerti, but it is indeed great solo rep for the big horn. Had I felt like really challenging the pianist there, I'd have played Journey. I didn't feel that it would fit together with only an hour's worth of rehearsal time together.

There are plenty of other pieces that work well with the big horn. Jim Barnes' tuba concerto fits the CC tuba well, and the gregson is no challenge to play on the big horn. I will agree that solo rep tends to be geared towards the bass tubas. However, I think that playing solo with ensemble lends itself to the bass tuba, as they tend to project a little brighter and cut through the orchestra/band. Playing with piano is different that ensemble, as you well know. I, personally choose the tuba based on the situation that I'm in. As an example, I recently did a string of gigs here at work with the brass quintet on my big CC tuba. The quintet plays slightly on the loud side, and the horn fit it best. It also added to the challenge of playing clean/precise with a small ensemble.

Basically, I believe it is up to the performer to decide which tuba to use, and as long as it sounds good... why question it?

[Rick Denney]

...and the gregson is no challenge to play on the big horn....

...Basically, I believe it is up to the performer to decide which tuba to use, and as long as it sounds good... why question it?

As to the Gregson being no challenge on the big horn, as a amateur I find it daunting even on F tuba.

Not all performers have a choice, by the way, especially when they are still in school.

But from my perspective I agree with Sam's concerns. Tuba players do not have the historical repertoire to provide a progression of concerto-style challenges to carry them from early in their training. There are no tuba concertos that I have found that I, as an intermediate amateur (even one who plays F tuba), can play satisfactorily. I am limited to solos intended for high-school competition, transcriptions from other instruments, or simplified arrangements.

There are no concerto-class works for tuba that are considered "training" works, in the way that, say, Mozart would be such for piano players. Some are not as difficult as others, of course, but they are all difficult enough to make them available only to tuba player with pro-level skills and aspirations, in my opinion. Consider the Gregson, which is not thought to be particularly challenging. The range of the Gregson extends from the pedal register of an F tuba to G above the staff, if I'm remembering correctly. That's something over three octaves, which would be beyond most recreational tuba players, even if they did play bass tuba regularly. In fact, the upper range would be more appropriate for euphonium players in the recreational class.

To take another example, consider the Variations on the Cobbler's Bench by Frackenpohl. That range is a bit more limited and I have heard a couple of well-done performances by pro-quality players on C tubas. When I try to play it, however, I find it much more accessible on F tuba. But I still would not attempt to perform it in public.

I was once invited to consider playing a solo with an amateur orchestra I belonged to. I had to decline after some searching, because even though I had played in that group and gotten the job done for several years, I could find nothing in the literature for contrabass tuba with orchestral or band accompaniment that was within the reach of my abilities, and that would fit on a serious program. I believe that the occasional soloist should choose literature that can be learned cold. I'm a much better player now, but the situation has not changed that I have seen. Playing something intended for another instrument would not do, because the listener would think of me the same way I thought of the famous string-bass soloist who played a work for cello. He played it well, but by his choice he was competing with Yo-Yo Ma, and that's a mighty tough standard to attain to, and he didn't make it. Why should I go head to head against, say, a horn in F on music central within their range, that requires me to strain to the upper register throughout the whole work?

Is there no way for composers to think of musical things to say that do no require higher and faster? We really do need a reasonable training literature that is accessible to players and audiences, and that allows intermediate recreational players the opportunity to perform soloistically when they get the opportunity. Any music that spends most of its time on and above the staff will not meet that goal.

I think that many composers are afraid to write music they perceive as reinforcing the stereotype of tubas being slow and lumbering, but in so doing, they write music that proves exactly that when performed by people unable to meet their technical challenges. It would be nice to play something lyrical in the middle range of the instrument, something where a recreational player could concentrate limited abilities on making a musical statement, and not just hanging on for dear life.

Rick "agreeing with Sam, but maybe not in the way he intended" Denney

[AndyL]

<<Is there no way for composers to think of musical things to say that do no require higher and faster?>>

I think part of the problem is composers and TUBISTS have _FORGOTTEN_ about the contrabass tuba.

