TubeNet

I am doing a research paper for my 4xxx level music history class. It has to be a pre-1750 subject. I would like to know if anyone has any neat ideas or concepts that would be worth looking into. I would like something that is a somehwhat "fresh" idea and would also like something that I could apply to my everyday musical study, perhaps something I could elaborate on in graduate study. Is anyone working on an interesting subject for their thesis or dissertation? Thanks for the ideas!

As you know, the TUBA wasn't invented until 1835 by two guys from Berlin, Germany. I did my master of music program at a school that required that most of the research I did for my classes involved my concentration, which was tuba. Write something about the serpent and the way G.F. Handel used it in his instrumentation of his Royal Fireworks Music. He was the only Baroque composer known to use it prominently and this was the only surviving work using it.



serpent

The ophicleide didn't come out until 1817. It was used by several Romantic composers, mostly by the ones who were anticipating a better instrument to be on the market soon--Hector Berlioz, for example.



ophicleide

My major professor had me go easy on anything that happened before 1840. I was tested on the music, history, and musical forms of everything before that time, which I passed with flying colors. But my research mostly centered on the use of the tuba between 1850 and 1930.

If it would be allowed, how about theorizing how Handel, Bach, etc. might have used the Tuba in their compositions. It might make an interesting paper!

I guess you could do that at the undergraduate level. I never had much say about what I wrote about until I got into graduate school. But there, it was all about what actually happened and not what might have happened.

Facts, facts, facts...

Thanks for the ideas...keep em' coming

The post-restoration development of Anglican chant into metrical hymns with Watts and others?