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Historically, why are (were?) rotary valves so popular in Germany?

I just got done writing a paper for a performance practice class and this was a point I found authors stating but without reason behind it. Anybody have any ideas?

Jim Langenberg

(P.S. this is NOT homework... I already turned in the paper)

FWIW, when I used to ask this very same question some of my old teachers in NJ and NYC would just say, "because the Germans can't make good piston valves".

This was back in the 80's before the York wannabe explosion.

It's mainly because of tradition, for the appearance. If you notice, most German orchestras have all the valved brass instruments using piston valves--including the trumpets.

Shoot, I was asleep. Yes, you're right.

Germans like rotary valves because the "push down" distance is shorter. If I am correct in my valve history knowledge, rotary valves were invented in Vienna and piston valves in Berlin.

This is just a wild guess, but...

military music corps may have been the biggest customers of brass instrument makers for a while. If I were in charge to choose equipment for my unit, I´d probably go for sturdy, dirt-insensitive and low maintenance gear. To me, that´s what rotaries are. You don´t have to take them apart every day, exposing them to dirt in the process. (keep in mind: back in 19th century, these military band units didn´t have tour buses and instrument trailers. More often than not, their horns never were kept in cases).
This way the tradition may well have been started, running all by itself later.

The original 1835 Berlin based valved-tuba patents were applied to fairly small instruments.

Czechoslovakia then was then part of the German-speaking Austrian empire. Around 1850 a very cunning and industrious Czech, the original Cerveny, designed a wealth of rotary brasses, including the huge Kaisertuba in BBb.

As Cerveny came up with the best instruments of the era, and as he was able to deliver huge volumes for the many military bands, he won the German and Eastern Europe market. Other names like Schediwy and Stowasser were involved, but most rotary tubas can trace their ancestry to Cerveny, when it comes to the acoustical design.

B&S, Miraphone, and Meinl-Weston have contributed with improvements to the mechanical transmissions from the paddles to the rotor movement. Some of these improvements now can be found on some Cerveny instruments.

However that fact doesn’t detract from Cerveny being the technological leader within large conical brasses with rotor valves until at least 1930. Maybe even until WWII. After that time the Catholic German speaking makers were exiled from the Sudeten-area. They are now found in Bavaria under company names like Glassl, M-W, and Miraphone.

The Protestant German speaking makers had been exiled from Bohemia and Moravia two centuries earlier. Their descendants are found in Markneukirchen and Klingenthal in Saxony, which until the wall-fall was part of the GDR.

A strength of the rotary guys was, that they came up with contrabass tubas around 50 years before the piston guys did so.

In the Franglaise area the bottom tuba was in Eb until shortly before 1900. The French and to some degree the Brits used C and Bb tenor tubas in their orchestras. The Brits went into small 6 piston F tubas based on Belgian (Mahillon) valve blocks until around 1960, where the Eb’s took over. Which in turn lead to the enlargement of the leadpipes and bells of the Brit tubas. Their valve blocks through bottom bows have been the same at least since the end of WWII, probably also since a couple of decades earlier (disclaimers: HP/LP – Parker cut).

One reason for the Germans and Czechs building their tubas in very thin metal (the massive rotors actually are heavier than the hollow pistons) shall be found in the reason, that the Germans are horribly bad at making trombone slides (or at least were so). Hence they needed brightish tubas to form the bottom of the trombone section. The original VPO F tuba, the one Brahms wrote for, blended very well with the VPO trombones, which were nowhere as bright as the peashooters of France and the UK.

The US contrabass tuba tradition, as Joe S and RD have told of, is based on the Sousa influence:

The huge circulars, based on helicons were reshaped into upright/bell-front tubas with front action. Keeping the Conn sousaphone idea of the wrapping of an efficient airpath through the valve block.

The odd thing is, that my researches have made me believe, that the normal US front action tuba /sousaphone (no imported stencils aside from the York Master) to a very high degree has been inspired by the Berliner Pumpen, a system which the Germans abandoned some century ago.