It seems like almost all the available recordings FEATURING tuba works are written for (or at least played on) bass tuba. Repeated "hearings" of those works skews the listener's CONCEPT of the tuba's sound. So as the "concept" has evolved strongly towards the bass tuba "sound" (and away from the contra sound) players and composers have accepted that as desireable.

I agree with Rick (and Sam). Let's hear some fresh works intended for CONTRABASS tubas!

[Allen]

This is an interesting thread. The tuba appears to be the only instrument that generally plays solo works at the top of its range -- and the top of the range of the higher tubas at that. It's like someone who normally plays alto sax switching to soprano sax and playing at the top of its range for a solo. I suppose it has something to do with non-bass instrument players not appreciating deep sounds as much as they should.

Rick has brought up a related point: amateurs generally do not have the high chops and frequently don't have a bass tuba anyway.

I did play a fun piece a few months ago: "A Touch of Tuba" by Art Dedrick. It's available for tuba/piano and tuba/band. It's well within contra-bass tuba range (especially if you don't take the optional 8va in the cadenza). Further, it's easy enough so that more advanced players can add some improvisation, especially in the cadenza and repeats.

My general solution to not having interesting music at my serious but amateur level is to play jazz and pop. There are tons of fake books available for many tastes and styles. Further, there are warehouses full of piano music, which can be adapted to tuba & piano.

To make a quick and dirty arrangement for tuba & piano from a piano score, all you have to do is have the pianist lay out of playing the melody when you want to solo, and lighten up on the bass part when you want to play the bass line. If you can read treble clef, you can do the arrangement with a copy machine, scissors, tape and a pencil. If you don't read treble clef, you will have to transcribe the solo parts to bass clef. Using this method, even a classical pianist can do a creditable job of playing a jazz/pop duet with you.

Of course, for jazz/pop, you can play around a lot. Take the solo part up or down an octave. Play a variation. Even do real jazz. Mainly, have fun!

Of course, I hasten to insist that I don't know what I'm doing when it comes to arranging. However, I have managed to have fun and entertain an audience. One of these days I'll take some formal music courses and try to figure out how it should be done.

Allen Walker

[Steve Marcus]

The contrabassoon has a range down to the tuba's pedal BBBb, and rarely plays notes (at concert pitch) above the staff.

If Susan Nigro can find, transcribe, and/or commission enough solo contrabassoon music to fill five of her CDs, we should certainly be able to locate a substantial quantity of solos that are appropriate for contrabass tuba!

[Chuck(G)]

The contrabassoon has a range down to the tuba's pedal BBBb, and rarely plays notes (at concert pitch) above the staff.

If Susan Nigro can find, transcribe, and/or commission enough solo contrabassoon music to fill five of her CDs, we should certainly be able to locate a substantial quantity of solos that are appropriate for contrabass tuba!

I'm a great fan of Susan's (as well as the Bassoon Brothers). But a bassoon has a lot more harmonic content to its sound than does a tuba.

Unless I had a hearing impediment, I'd much rather have my ears entertained by a small tuba playing in the euphonium range than a big one playing in the double-bass range. The sound of a contrabass tuba playing solos makes me feel as if I've got cotton jammed in my ears.

FWIW

[TonyZ]

If Susan Nigro can find, transcribe, and/or commission enough solo contrabassoon music to fill five of her CDs, we should certainly be able to locate a substantial quantity of solos that are appropriate for contrabass tuba!

Or, in true tubist fashion, we just steal it from her!!

[TonyZ]

The sound of a contrabass tuba playing solos makes me feel as if I've got cotton jammed in my ears.

FWIW

I think that comes from the current rage of inarticulate contrabass tuba playing. I heard Phil Black launch some things from his monster Rudy CC. No cotton there!

[cjk]

Because F tuba is just nicer to listen to?

Because solos played on one's 6/4 Jacobsian behemoth just don't sound quite right??

I went to a regional conference recently and found that the tone quality of those playing B&S F tubas was the most to my liking.

[ThomasDodd]

I'm with Rick.

My less than bountiful talnet combined with miniscule amounts of practice time, relegate me to high school material, or reading stuff written for other instruments.

