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I was wondering if any one has a pretty comprehensive list of orchestral, solo, and Quintet literature that would require the use of an F Tuba. The head of the music department is looking into buying one and was wanting to know if there is enough literature to justify the cost of one. What would be a great all around f tuba also?
Daniel Rathert
Missouri State

Just about every high end solo is performed on the F tuba. CC tuba is the staple large ensemble horn. Also have to consider that any serious tubist in America is going to have to learn F tuba before undertaking a professional career. Of course there are some exceptions, but as a University I would consider having at least 1 high quality F tuba as essential as owning marimbas or a celesta. While it might not be used as often as a CC tuba, it is never the less essential for the tubists to be proficient on.

I would consider it 100x more important to be trained on than piano proficiency. That is for darn sure.

As far as which one to buy. That is a whole other ball of wax. Get a PT-10 with hard case and call it a day. Budget $8,000 or so.

Doc wrote:I also think Joe is right. (when is he not?) How many will bust their hump with a school instrument? Enough? If it's just going to be used as a learning tool, as in "Here's the F tuba. Play it a while and learn it in case you ever need it," then the school has to approach it that way. Maybe then it's like piano proficiency. Ok, I can go along with that, but "required" to train serious players? Nah. I don't buy it either. Doc

I dunno...
Many schools have things like piccolo trumpets and alto trombones that students will check out the semester of their recitals. Plus, there are always the contrabass clarinets and contrabassoons that the clarinet and bassoon players will play but probably never own.
I for one think it would be a good idea on the undergrad level - so that the students could get their feet wet on it and have some experience before dropping 5-10G.

bloke wrote:Every time a state university buys a "toy" such as this, much of the money came from hard-working lower and lower-middle class people who are struggling to feed and house their families, and who are struggling to pay exorbitant state sales tax rates.

There's a way to resolve this.

1. You can determine the actual need by determining the fair rent for the instrument (charged to the borrowing student as a student fee), and then making a standard economic analysis of whether the rents will offset the cost of ownership. That cost of ownership includes the initial purchase, the maintenance, and the eventual replacement, in the same dollars (accounting for the time value of money) as the rent income. In the real world, this is called a business case.

2. If you can't identify enough usage to provide sufficient rent to make a good business case for it, then you have your answer. You don't need it. Students to decide they need one can purchase a used one, and then sell it if they decide on something new, for nearly no long-term cost of ownership.

3. If you can make a good business case for it, then use that to establish the need for both the purchase and the rental charge.

I had to pay lab fees to use the test equipment in my various engineering labs. I would assume this would be the same thing. But (hint, hint) many of the labs I worked in were not funded from taxes, but rather from alumni gifts. The scholarships that might reimburse a student for renting an F tuba might also come from alumni gifts.

Rick "whose niece uses the contrabassoon bought by her university" Denney

Rick Denney wrote:But (hint, hint) many of the labs I worked in were not funded from taxes, but rather from alumni gifts. The scholarships that might reimburse a student for renting an F tuba might also come from alumni gifts.

I'm always a little skeptical when I hear that a certain project was funded solely by alumni gifts. That often means that alumni gifts that were previously used for other purposes are diverted to the new project - often with "traditional" funding diverted over to what the alumni gifts otherwise would have gone for.

Overall, though, I don't think it is a terribly difficult case to make for a university to own a bass tuba for student use. The intolerable abuses pointed out by Bloke are examples that should cost somebody their job, but they don't seem to me to make the case that a university with numerous tuba majors should not own a single bass tuba that will likely get extensive student use. Compared to other types of equipment purchases, it seems a fairly reasonable one.

*EDIT*
I think the case is an easier one in a school with a significant orchestral program, where the instrument is more likely to get ensemble use.

