With increasing globalised unity in many things can you see a time when tubas are truly standardised across the globe? If so which pitches of tuba will prevail?
Will Germans ever embrace C tubas or piston valves?
Will the UK stop starting off kids on Eb and playing that as bass tuba in orchestra?
Are we already as far along as we'll likely get??
Does anyone even care?
(Yeah, I know this is sort of a dressed - up version of "Piston-V-Rotor" & "Which key tuba is best")
More than 30 years ago, one of my profs spoke of the "homoginization" of orchestra's sounds, due to the age of jet travel. Maestros flying all over the world, working to get the same sound out of the current orchestra, that they got out of the last orchestra they conducted, 5,000 miles away on a different continent.
Multiply that scenario by 500, and sudden ly all orchestra start to sound the same! : (
I don't think we'll ever see tubas completely standardized. As long as people come in different shapes and sizes, I think the same will be true of tubas. Smaller instruments (like trumpets, or even euphoniums) can be manhandled, but tubas are just too big for that. When you play tuba, you need to play a horn that fits your body type. Personally, I generally prefer rotary valves, probably because I have fairly small hands, but other people like pistons. (I make an exception to my rotary-valve preference for my 1291 CC.) As for different keys, I know there have been a couple of times when I've been playing in my local community band and I've just decided that a CC tuba doesn't make sense. Why torture yourself on a CC tuba when the music you're playing is all in keys with lots of flats? So, no, I don't think we need to worry about the homogenization of tubas.
------------------- Miraphone 191 5-valve BBb, 1291 CC, 181 6-valve F
Weidlich 4-valve F
Boosey BBb compensating helicon,1906
Besson New Standard 4-valve Euph
More than 30 years ago, one of my profs spoke of the "homoginization" of orchestra's sounds, due to the age of jet travel. Maestros flying all over the world, working to get the same sound out of the current orchestra, that they got out of the last orchestra they conducted, 5,000 miles away on a different continent.
Multiply that scenario by 500, and sudden ly all orchestra start to sound the same! : (
I like the idea of regional differences.
Music is a kanguage. It is said that if (when?) English becomes the only language on the planet then virtually all non-English speaking human cultures will die.
American sailboats, airplanes, banjos, guitars and flutes ...
Italian motorcycles and cars ...
German cameras and tubas ...
Life is Good.
imperialbari wrote:Please remember that English is nothing but old Danish with a hefty sprinkle of Latin.
... and French. And German. And Swedish. And Yiddish. And ...
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."
--James D. Nicoll
American sailboats, airplanes, banjos, guitars and flutes ...
Italian motorcycles and cars ...
German cameras and tubas ...
Life is Good.
imperialbari wrote:Please remember that English is nothing but old Danish with a hefty sprinkle of Latin.
It would have to be very old Danish, around the time of Julius Caesar, when it was also old German, old Frankish, old Gothic etc. English is a West Germanic language with a few Danish loanwords and a lot of old French. Danish by the way has some words of Old English origin, like sjæl and mønt (yes, we let you have them when we got tired of using funny letters.)
England and Denmark were politically very close a millennium ago (and it wasn't the Brits coming here), so the Danish influence was much more recent and direct than you tell.
