Todd S. Malicoate wrote:Simple answer...it's easier and more economical to add a 5th (and 6th!) valve instead.
Besides, those compensating tubas that were manufactured are really heavy!
I think an equally compelling question would be...why aren't there more 5 or 6 valve euphoniums???
In another thread, I made the point that the tuba we know today is the result of a collaboration between musicians and instrument makers over the whole history of the instrument. The reason we think of the modern tuba sound as being characteristic is because that's the sound we have always associated with the tuba. This concept migrates, but slowly.
For this topic, the important element of this process is that it is regional. In this modern age when we can have world-wide discussions just by typing into a keyboard, we sometimes have to remind ourselves that when someone invented something in Germany in 1836, it might take months or years for someone in, say, England to be aware of it.
Even now we continue the regional trends that started a century ago. Occasionally, something happens that causes a fundamental shift.
There is no doubt in my mind that the British-style euphonium was a generally superior instrument to the American-style baritone. People will argue, but the British instrument has a bigger sound and presence in a band. That's why the introduction of the Boosey euphonium to the Marine Band in about 1950 revolutionized euphonium use in this country. (Was it Art Lehman who first brought the Boosey to the Marine Band? My memory fails me on that important detail. It was Glenn Call who first recounted the history, and now I can't remember all of the story as he told it.)
The Blaikley compensation system came along with those Boosey euphoniums. Boosey's premium models didn't have the option. So that's what everyone got used to in the premiere bands over the subsequent years. It has taken a very long time for that to filter its way down into schools, but I suspect the schools still using front-action, bell-front Conns are diminishing rapidly. Even at schools that use non-compensated euphoniums such as the Yamaha 321, the best players are dreaming of the instruments used by their heroes.
But the motivation for this was that one influential performer brought a new instrument technology to a region and that sparked a shift in tradition.
In England, the standard orchestral F tuba was an uncompensated Barlow F tuba. That instrument was quite small, but it did indeed have five valves. It was still configured like a saxhorn, with three top-action valves and two side valves similar to a modern French saxhorn basse. It wasn't compensated because it was developed before Blaikley's invention, or at least before it was popularized by Boosey. As Jonathon has pictured, some of the orchestral F's did eventually get built as compensating instruments. But since nobody in England at the time was playing a C tuba, there was no motivation for Boosey to construct one, beyond the occasional experiment.
The small British orchestral F tuba was unlikely to cross the pond, because over here, the very large C tuba already had its performers who were themselves world-class. In fact, their performance so defined the orchestral tuba sound that the tradition is working its way back into England.
But American instruments didn't have the Blaikley compensating system, and the reason they didn't is at least in part because Boosey owned the patents on it. So, orchestral contrabass tubas used additional valves as a means of managing intonation problems (primarily what Stauffer called the valve swindle), rather than an automatic compensation system.
Germans went their own way from the start, and never felt the need to adopt the instruments or practice of Britain or America. They, too, solved the valve swindle problem with additional valves. Even if they had embraced the Blaikley automatic compensation system, those patents would have prevented them from using it.
In the end, both methods work. Fine performers manage somehow to play all the required notes in tune, using whatever method that have grown accustomed to.
And, as the two approaches have developed, people have grown accustomed to the results and figure out how to make them work. Thus, British tuba players think their pinky finger is too weak to operate a valve, and American tubas players think compensated tubas are stuffy.
Rick "thinking neither solution comes without compromises" Denney