I teach at Montclair State University in NJ. We decided to buy an F tuba for our students. It has proved to be a very worthwhile puchase. The students have all had a chance to spend time with it, when ordinarily they would not have this opportunity. It is a Meinl Weston 45S, 5 rotary valves. It plays very well. Great horn for the price.
Playing solo tuba music on BBb or CC tubas sound great, but it sounds even better on F or Eb. That's why all the greatest players have chosen to play them. I've seen "anti" F tuba people completely change their minds after getting a good F and learning it. You have to get a good one and spend time with it.

Kyle Turner wrote:I teach at Montclair State University in NJ. We decided to buy an F tuba for our students. It has proved to be a very worthwhile puchase. The students have all had a chance to spend time with it, when ordinarily they would not have this opportunity. It is a Meinl Weston 45S, 5 rotary valves. It plays very well. Great horn for the price.
Playing solo tuba music on BBb or CC tubas sound great, but it sounds even better on F or Eb. That's why all the greatest players have chosen to play them. I've seen "anti" F tuba people completely change their minds after getting a good F and learning it. You have to get a good one and spend time with it.

That is pretty much the way it works. Thanks for the post Kyle. All the other stuff here about being pissed at paying taxes has little to do with the original question.

Yes. A sharable F tuba makes infinite sense and should be a standard piece of equipment at any school which offers a tuba performance degree. I find it difficult to believe that fellow tubists would argue that a tuba performance major does not need access to an F tuba.

I would definately say that an institution of higher learning should have an Eb or F available for the tuba students to play. True, any performance major SHOULD have their own, just as trumpet players amass a Bb, C, cornet, piccolo, Eb, etc. etc.

Since most students acquire the bass tuba AFTER they start studying, it is at least imortant for them to have a benchmark for their search process, if not as part of their performing development.

The posts have been interesting, but nothing is really answering the original question.

What the original poster needs is a literature list for which f tuba would be preferable. A list of solo literature is easy - a list of orchestral literature probably would be more useful for the goal at hand (to convince his department to buy an f tuba).

I don't have the expertise to make suggestions for this list (well, OK, at least I can suggest Symphonie Fantastique, and probably most Berlioz), but I thought I would at least try to re-direct the responses. Help the guy out a little and suggest some orchestral literature that is generally played on f.

Uncle Buck wrote:What the original poster needs is a literature list for which f tuba would be preferable. A list of solo literature is easy - a list of orchestral literature probably would be more useful for the goal at hand (to convince his department to buy an f tuba).

Ones that come to my mind for bass tuba (F, or Eb) are:

All Berlioz (& most other French repertoire)
All Brahms (I know some may have other ideas)
Mendelssohn - Midsummer Nights Dream Overture
Mendelssohn - Elijah
Franck - Symphony in D minor
Mahler - 1st symphony solo (3rd movement)
Mussorgsky - Bydlo from Pictures (if not played on euph)
Wagner - Flying Dutchman Overture, Tristan Prelude (& others, except Ring)

Uncle Buck wrote:The posts have been interesting, but nothing is really answering the original question.

What the original poster needs is a literature list for which f tuba would be preferable.

I understood his original question was how to convince the powers that be at his school to buy an F tuba.

He asked for a list of literature which is traditionally played with an F tuba. I personally don't think that is the best argument.

If the school is going to offer a tuba performance degree then it is essential that at the VERY least students need to learn the F tuba by their Junior year. It makes too much sense to have the school own at least 1 professional quality F tuba for students to learn on.

With few exceptions, American professional tubists utilize F tubas. The University needs to take a careful look at the graduation criteria for a tuba performance major if learning to play F tuba is not part of an undergraduate program. You can't teach someone how to play F tuba in undergrad if there is no F tuba available.

Not everyone has the $10,000-$20,000 it can cost to own both a CC and an F AND pay for college. This is part of the reason schools buy timpani, celesta, contrabassoons, etc. These instruments are essential to some degree programs in order to fully train students.

As I stated before, it is infinitely more important for a tuba performance major to learn F tuba than to learn piano proficiency.

