A Thought

[Chuck Jackson]

While I am out of the playing end of the business, I still listen with a critical ear to stuff I think may work for the tuba and euphonium. Here are a couple of thoughts:

1. When I was working for KCNV, I ran across a disk of music composed by Charlie Chaplin that was performed on the cello. Chaplin was an accomplished cello player who had an instrument made that would fit his "left-handed" i.e.; backwards, playing (must have been rough getting the bass bar to work). Most of the tunes were his "pop" hits (Smiles, etc.) and were expertly arranged by him. They would work perfectly on the bass tuba or euphonium. The name of the cd escapes me, but it would well worth the hunt as these are engaging, AUDIENCE FRIENDLY works.

2. I have noticed that no Euphonium players (mind you, I may have missed it) who have taken a stab at Weber's "Andante and Hungarian Rondo". While incredibly florid and requiring the player to have a good command of the bottom end of the instrument, it should be doable. Any Euphonium player who can play the "Arpegionne Sonata" could easily do this. This, again, is an AUDIENCE FRIENDLY work.

Chuck"thinking"Jackson

[BVD Press]

If anyone is interested in either the Weber or Arpeggione (Schubert), both can be found here for Euph/:

http://www.cimarronmusic.com/music-werden.cfm

Fun and challenging are both as Yoda might say....

[Dylan King]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXxJ9lwfS4M
http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/oh-tha ... d346161327

[sloan]

In general I've found flute pieces tend to work better on tuba than do cello pieces, although I'm not sure why.

Air.

[sloan]

Air.

This is the obvious conclusion and the one to which I alluded, although perhaps a more thorough explanation of the differences might be worth exploring. For example, the prevalence of places to breathe does not, at first glance, seem to be the sole determinant of appropriateness. I've played flute transcriptions where the places to breathe are fewer and farther between than some string transcriptions, and yet the flute transcriptions seem to be more natural to play. Tonal spacing could, perhhaps, be another indicator. Curiously some wind instrument pieces which might be similarly easy to adapt (e.g. clarinet or oboe works) do not seem to be as well represented.

Perhaps I was too terse.

Tuba and flute are at the top of the list for "volume of air moved". Other wind instruments do not necessarily impose the same requirements. So, the division is not between "wind" and "non-wind" so much as "HUGE amounts of air needed" vs. "not". With oboe (and, to a lesser extent, clarinet), you break the phrase to breath OUT, not in!

I think this might also be reflected in the type of articulations used/required. I suspect this has more to do with the success of cello transcriptions that the proximity in pitch.

Question: does anyone know of a piece written for tuba that has been transcribed for another instrument?

[Todd S. Malicoate]

Question: does anyone know of a piece written for tuba that has been transcribed for another instrument?

As the "official" accompanist of the OSU trombone studio, I can assure you that many tuba works are performed on bass trombone. While there really isn't a need to "transcribe" them, there are sometimes passages that need to be altered just a bit to function better on the slide instrument (although I am nearly always amazed by what these young players manage to do when I would think it impossible).

The Vaughan-Williams, John Williams, and Gregson concerti are popular choices. I have a student now doing the Halsey Stevens sonata (although I think that one was actually published for bass trombone in a different version) and also the Ewazen "Tuba/Bass Trombone" thing.