I'd be nice to find a musical piece, not a technical tour-de-force, generaly in the range from Bb below the staff to Bb om the top of the staff. My best find trhgis far is a hymnal. Reasonable range, and room to be expressive. But not exactly the stuff for a program with a community band/orchestra.

I was going to start working on the Barnes' Concerto for Tuba and Wind Band which sounds great, and I think the band part is with the abilities of the group I play with. But the technical side is probably out of my grasp, as is the range (4 octaves?). It'll just be a doodle piece to work on. Maybe in a few years I can think about a public performance, but I'll probably loose interest several times along the way.

[Chuck(G)]

Someone certainly must have don a dissertation on this subject, but I can't seem to find much in print.

Historically, it seems that the bass tuba has been the preferred orchestra instrument, with the big 6/4 contrabasses being mostly considered to be "band" tubas.

When and why did this change?

[Alex C]

My thought is that the CC tuba is equivilent to the solo bass singers. How many of them do you hear? How many rock groups have a lead singer who is a bass? How many pop goups ever recorded have a lead singer who is a bass. I can think of one of each.

Even in instrumentals, popular music is usually played by a lead flute, or (God help us) soprano sax, or trumpet. How many lead trombones are there? Harvey Phillips was as good a musician as Harry James, could he have fronted a band? Not for long, there would have been no audience.

It seems to work this way: the lower the voice/instrument, the less the general popularity.

Would the music world suffer a loss if there had never been great bass singers and low instrument musicians? Yes! The play an important, however, secondary role.

Does the music world crave another concerto for tuba? The answer is a resounding: uh, no...

My advice is always to play the solos on the instrument you like to play. Once you figure that out, let the audience figure out the rest for themselves.

By the way: Mr. Jacobs' solo recordings on the CC York are absolutely terrific. When I've played CD's of them for string players, they marvel at the facility and clarity. None of them went out and bought the CD though.

[Rick Denney]

Because F tuba is just nicer to listen to?

Because solos played on one's 6/4 Jacobsian behemoth just don't sound quite right??

I went to a regional conference recently and found that the tone quality of those playing B&S F tubas was the most to my liking.

I don't disagree with this, and I have the same preferences as a listener, though see my countering example below. But my point (even if I hijacked it from Sam) is that creating music that is most appropriate for the listener isn't the point of writing for the tuba--any tuba. No composer sits down to think, "I'm going to write music that will really showcase my talent. Let's see...violin, trumpet, oboe...no, those are all shrill; I really want a tuba!" The point of writing for the tuba is to give tuba players an opportunity to be melodic and musical, and to showcase and develop their abilities (wherever those abilities are). Composers write for the tuba only because tuba players ask them or pay them to. Unlike melodic instruments, we have very little concerto-style literature that is appropriate for those not at the advanced level, and none that I can find that has orchestral or band accompaniment and that is appropriate for a serious program (which Touch of Tuba isn't always, though I have and enjoy playing that music). The fact that Dedrick's piece is the only one anyone can think just highlights the point.

I would love to have a long, multi-movement work within my abilities that also has the musical value to be worth studying, learning, and performing. An example: William F. Buckley, a professional author and commentator but an amateur harpsichordist, was invited (because of the fame he attracted as an author and commentator) to perform with the Arizona Symphony one movement of a fairly easy Bach concerto for harpsichord. He agreed, and spent a full year working it up. The performance was unstellar by his own admission, but it was something he could at least attempt. Should the same opportunity come my way, which it has on a much more humble scale, I would have nothing to try unless I wrote it myself.

Also, some of the high works are not intended to be particularly difficult, and when played on a euphonium would be rather easy except for a few low notes. In our attempt to be more melodically effective, we've persuaded ourselves that music for tuba should be at the upper end of our range, instead of developing our melodic talents at the lower end. There is John Stevens's concerto for contrabass tuba that Gene Pokorny premiered with the CSO, but though it was written for the big tuba it was still designed to demonstrate Gene's virtuosity.

When Gene gave a brief demonstration of his abilities at the Army Conference a couple of years ago, he did not play high or fast. In fact, he played in the bottom register of the instrument an old hymn tune. It was startlingly musical, and nobody listening to that would have thought they had cotton in their ears even though he ended up in the pedal register. And he played it on the York. Maybe the cotton is the result of always trying to play high and not having good literature to focus on musicality down low. That's fine for players with the abilities to play high, but such music is inaccessible to those who are learning or who will never reach those ability levels.

