Styles of Orchestral Tuba Playing?

[Z-Tuba Dude]

I just finished watching one of Sarah Willis's Horn Hangouts, which featured the principal of the Philadelphia Orchestra.

She talked about different instruments, and different sound concepts as applied to various orchestras.

She mentioned that Alexander horns are not used so much in the US, but are much more common in Europe. The Conn 8D being used in quite a few orchestras in the United States as well as another brand, with which I am less familiar, that is favored by some other US orchestras.

My question is, how does that relate to tuba playing? Clearly, there's no shortage of talk about equipment on TubeNet, but we don't always connect the dots with how the various horns fit into the ensemble. Maybe that's because we are always playing a solo instrument. When you play in a section and are creating a "section sound" maybe there is a level of responsibility to your section mates, which does not exist for a tuba player.

Of course, there's the German style tuba versus the American-style tuba, but beyond that generalization, what responsibilities do we have to the music?

I don't know the answer, but I thought it might be interesting to kick it around.

[jeopardymaster]

Mike Thornton and I had a similar discussion a long time ago, but as I recall he was more an advocate for trying to match the sound you have inside your head. That was the priority - find that sound, and the horn essentially will follow, as I recall. And then, some years later, he made an equipment change from his Alexander 163 to a Willson. Although he said the change was motivated by his Alex simply being worn down, I think he was also tired of waging the intonation battles. But the rest of the section expressed problems with the timbre change, and so it was back to his Alex. Personally I love the way Mike, Ron Bishop and Chester Schmitz, all of them Alex players, sound. They didn't have the same exact sound, but the effect was unmistakable. I confess I have tended to aim more for Chester's sound. Never really got there, of course.

[timayer]

I've been mulling this over in my head lately listening to various Gabrieli recordings.

The short answer is: Whatever the conductor tells you to do.

But the long answer, if we tuba players can philosophize on it, is a lot more complicated. We would have to have an unwieldy number of horns to be historically accurate - German kaiser, Russian BBb, British Eb/BBb, French CC, German F, American CC, Euphonium, American BBb. Most audiences wouldn't hear the difference between most of those horns. It also imputes a lot of intent to the composer, assuming he or she really cared about a specific tuba, rather than just "big low brass instrument."

There are exceptions for what the audience would hear, and what composers intended, though. There is a massive difference between playing the Dies Irae on a euphonium (historically justifiable) and an American BBb (not at all justifiable historically). There is no way Berlioz intended the American BBb sound, because he had never heard it before. Similarly, and one that generally goes unspoken, is using a French CC for the entirety of Pictures. We all talk about using a euphonium for Bydlo, but really it should be for the whole piece. You could easily imagine Ravel and Berlioz seeing you walk in with a 6/4 tuba and exclaiming, "You're going to do WHAT with that?!?!" However, it's equally plausible that they would see you walking in with your 6/4 tuba and openly weep out of sheer joy that there is an instrument with the breadth and depth of sound they always wanted and ABSOLUTELY YOU SHOULD PLAY THE PIECE ON IT. There is no way to know what they would want.

So you could look at it as: Do we want a performance as close to historical accuracy as can be? Or do we want to produce a specific type of sound that we now have available to us? In either case, the choice has to take into account what will make the orchestra sound best, if choice of horn would be noticeable. For example, CC tuba can be inserted into Pictures, rather than a French CC, without overpowering the rest of the orchestra. Two CC tubas in the Symphonie Fantastique may be a bit overpowering. Likewise, whether you use CC or F in certain movements of Bruckner as he specified would likely go unnoticed. A Kaiser BBb in Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream would be ever-so-slightly more noticeable.

Back to my original point - Gabrieli can not be done historically accurately on brass. However, it is a powerful musical exercise to perform the canzonas on brass instruments. When listening to the Empire Brass "Glory of Gabrieli" album, I was initially put off by how thick and overpowering the sound was. Totally different than the 1960s recording, which itself is not historically accurate. But on further listening, what they achieved was a celebration of brass instruments and what they are capable of through Gabrieli's compositions. It is an absolutely musical album/performance, just not anywhere near historically accurate. But they weren't seeking historical accuracy, so they shouldn't be held to that standard.

There is value in producing historically accurate performances. There is also value in reinterpreting pieces with a modern sound, as long as it is done with honesty to the music. The worst thing we can do is say something is "right" or "wrong."

