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Hi-
Thought you'd enjoy seeing a young Bill Bell Goldman, and the famous double bell 'Bell-o-Phone'--from c. 1933...FYI...Mark

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bloke wrote:

You win, Joe.

Chuck

Nice photo, Mark! It looks like the father of a double-bell euphonium.

I'm sure I wouldn't want to haul it around, though.

Somewhere there is a photo of Bill Bell and Harold Brasch playing it together.
I believe that Eli Newberger presently owns the instrument.

Lovely picture! May I please have a copy of the whole page?

Yes, as Art Hovey said, I own the Bellophone. Bill Bell's friend, John Richards, librarian and former tuba with the Portland, OR, Symphony, was deaccession his collection, and after selling me his Holton Del Negro BBb horn, was willing to part with this horn. It welcomes visitors in our front hall and reminds me constantly of Bell's generosity when I was a teenager.

I gave tribute to Mr. Bell the chapter on Sharing in my book on strengthening boys' character development, "The Men They Will Become." Please see the excerpt below.

The horn can be played in 2 ways. From the rear of the top bow, through a tuba mouthpiece receiver with a rotary valve trigger that lets you go from the low end of the tuba range (and then switch) to the entire baritone range. The valves are very long, accommodating the separate tuba and baritone systems.

From the side lead pipe, requiring a change of tubing, it's possible to play just the tuba section. Theoretically, 2 people could play the instrument simultaneously. I've never put that gimmick to test.

The horn looks great but is enormously heavy and quite stuffy.

Hope this helps,

Eli

Sidebar printed in the July, 2001, Journal of the International Tuba-Euphonium Association:

From "The Men They Will Become: The Nature and Nurture of Male Character" (Perseus Books, 1999)

An excerpt from Chapter 8, "Sharing," on William Bell's generosity:

"Rules may be very helpful in causing a certain amount of sharing by the preschooler, but I don't think they will inspire sharing behavior as much as will his seeing the older members of the household be very sharing with each other, with others outside the household, and with him. Sharing is contagious behavior.

During my childhood, my father, even with two jobs, made barely enough income to pay for the essentials. By the time I was a preschooler, my parents were quarreling regularly about money; that is, my father frequently complained about what my mother spent. My mother had an old piano, on which she occasionally played Beethoven's "Fur Elise." When I begged for piano lessons at age five, and a teacher told my mother I had enough talent to justify having a good instrument at home, she, without consulting my father, upgraded the old piano to a Steinway, signing a contract to pay for it in installments. My father was predictably furious, but after his outbursts he would eventually subside.

Looking back, I realize that my parents were playing out the normal middle-class division of labor of that time; a wife stayed home, took charge of the household, and raised the children while her husband earned a living for the household. When such a conventional marriage was not a true partnership – as was the case with my parents – it was easy for the breadwinner to slip into the resentment of thinking his wife was merely a consumer devouring his earnings, and an insatiable one at that. To me, as a preschooler and schoolboy, it often looked as though my mother was caring and giving, to the extent of her ability, and that my father was ungenerous toward her and his children.

In my high school years, when I was earning money playing gigs as a jazz pianist and giving it to my father to save for my college expenses, but also making the tuba my principal instrument, my renowned tuba teacher, William Bell of the New York Philharmonic, offered to sell me one of his favorite horns that he had already loaned me for three years – a Conn pitched in the Key of C – for the giveaway price of two hundred dollars. My father refused to release any of my savings to buy the tuba; he said it was a foolish idea. I went off to college without my own instrument. Though I now have four tubs at home and have given several others from my collection to museums over the years, I yearn to this day for the one that belonged to a teacher with faith in me.

From our household's struggle over finances, I grew up determined to be generous toward others. Yet the legacy of my childhood experience is that I do sometimes find myself calculating the cost of being generous: What is it going to take out of me? When I'm really tired or upset or under pressure, one of the things I do is get very uptight about money. My childhood comes back to haunt me, to remind me of the tremendous long-term power, for better or for worse, in the parent-child relationship.

The character strengths we treasure and foster in ourselves are in dynamic tension inside us with their very opposites – generosity and stinginess, courage and timidity. Under stress we risk becoming the very opposite of what we most aspire to. In the first century, Paul of Asia Minor described this struggle: "The good which I want to do, I fail to do; but what I do is the wrong which is against my will." The qualities that we try to cultivate within ourselves do not come from a textbook or from "character education." Each one reflects a problem or challenge in our lives, against which we try to construct an inner strength to cope with it." (pp. 106-108)

It is rare to see a picture of Bill Bell that young, and it is (unfortunately) becoming rare to hear firsthand from those who new him. I have noticed many times how our instruments themselves help preserve our history and community, and this is another great example of that. Great posts!

Eli-
As requested-in two parts-left and Right of article-FYI-enjoy!-mark

Thanks a million! I so appreciate this!

Eli

After reading this, I thought more about my 3+ years of hour-long, weekly lessons with Mr. Bell (I lived in Mt.Vernon, just outside NY, a 30 minute train ride from Grand Central).
I can recall only one lesson that wasn't structured on exercises and excerpts from my well-worn, trombone Arban book.
Mr. Bell focused like a laser on articulation, the quality (or rather, "beauty" as he inabashedly put it) of sound, breathing (focused on sustaining the column of air through taking "puffs of air" through my nose, even -- and especially -- in rapid passages), embouchure (lips within the mouthpiece in all registers, dropping the jaw and tilting the tuba inward when descending), and sustaining and modulating phrases, with appropriate and expressive use of jaw vibrato, including in individual notes in legato passages. Beauty in the tuba sound, in his view, couldn't be achieved absent a full column of air and discriminating use of vibrato.
That one exceptional lesson, at my request, was on the Hindemith Sonata, which I was asked to perform in my sophomore year at Yale. It was quite frustrating for me. I asked for guidance on musical interpretation, and he woukdn't or couldn't divert from a critical focus on every note and phrase. I thought afterward that he either didn't like like the piece or was annoyed by the 1+ year lapse since my last lesson. Also, he was leaving soon to take his post as professor of tuba and the Indiana University Conservatory. It was an awkward good-bye. He was so important to me.

Eli

A lot of those concepts were passed by Mr. Bell on to my teacher, Sam Green, who insisted that we learn "sniffle breaths" through the nose as Mr. Bell taught him. However, Sam always focused on the musical line and a singing interpretation, whether the music was Hindemuth, Arban, or something else. Anyone who studied with Sam learned a lot about Bill Bell and his approach. To the end of his life, Sam spoke of Mr. Bell with something akin to reverence. He must have been a very special player, teacher, and character!

I'll happily post additional pictures of the Bellophone's intriguing structure and valves, but for the life of me I can't figure out how to do so, even after reading the TubeNet FAQ.

If someone can help, start me off with my iPhone 5s camera.

Thanks,

Eli

Eli-FYI-mark

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