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Would you say the tuba is an extension of the horns or the trombones. One of my friends says it's an extension of the trombones because it sometimes acts as a 4th trombone in orchestra. My other friend says it's an extension of the horns because it's conical like the horn. What do you all think?

Neither. Not a bass trombone or a bass horn. More like a bass cornet that composers use most often as a bass instrument to the trombone section.

In my opinion: flugelhorn > euphonium > tuba, as the most conical brass instruments.

Bob Mosso wrote:In my opinion: flugelhorn > euphonium > tuba, as the most conical brass instruments.

Agreed.

and here I have thought all along that we were just there to wink at the cute violinists and oboists, strike some fear in the double bassists and to keep the violas looking over their shoulders....

Paul S wrote:and here I have thought all along that we were just there to wink at the cute violinists and oboists, strike some fear in the double bassists and to keep the violas looking over their shoulders....

That too ...

I believe in neither... the ORCHESTRA is just an extension of the tuba.

sc_curtis wrote:I believe in neither... the ORCHESTRA is just an extension of the tuba.

Naw, silly! The orchestra is just a water key for the tuba!

don't forget an extension of the double bass section too....

According to a world famous bass trombonist writing here, the tuba is not part of the trombone section:

http://www.basstrombone.nl/forum/viewto ... c&start=15

"We are a long way from the day when we had a true "family" of instruments in the trombone section with radically different sizes. But we are ironically getting closer to the day when Berlioz was writing for a section of three matched tenor trombones of the same size and bore. One of the reasons composers have had so much trouble with the low brass section is that the tuba is so far removed from the trombones in its construction that it doesn't blend IN the trombone section. The tuba is a great bottom especially when it doubles the 3rd trombone for reinforcement of three part writing, but for four part writing, it's like having 3 like voices and one different one. Verdi, when writing for cimbasso (which was a valve contrabass trombone in BBflat), understood this. He deeply disliked the tuba, feeling it didn't blend with trombones, and preferred a section of 2 tenor trombones in B flat, bass trombone in F and contrabass trombone in BB flat. All were valved instruments. Today, when playing Verdi (recognizing that valved trombones are now more or less obsolete, and slide instruments are in favor), we come closest to his requirements by using 2 medium bore tenor trombones in B flat, 1 large bore bass trombone in B flat and 1 contrabass trombone in F. That keeps the instruments in a relatively similar size and timbre to what Verdi wanted, notwithstanding that the bass trombone in F is not used any more."

Here's one more comment, by a different author, from the same thread quoted above. Isn't it interesting to get the perspective of the trombonist?

"Let's face it, the trombones and tuba make for a very unhappy partnership as their tone qualities are so dissimilar. Historically, the modern tuba is descended from the serpent via the ophicleide and early tuba and was always subjoined to the trombone group as a matter of convenience, though in reality none of these low brass instruments shares anything in common in terms of timbre, hence the desire later in the nineteenth century to provide a true trombone bass to the other trombones in the form of the contrabass trombone, which Wagner, Strauss, Verdi and Puccini all did, to name but a few. With the disappearance of the low bass trombones around, for argument's sake, the turn of the nineteenth century, the even more obvious lack of a true trombone bass resulted in the adoption of the tuba, though most composers did not treat it differently from the trombones and it was often scored for as though it is another trombone, which is also the case today. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose....

The dissatisfaction of composers such as Wagner aside, the contrabass trombone has been far too infrequent a visitor to the orchestra to establish any permanent place for itself in the low brass, which is also true of the tenor tuba, bass trumpet and Wagner tuben. Thus we are left with the same group of three trombones plus tuba (for the sake of convenience) as in the mid-nineteenth century, for which most mainstream composers (including Wagner, Bruckner, Brahms, Mahler, Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov, Prokofiev, Rachmaninov, Stravinsky, Debussy, Ravel, Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Holst, Britten, Walton) score or have scored for the last 150-odd years, all of which points to the tuba being as much a member of the trombone section as the trombones are members of the increasingly misconceived tuba "section". Remember: the tuba would not be there but for the trombones and it still fulfils its surrogate rôle as a trombone bass whether you acknowledge it or not; the presence of the tuba still largely depends on that of the trombones, not the other way around."