[Steginkt]

I'd like to think that we dont have to get bogged down by the lines of thought that state playing on the first instrument it was performed on is the only way to be 'correct'. Berlioz didn't write the dies irae for a BBb tuba or Euphonium, nor did he write it for any kind of tuba. It was originally serpent and ophelcleide. I'm pretty confident most of these composers would be happy with saying "I want this part to be played by a fully chromatic bass voice with such-and-such timbre".
Its not our job to simply look at the part and go buy another horn to schlep around, nor is it our job to copy what everyone else is doing. If you're being paid, the pay-er is probably hoping you'll use your brains to study the part and the composer and come to a well-informed decision about the best tool for the job.

[timayer]

discernible difference to others' ears...??

cimbasso vs. sousaphone

I think I can speak for many of us in now demanding a recording of La forza del destino with you on a sweet old Conn sousaphone.

I'm pretty confident most of these composers would be happy with saying "I want this part to be played by a fully chromatic bass voice with such-and-such timbre".
Its not our job to simply look at the part and go buy another horn to schlep around, nor is it our job to copy what everyone else is doing. If you're being paid, the pay-er is probably hoping you'll use your brains to study the part and the composer and come to a well-informed decision about the best tool for the job.

Exactly.

French CC

I would like to apologize profusely for this abomination of tuba terminology and hope that it doesn't forever taint my perceived seriousness as a musician. I did 4 major scales and 12 lip slurs as penance.

[Leland]

I've been mulling this over in my head lately listening to various Gabrieli recordings.

The short answer is: Whatever the conductor tells you to do.

(snip)

Back to my original point - Gabrieli can not be done historically accurately on brass. However, it is a powerful musical exercise to perform the canzonas on brass instruments. When listening to the Empire Brass "Glory of Gabrieli" album, I was initially put off by how thick and overpowering the sound was. Totally different than the 1960s recording, which itself is not historically accurate. But on further listening, what they achieved was a celebration of brass instruments and what they are capable of through Gabrieli's compositions. It is an absolutely musical album/performance, just not anywhere near historically accurate. But they weren't seeking historical accuracy, so they shouldn't be held to that standard.

Yesterday, I started wondering what Giovanni Gabrieli would think if we could bring him to the modern day and play his music on contemporary brasses for him. Have the National Brass Ensemble show up again. Might he say, "No no no no no!! Too loud!" Or would he be amazed and say, "Yes! This is what I heard in my head! Those darned sackbuts were all we had..."

[roweenie]

I find it interesting that our tuba predecessors/forefathers seemed to get by just fine one one or two (maybe in very rare circumstances, three) horns for their entire careers.

...but/and all of those tuba-family instruments sound so similar to not-tuba-players and so different from all other orchestral instruments to not-tuba-players, that just about any of those instruments for just about any of those passages would be - well - passable, assuming the correct pitches were played, and no playing-in-rests occurred.

roweenie "who occasionally yearns for the 'good old days'"

[roweenie]

I find it interesting that our tuba predecessors/forefathers seemed to get by just fine one one or two (maybe in very rare circumstances, three) horns for their entire careers.

...but/and all of those tuba-family instruments sound so similar to not-tuba-players and so different from all other orchestral instruments to not-tuba-players, that just about any of those instruments for just about any of those passages would be - well - passable, assuming the correct pitches were played, and no playing-in-rests occurred.

roweenie "who occasionally yearns for the 'good old days'"

I'm all of these: miserly, patient, somewhat shrewd
Likely, I have not paid the "lowest prices ever" for my individual instruments, but I also feel confident that I have not paid the most for any of them.
A USEFUL grouping of instruments makes my job(S) easier and assists me in blending in with various music genre with more ease.

the fact that I mash different configurations of buttons on tubas built in five different lengths: This is nothing compared to the complexity of bassoon, violin, or piano fingerings. Further, the vast majority of the music that I'm asked to play never matches the complexity of theirs, either.

I'm not sure if I was clear (or if I misunderstand you), but I included your statement because I thought it jived with my thoughts and observations, not as a critique aimed at any individual. Considering our role in the orchestra, I sometimes think we tend to "overthink" what we are doing, especially when compared to what is going on around us.

With that said, I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with having several different tools, rather than just one, or a few - I just sometimes marvel at how the "old-timers" got so much, while using so little.

Life has become far more complex than it was when I was younger, and I'm not always so happy about that.

(Truth be told, as I get older, I tend to long for simpler times in general {not just pertaining to tuba playing}, so maybe my statements are colored by things other than logic......)