If you still think just listing literature is the best approach, then collect audition lists for the past few years and cite which tunes are F tuba tunes. Then highlight how a tubist performance major, who is being trained supposedly to become gainfully employed as a performer, is required to be proficient in those cited excerpts and solos in order to fulfill the most basic goals of the performance degree.

If the University still maintains that they don't need an F tuba, then they should also seriously rethink offering a tuba performance degree.

bloke wrote:I now remember that a nearby (major) university actually bought a (used) F-tuba (the model that woodsheddin likes, btw): The acting tuba instructor talked the powers that be into buying an F tuba. He messed around for a while thinking he was going to use it in the faculty brass quintet, but never really got the hang of it. The thing sat for a year or so, and a 25-year-old sophomore - who had actually been working on a bachelor of music degree at that school since age 18!! - messed around with it for a couple of semesters.

Then why they he££ wasn't said instructer using the F in his program if for no other reason than to demonstrate why HE thought it wasn't necessary!?

WoodSheddin wrote:He asked for a list of literature which is traditionally played with an F tuba. I personally don't think that is the best argument.

I don't disagree that the points you made present a better argument for a university F tuba purchase than a literature list. However, since the individual who will ultimately make the decision specifically asked for an literature list, I would recommend meeting that request and then supplementing the list with the arguments that have been pointed out here.

I don't have the "professional" designation by my avatar, but I do have lots and lots of professional experience making and evaluating purchase requests. It isn't always the best argument that makes the difference - it is whatever the decision maker is looking for.

To yank the discussion in yet another direction:

Is there something like a tuba rental service? Pay a sum for renting an F tuba (or any other horn for that matter) for a quarter or semester including a repair fee and replacement insurance. Maybe even 'rent to buy' like with the student instruments. (I'd like to try a good piccolo trumpet or one of those rotary valve B flat trumpets but I sure don't want to buy one. I would pay to rent one for a few months.)

Considering that universities are willing to buy lines of souzies for their marching bands, I think they should also get something that can demonstrably be shown to be necessary for the training of a tuba degree candidate. Kinda like buying microscopes for the biology dept.

Blithering as per usual,

Jeff

As a current tuba performance major
As someone who has had access to a school owned F
As someone who will be buying an F in the near future;

If a school is to offer a degree that (in name at least) is to prepare a student to be a professional musician, it must have all the appropiate equipment to train said student. In the professional world TODAY (important for making comparisons to the likes of Jacobs and Torchinsky, who may not have used F's much, but I believe that Baer and Bobo and Pokorny, and the various pros on this board DO use a Bass of some sort) A student needs to know how to play all four keys of tuba, but at the very least one contrabass and one bass.
My Issue with those that have suggested that a student must buy their own bass, with a five year 'fee' to a certain store in south bend, is how on earth would a person know how to drop big $$ on a bass if they dont know how to play it. and sorry, but for me I needed more than a few hours learning F to figure out what i wanted in an F, 6-8 months or so since I began leanring F i now feel comfortable spending in the 7K range to buy my own. Look at any post for horn advice on his forum and you'll see the most common reply is 'go play a bunch' how can you do that with no training on an F beforehand.
As for these schools that have spent money of F's only to have the horns collect dust and be used by no one, they DO need to re-evaluate their perforance degree, obviously no one serious is in attendance. Here at IC we have a PT-16 that is used at some point by every tuba major, Ed or Performance. Most of us enjoy it, continue to use it, and if we can justify it, (as the performance majors can) buy one. The horn has had many many hours of use and is an indispensible part of the studio. (used in recitals, concerts, and the tuba ensemble)
I cannot speak as one who has paid taxes...I haven't yet ( at least not to a state) but i feel that a <10K investement in a school where the equipment will be used is really a drop in the bucket, especially in some of these larger states, and if the horn will not be used the problem is with the school requesting it, not the government that may be approving it.