I think you're seeing the confluence of two trends. One is towards increasing acceptance of tubas pitched in C. This trend is now, of course, dominant within the professional ranks. The other trend is towards the large grand orchestral style of instrument. Jacobs did not invent this approach, but he is largely the performer in everyone's mind now when they consider such an instrument.TubaView wrote:Not exactly what it may imply, but I was just wondering when the concept of "cutting" horns began. From the stories I've been told about our musical forefathers, these guys just had several horns around for different applications. The uber-Yorks of the CSO were fairly custom-made for Jake, but it seems like there have been a fair number of 6/4 BAT's chopped in the persuit of that sound over the years.
Jacobs was a prolific teacher. During his peak years in the 50's and 60's, the rotary tuba had started to make substantial inroads into orchestral use. But some of his students wanted a fat, American-style tuba similar to the York. The choices were few, however. Jacobs helped his students select the Holtons that were loose copies of the York made for Jacobs to use when Holton was the sponsor of the Chicago Symphony Brass Quintet in which Jacobs played. These were inconsistent, however, and nobody else was making instruments of that type pitched in C.
One of Jacobs's students, Bob Rusk, started to salvage otherwise junked BBb Yorks by grafting modern front-action valvesets onto the big BBb carcasses. The idea was not only to make a BBb into a CC, but also to take a nearly dead top-action school horn and turn it into a front-action instrument that could be used in an orchestra.
Hirsbrunner was the first modern maker to make reproductions of the Jacobs York, and of course they still make them. They started this in the late 70's, a few years after Holton stopped. It was during this time, I believe, that Rusk started his work.
So, I don't know if Bob Rusk was the first to "cut" an instrument from BBb to CC, but he was the first to try to do so specifically with the intention of creating available sources for the grand orchestral style of tuba that was otherwise not available.
Now, as to whether the Yorks themselves were cuts, I don't think so. They were certainly based on the BBb instruments that York made at the time. But they don't show the usual signs of having been shortened. All the bows extend to fill the available space, and so on. Clearly both the CSO Yorks were prototypes built on commission for Donatelli, as elsewhere described. Donatelli was apparently having problems with his conductor at the time, who didn't want the big instrument (unlike the previous conductor who had requested it). So, he sold the York to his best student, Arnold Jacobs, who needed both an instrument and a good deal. It's one of those moments that seems insignificant at the time, perhaps--the dislodged pebble that starts the avalanche. Donatelli was endorsing Conn a couple of years later. This isn't the story most often recounted in lore, but it is the story that fits with the oral histories that have been recently collected by Carole Nowicke. (By the way, the second York tuba was sighted by Donatelli while on tour at a university in Oklahoma, and he notified Jacobs, who obtained it by offering other instruments in trade).
Rick "who prefers not to address Jacobs, who he had never met, as 'Jake'" Denney