I have discussed these matters with list members Sven Bring and Søren Roi Midtgaard. Søren actually gave me a Danish made F tuba with Berliner Pumpen, so that I could write an article on the matter, but even if my eye situation has improved, I haven’t come to writing that article, even if I have it ready in my head.

The code word is bends. If you study material from the horn maker Englebert Schmid, you will realise, that rotor valve blocks are sheer horrors of accumulated bends. Which is not the case with Berliner Pumpen. The Conn front action/sousaphone valve blocks (aside from the 2nd valve) in some ways are an improvement on that system.

Photo documentation is available within my brass galleries project. Sadly Yahoo has changed its .jpg storage address system, so I am working as much as possible on a fast rewriting of the index. Fortunately the matters in question are located in areas, where I have revised the most recent version of the index.

Denis Wick has written, that the US trombones basically are immensely improved versions of the German trombones.

The huge US/York/Chicago orchestral tubas basically are band instruments not blending too well with the trombones. The general remedy is the usage of mouthpieces, which I find ridiculously small.

I have done orchestral work on trombone and horn, but in tuba/sousa/euph/baritone contexts I am a band person. But then my greatest inspiration on tuba has been the "secret" tubist doubling the double bass line in the very old NYPO recordings. And then having been a bowing double bass player myself, before I came to the tuba.

There may be a few amendments to the long series of my postings on the old and new TubeNet in the above lines, but basically these lines are a shorthand compilation.

Klaus Smedegaard Bjerre

Wow Klaus, that's a lot of information in one place. I think the key point you made was that Cerveny was the source for rotary valves becoming popular in Germany, and that they continue to be popular primarily due to tradition.

I would describe current piston valves as evolving from Perinet, which I believe were developed in parallel with Berliner Pumpen. In particular Distin Light Valves, developed in the 1850s/60s in London seem to me to be remarkably like today's current piston valves. I had a Distin Eb Bass from the 1850s that had valves that looked exactly like most piston valves found today.

I would only add to Klaus' succinct explanation is that Wieprecht and Moritz invented the rotary valve and the tuba in an 1830's patent in Berlin for the Prussian army because Wieprecht wanted a better bass for military band than the ophicliede.

And, of course, once something gets intrenched, it usually never changes. Hence, rotaries on the continent and pistons in England, especially after Distin's improvements to Perinet's valves. (oversimplification, I know, just an illustration to point.)

I would only revise Klaus's post by questioning the presence of six valves on British orchestral F tubas. The most I have ever seen is five.

To summarize even further than Klaus did, the rotary valve was invented in German-dominated areas, while the piston valve was invented in France. The British and the French followed similar lines because of the back-and-forth trade with such firms as Besson (originally French and now French again!), both tending to the saxhorn style with top-action piston valves.

Those traditions die hard, especially among a people so deeply concerned with tradition as seems to be the case in German orchestras. The British still use the saxhorn-style Eb tuba, while the influence of one towering performer (Mel Culbertson) has swung French tradition to the use of the F bass and C contrabass as opposed to the C tenor tuba.

America, as always, has borrowed its tradition from others. The use of the Yorkish 6/4 contrabass has, to me, the objective of providing a distinct voice from the trombones rather than attempting to match the trombone sound to any great extent. That doesn't mean it can't blend, as any listen of the CSO low brass CD will assert. The blend is there, but it is a blend of mixed voices. The desire to provide a distinct tuba voice may be a uniquely American influence, but though Jacobs made it more popular the influence was there before him. Two examples of that are Donatelli himself, who had the York made when Jacobs was still in short pants, and Donald Stauffer, who played a 6/4 Conn in a professional orchestra in the 40's before Jacobs became the towering figure that can establish new trends.

We see more mixed use of rotary and piston valves in the U.S. because of the borrowing of those traditions. Bell's King was similar to Helleberg's Sander, which was similar to the Cerveny Kaisertuba from no later than the 1870's. Bell's influence led to the popularity of rotary instruments like the Alexander and, later, the Miraphone (helped by another towering figure--Roger Bobo).

Rick "who thinks towering figures either reinforce old traditions or shatter them" Denney