The Dvorak 9 TRUE story

[Tubaguyjoe]

So I have had a string of Dvorak 9 gigs lately, which leads me to the question of why the tuba part exists at all. As most of you probably know, there are only 14 notes at the beginning, and the end of the 2nd movement. Up until now, i've only heard stories...things about Dvorak not liking a tuba player who insisted on a part, the orchestra saying that tuba player didn't have enough services and that Dvorak should write a part, things like that.

The part really is a bit ridiculous, and was for sure an afterthought. This morning, Carl St. Clair told me after the break when I asked him if I was finished or not, told me that he heard it was something to do with Dvorak's wife having an affair with a tuba player, and the part Dvorak wrote was getting back at him in some way.

I googled it and found this,

http://blogs.usyd.edu.au/sydneylife/200 ... ied_1.html" target="_blank" target="_blank

Can anyone bring this story to a close for me once and for all. I'd love to really know why the part was actually written. I bet Dvorak never thought that this part would be famous in the Tuba players repertoire for years to come as, "the fewest notes in a symphony".

Thanks for your input.

-Joe

[pierso20]

HAHA! I happened to think much of those were quite funny. Especially the authors personal touch.

[Dylan King]

As a composer and orchestrator, I don't think the 9th symphony would be complete without the tuba part. At the point that the tuba plays, we hear a brass choir. I'm sure that he wrote that part deliberately, to color the sound.

In film scoring school I once did a cue where we had a 42 piece orchestra, including my old friend Doug Tornquist on tuba. I wanted to write something fantastic and fun for the cue, but the picture didn't call for it, and Doug ended up playing four low C whole notes.

As a tubist who has played Dvorak's 9th a number of times, I always wished thee was more to play, but also enjoyed the surround-sound concert while observing the tacet.

-DK

[Wyvern]

My GUESS is that the tuba was just included at that points to enhance the tone colour - possibly added as an after thought. But we can never know for sure. Nice story!

Equally puzzling is why Sibelius never again included tuba after his 2nd symphony when that has such a significant part.

[Mojo workin']

This has been posted before, a tuba part for this symphony that has considerably more meat to it than the original, written by Robert Ryker - former tubist of the Montreal Symphony.

[joebob]

The tuba part is entirely in unison with the bass trombone part. That always leads me to wonder if Dvorak originally wrote it without a tuba part, but that when he first heard it played (perhaps in a rehearsal), the bass trombonist couldn't play the notes big enough or in-tune enough and so a tuba part was added to fill it out. Just a theory.......

[jeopardymaster]

When you sit through it as often as I have, watching the bass trombone part and listening, you notice all kinds of places where the tuba could add to the piece, particularly in the 1st and 4th mvts. That chorale from the 2nd mvt even recurs in the 4th, and in a context where including the tuba could enhance it quite a bit.

I dunno why he did it, but, as Gilligan would say, "there's something wrong here, Skipper!"

[Alex C]

My GUESS is that the tuba was just included at that points to enhance the tone colour - possibly added as an after thought. But we can never know for sure. Nice story!

Equally puzzling is why Sibelius never again included tuba after his 2nd symphony when that has such a significant part.

Supposedly... The orchestra in Finland was very small and the lone tuba player dominated the orchestra no matter how softly he played. I can imagine that the best string players in Europe, at the time, did not relish the idea of living in Finland either.

Sebelius is supposed to have commented to someone that the tuba was too heavy and ceased writing for it. Perhaps if he'd had access to an ophecleide...

[THE TUBA]

I subscribe to the Brahms theory. Dvorak's European publisher sent the score to Brahms for double-checking, and Brahms could have "corrected" Dvorak's potentially prominent use of tuba. Has anyone written a dissertation on this?

[cambrook]

I think that might be the polite version A few years ago the Finnish Radio Orchestra toured to the Perth Festival and I asked the brass players about this. Some of the older players had teachers who had worked (or their teachers worked) when Sibelius was writing, and the story they told was that the tuba player was not very strong - this was Finland in 1901 - and Sibelius could not get the result he wanted so stopped writing for tuba. Such a shame, as he didn't change much else about his orchestration "voice".

Perhaps a Finnish colleague can confirm this?

[UDELBR]

Equally puzzling is why Sibelius never again included tuba after his 2nd symphony when that has such a significant part.

The story I've heard more than once from prominent conductors is that at the premier of the 2nd, the tubaist showed up drunk and made every conceivable mistake during the concert. Hence Sibelius' "ban" on the tuba.

And if that ain't true, it oughta be.

