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Sousa is pretty well documented in form of parts from his older marches being available on the web. The US-LOC possibly takes a conservative approach in matters bordering copyright conflicts, and I don’t blame them for that.

However the US has other great march composers. One march which I enjoyed especially while being a younger player was Claudio S. Grafulla’s Washington Grays.

I found a full score of an arrangement, but I would rather see parts, or better, the score of the original composition. A full set of parts will do, as it then will be possible to re-establish the score. There are some interesting low brass parts, and I would like to see how Grafulla handled the setting of these.

Somebody in the know out there?

Klaus

contact Richard Rowe, the librarian for the Dodworth Saxhorn Band.

dodworth.org

We have a full cd of Grafulla!

We performed a modern brass band version of it last April. Parts are available. It's on our audition list for a baritone/euphonium opening that we have in the band.

Sam Gnagey wrote:We performed a modern brass band version of it last April. Parts are available. It's on our audition list for a baritone/euphonium opening that we have in the band.

Sam, my interest for the original edition shall be seen in the context of the discussions within the last year or so about the distinguishing of the bass and contrabass tuba lines in marches.

My starting point is with the British brass band, where the Eb and the BBb tubas have separate parts. Each of these parts rarely have divisi in marches, but the BBb line most often is taken quite low, whereas the Eb most often plays an octave higher in a range which would not even challenge a Bb bass trombone. In a band with a weak BBb I often took the Eb line an octave down on my fairly large Besson 981.

Neptune/Jonathan wanted something smaller than his large contrabasses for standing concerts and for marching with his police concert band. His small 3 valve Eb could play the notes, but could not provide sufficient foundation. He ended up with a medium CC for that task.

During that discussion videos with that policeband came up on YouTube from a tour where two Besson Eb’s, likely two 982’s, substituted for Jonathan. I wondered why I didn’t really miss the contrabass notes. The explanation was obviously that British concert band tubas all play from the same part no matter what pitch of instrument. Even Eb tubists send one player for the lower notes in the divisi passages if at all possible.

When I was made aware of the Sousa marches made available through the US-LOC, I noted the oldest one having a part in treble clef for Eb tuba and no other tuba parts except for the Bb bass treble clef part intended for a tenor tuba/euphonium.

The later marches eventually got more divisi passages, but the lowest line usually would be playable on a 4 valve Eb instrument, even if a BBb would be much more convenient.

The same considerations have been up in a thread on the long gone Women’s Army Corps band. A photo from close to 60 years ago shows a lady with 4 piston Buescher Eb sousaphone. Helen Gillespie here of TubeNet was a very young member of that band around 1970. The band issued 20J’s, but Helen preferred her own tuba (of the 186 magnitude), and was reluctantly allowed to use it.

I find Grafulla wrote very interesting counterpoint lines. My aim is to find out, how much weight his basses could provide to them.

Klaus

I don't have original scores available for any Grafulla works, but we play several in the Georgia 8th Regiment Band, a band that specializes in 19th century music, not all of it Civil War tunes. Most of our music from that era followed this pattern: 2 Eb soprano cornets, 2 Bb cornets, 2 alto horns, 2-3 tenor horns (often divided into tenor, baritone, and bass horns, all in modern euphonium range; the difference was most often in bore size), Eb contrabass (a saxhorn in the same range as modern Eb tuba), and percussion. There were bands with more or fewer players on some of the parts: some of our charts have 1 Eb soprano part, 3 alto parts was not uncommon, and we have a few charts with 5 cornet parts and 4 tenor parts. Usually there was one player to a part, with the Eb contrabass the only one commonly doubled. (We occasionally come across music that has a Db piccolo part that doubles the lead soprano part an octave higher.)

Eb contrabass parts were rarely written in split octaves even when there was more than one player. The Bb bass parts were played on a large bore baritone instrument, usually an octave higher than the contrabass. The tessitura of these ensembles was pitched higher than modern groups, so the tones and blends were quite different. Lack of BBb basses does not thin the sound; it actually sounds more consistent and blends better without them.

I'd like to be able to send you some score copies, but our band's trailer was stolen several years ago and we never got the scores that were in it back. We eventually recovered some of the missing instruments (in particular, our 1840 bass drum), but the loss of the scores has been a problem. I could send you some contrabass and bass parts if you'd like, and maybe a few recordings of Grafulla pieces.

imperialbari wrote:I wondered why I didn’t really miss the contrabass notes. The explanation was obviously that British concert band tubas all play from the same part no matter what pitch of instrument. Even Eb tubists send one player for the lower notes in the divisi passages if at all possible.

A lot of the military marches we play have divisi parts. I usually cover that in the Police Band playing my CC, but when just two Eb's playing, then naturally one would take the lower part. An advantage of the 3+1 Eb is that it can as easily move around in the low register as a BBb. Most wind bands and even some professional military bands in the UK use exclusively Eb's.

Where I have seen both the brass band and military band bass parts for a march, then undoubtedly the low line on the military music is identical to the brass band BBb bass part, and the top line the Eb bass.

Washington Grays is a good march. We often play in UK bands.

imperialbari wrote: When I was made aware of the Sousa marches made available through the US-LOC, I noted the oldest one having a part in treble clef for Eb tuba and no other tuba parts except for the Bb bass treble clef part intended for a tenor tuba/euphonium.

Could be wrong, but this might have to do with Sousa's early writing for Brass Band (Civil War instrumentation) which at the time used Eb as the Bass tuba and Bb for Euph/Tenor Tuba. Somewhere I have a copy of manuscript Sousa had done of a medley of Hymns for Brass Band. The group I play with, Yankee Brass Band, played it a few years back. It is a fun chart! Paul Maybery has a copy somewhere...I have a Finale file, but that would take a lot of digging to find it.

The manuscript can be found in this library:

http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/students/r-rosas/souscoll.htm

Great place if you have never been there. Lots of manuscripts, etc. Just good stuff! You might be able to get them to mail you copies of the tuba parts from whatever is in their library. They do have one of the first copies of Stars and Stripes Forever which has just half notes after the opening four bars in the tuba part.

Sorry for having been inaccurate. I went back to my downloaded Sousa marches and found out that the Eb tuba part I referred to was in Liberty Bells, which is as late as from 1894. And that Eb tuba part is written in Bass Clef. I even suspect the Eb tuba indication rather than the usual Basses or Tubas being the responsibility of the editor. This part bottoms out on low G in the lower divisi of the opening statement. Possible on a 4 valve Eb bass, but not likely to provide clarity.

I then started browsing and downloading early marches. So far only Bonnie Annie Laurie March from 1883 has the Eb tuba indication on the Bass Clef part, which bottoms out on Bb below the staff.

As noted by another poster there is some correlation between the Eb being the lowest bass and the Eb cornet/flugelhorn being the lead. The Eb cornet as lead instrument is very rare in modern brass bands. And I must admit that I prefer the BBb basses on the contrabass line, especially in fully manned bands. But as Grafulla obviously knew what he did, I would want to have a first hand look into his toolbox.

Klaus