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My church orchestra director said that music for church orchestra is typically written with the expectation that it will be played with a BBb tuba. Obviously a CC could easily be substituted. (The range rarely goes high enough to need an Eb or F, but that would work fine too.) I play a BBb tuba and began to think that BBb seems to work best for this application. Any thoughts?

tubamonster

Church Orchestra.
Could be 6 people, could be 100. Could be in a very live hall, or an acoustically dead auditorium with instruments spot miked. Could be amateurs who can barely read music, could be all pros. Music could be painfully simple or wickedly hard. Could have a stone cold congregation or one who jumps, claps, and dances in the aisles. Could be Bach, Beethoven, John Rutter, Camp Kirkland. Could have a three manual pipe organ, a B3 and Leslie, a 9 foot grand, or a Kurzweil. Could have a set of timpani or a full Pearl kit, or a Roland V-Drums. Could have a Fender Jazz Bass or a section or uprights, or both.
Church Orchestra.
Covers a lot of ground, doesn't it?

Marty "who has done all of the above, and it's all good"

tubamonster wrote:typically written with the expectation that it will be played with a BBb tuba.

I don't know that very many composers/arrangers give it a second thought. To them, tuba is tuba unless they are wanting a difference in timbre between bass or contrabass. I have never run across a specified bass tuba part in a church music setting in 35 years of playing. I defy a church director to close his eyes and identify by sound if a tuba is a BBb or a CC.

The good composers/arrangers for church music get the voices and organ right, and the other instruments better know how to play in those keys.

*****

schlepporello wrote:I play in a church orchestra and have done so for over 20 years now. As a matter of fact, were it not for our church having an orchestra, it is very possible that I would not have returned to playing tuba.

Schleppy, didn’t you bring your Eb helicon to church a few times? How did it work there?

In my very diverse playing contexts I was more or less forced to learn to transpose. The first transpositions are hard, eventually one gets the idea and becomes quite flexible. Aside from brass band parts and band playing in some countries along the English Channel, tubists rarely are asked to transpose. However it is my experience that the ability to juggle octaves up and down from the written page comes in handy for bass line players on any instrument in any playing style. Bass tubists will need to move the lowest notes of a contrabass tuba part an octave up. Players reading the string bass part will need to move everything an octave down. In just about any ensemble with two or more tubas fantastic ending chords can be obtained from one player going pedalistic.

Klaus

Very interesting comments.Our church just performed a musical called "The Ornament" which involved a 70 member choir and orchestra. The tuba part was next to nothing,however the sting bass part was fairly substantial. Doubled the part on my BBb horn and played with the strings.To me it sounded great,never had the luck to play with strings before.Was a great experience.Played an octave below written.

As a church orchestra director I believe any of my peers would be so happy to have a decent tuba player that they wouldn't care what instrument he brought.

tbn.al wrote:As a church orchestra director I believe any of my peers would be so happy to have a decent tuba player that they wouldn't care what instrument he brought.

I second this. Our director (who plays bass) LOVES to have some tuba. If she could both play and direct and have tuba, she'd prefer that....moar bass!