[Easty621]

As for Sibelius: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=14029&hilit=why+sib ... e+for+tuba" target="_blank

[samulirask]

Equally puzzling is why Sibelius never again included tuba after his 2nd symphony when that has such a significant part.

The story I've heard more than once from prominent conductors is that at the premier of the 2nd, the tubaist showed up drunk and made every conceivable mistake during the concert. Hence Sibelius' "ban" on the tuba.

And if that ain't true, it oughta be.

I think this is also mentioned in Erik Tawastjernas five-part Sibelius biography. If I don´t remember wrong Sibelius told this himself in a letter or in a diary (I´m too lazy to check this, although I have these five books in my bookshelf...)

Of course his music went into different direction after the second symphony, so probably the tuba player being drunk in a concert wasn´t the only reason why he didn´t use tuba anymore.

[windshieldbug]

Equally puzzling is why Sibelius never again included tuba after his 2nd symphony when that has such a significant part.

The story I've heard more than once from prominent conductors is that at the premier of the 2nd, the tubaist showed up drunk and made every conceivable mistake during the concert. Hence Sibelius' "ban" on the tuba.

And if that ain't true, it oughta be.

Maybe the tuba player showed up SOBER one night...

[Rotaryclub]

I've always heard it was the conductor's wife who was having the affair with the tuba player, and he (whomever and wherever this was) asked Dvorak to write something, anything, to include him when they went on tour because there was nothing else on the program which would have left the tubist back home with plenty of access to the straying wife.

[Steve Marcus]

When you sit through it as often as I have, watching the bass trombone part and listening, you notice all kinds of places where the tuba could add to the piece, particularly in the 1st and 4th mvts. That chorale from the 2nd mvt even recurs in the 4th, and in a context where including the tuba could enhance it quite a bit.

Conductor Robert Rÿker created a tuba part for this symphony when he was Principal Tuba of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. It has very sensible passages for the tuba in the first and fourth movements (to be played with symphony orchestra--not a "bandstration!"). He adds one low C# in bars 96-98 to the 14 notes that Dvorak wrote for the chorale in the Largo. The Scherzo remains tacet for the tuba.

[imperialbari]

Going on tour for the sake of 14 notes?

An article (on paper somewhere within the last two decades) told about Dvorak’s trombone writing, which in some places is too agile to fit well with traditional Central European slide making, which rather produced body-building tools than speedsters for virtuoso work. This area, and also my more northern country, had a widespread usage of valve trombones even in the finest orchestras up to around 1900. But the German/Czech rotor valve bones rarely, if ever, came with triggers or with wraps allowing for easy slide manipulation. At least I never saw anything of that sort until quite recent high-end cimbasso models.

Even with this catch of either inherent slowness or inherent dubious tuning in some keys Dvorak at least in one place wrote fast trombone arpeggios involving 2nd line B natural. That writing wondered players and scholars. Until the find of some, for the area, unusual period valve trombones. Small bore and with well working triggers. I am not positive on the valve type, but my inner screen shows a photo of a piston instrument.

I have given away one of my valve trombones, yet they tend to strand with me, so that I have 4 in two pitches.

The third trombone in Dvorak’s orchestra must either have been in a lower pitch than Bb or have had more than 3 valves. And here my detour comes to a topic relevant point.

From my helicon shaped Kühnl & Hoyer 3 piston Eb bass trombone with its small bore I know that such low valve trombones don’t have much carrying power. And it isn’t just an old-man-problem. Søren, also of TubeNet, is physically much stronger than me, and he couldn’t make that valve bassbone’s low range say very much either.

If Dvorak was out for the sound of a full brass choir sound, like some present posters have mentioned, then the tuba simply was indispensable in an orchestra with small bore trombones.

Klaus

[Tubainsauga]

That chorale from the 2nd mvt even recurs in the 4th, and in a context where including the tuba could enhance it quite a bit.

Actually, I've been asked to play that chorale with the trombones by my current conductor. It does add quite a bit (though it means I have to be in rehearsal for longer. Oh well.

[Tubadork]

Equally puzzling is why Sibelius never again included tuba after his 2nd symphony when that has such a significant part.

The story I've heard more than once from prominent conductors is that at the premier of the 2nd, the tubaist showed up drunk and made every conceivable mistake during the concert. Hence Sibelius' "ban" on the tuba.

And if that ain't true, it oughta be.

Gene Pokorny told that story at ITEC this past summer and even showed a sheet that had the pay for each of the musicians and the tuba players name was crossed off (if I remember right).
Bill