Rick "more impressed by what Gene played and the way he played it than anything else at the conference that year" Denney

[ThomasDodd]

How many rock groups have a lead singer who is a bass?

Quite a few bass player have had the lead vocal role.

Oh, you me the voice was in the bass range though...

Not a rock group, but Richard Sterban of the Oak Ridge Boys has cut many song as the lead. Most tend to slow, soft, and tender.

And J.D. Sumner, of the Stamps (Gospel and backup group for Elvis in the 70's). He's my kind of singer too:

In 1983, the Guinness Book Of World Records recognized Sumner's 1966 solo recording of the hymn "Blessed Assurance." According to Guinness, the song contained the lowest recorded note ever produced by a human voice, a "double low" C.

Why not write tuba solos like that?

[Rick Denney]

Someone certainly must have don a dissertation on this subject, but I can't seem to find much in print.

Historically, it seems that the bass tuba has been the preferred orchestra instrument, with the big 6/4 contrabasses being mostly considered to be "band" tubas.

When and why did this change?

I think there are two reasons, and both have affected American practice to a greater extent than European practice. One is that American orchestras have been on a decades-long trend to play louder and louder, I think in competition with recorded and amplified music. Another is that orchestras have sought to increase the tonal range in addition to the dynamic range, leading flute and piccolo players to go for more brilliance and "silvery" tone and tuba players to want to go darker and darker. The recordings I've heard of orchestras in the 30's, despite the limited recording quality, don't seem to try for as explosive a sound as modern orchestras.

F tubas just can't keep up with those trends. Of course, not all orchestras are going that way, but many seem to be.

Rick "who has nothing but supposition to back up his conjecture" Denney

[Rick Denney]

Most tuba solos are written to show off the technical facility of the instrument and player, rather that to be particularly lyrical. It is about time that the tuba world had matured enough, that we do not have to continually be proving what we can technically do - what we want is to show that we are true musicians!

Bingo!

Rick "who wishes there were rich incompetents who could commission work like the aristocracies of prior centuries" Denney

[Chuck(G)]

My thought is that the CC tuba is equivilent to the solo bass singers. How many of them do you hear?

A good bass can be awesome, and pretty popular:



even in the pop world:



and, while there is such a thing as a contrabass voice, I know of no solo literature for one.

[Gorilla Tuba]

Many fine points set forth here. Please take a look at Dave Zerkel's artical in the Journal about Solo lit do-able on Contrabass. Ya, a lot of it may work slightly better on a bass tuba, but a lot is do-able.

A "major" piece one of my BBb only students is playing is the Hindemith Sonata... definitely a big piece, best played on BBb or CC. There are lots of others. Beversdorf also comes to mind. For a more modern and tonal type piece look at Barbara York's Sea Dreams. Very cool, lyrical, and not too hard. She also has a new concerto for tuba and orchestra... I don't know the ranges, but I bet it could be successfully done on CC. A very easy "big piece" is the Tuba Rhapsody by Clare Grundman which has a nice band accompaniment.

I will completely agree that there is a need for some major concertos that are more in the "cash register." I would like to be able to enter my freshman in concerto festival. It is usually at least in the Jr. year that my students can evenm consider playing the RVW or Gregson. Granted, I teach in a small state school with a Music Ed focus, not Julliard.

I would contribute to a commisioning of a concerto that was intended for Contrabass tuba.

[MartyNeilan]

A "major" piece one of my BBb only students is playing is the Hindemith Sonata... definitely a big piece, best played on BBb or CC.

So this begs the question (directed towards general audience): For orchestral works, we have all been up in arms about whether the page says "bass tuba" or "contrabass tuba," and that we must play the horn the composer wrote for. So, since the Hindemith says "bass tuba" in the title, why are we pushing for it on the contrabass?

Marty "who doesn't particularly like the piece on either tuba" Neilan

P.S. I played Tchaik 4 two weeks ago, and although my part said "bass tuba" I would have probably been laughed out of the orchestra if I brought a little horn.