History of the CC Tuba's Orchestral Dominance?

[iiipopes]

extra credit: Which manufacturer, today, makes the only "legitimate" saxophone that is (via its pedigree) NOT a "copy of a saxophone" ?

OK. I'll bite: Selmer?

[swillafew]

I couldn't find William Bell's name in there, but I heard back in the last century that he more or less demanded CC players, and he was doing a lot of teaching. He taught 3 of the teachers I had, and the other one was a prodigy of one of the first 3.

Having said that, none of those teachers I had gave a (your expletive here) what horn any of their students played. One liked to say, "that thing won't make a sound until you pick it up".

[Art Hovey]

"Why Bb?" I think it's because an average-size adult can reach 7th position on a Bb trombone.
"Why CC?" I keep reading that a CC tuba is more nimble than a BBb, but how many orchestra tuba parts require nimbleness?
A better reason is the E-natural above the staff which appears fairly often in symphonic literature, but almost never in band music. That note tends to be risky on a BBb tuba.

[Donn]

I don't know about saxhorns, but Sax made a parallel family of saxophones in F and C, as I understand it for the orchestra etc. market. He's supposed to have made them to slightly narrower proportions for a sweeter tone, as can be seen in the C melody, the last survivor made in considerable numbers in the first half of the last century, though it isn't real hard to find a C soprano if you care to. The F baritone is impossibly rare. Maybe the saddest case is the F alto - Conn brought it back in the '30s (?), but it didn't do well so they dropped it and used their remaining inventory for practice repairs. Sad because by some accounts it was a great sounding instrument.

Anyway ... the point in the present context is that the C/Bb dichotomy was already there, if it's true Sax made a F/C family for classical music.

The trombone theory makes sense - trombones have been around a real long time. Assuming players of yesteryear had long enough arms to play Bb 7 position.

[Charlie C Chowder]

I just made a trip to the Boston area. At a dinner with my daughter's in-laws the night before we left, the Mother gave me a C melody tenor saxophone. It had been setting in the basement for years and the case was covered in a thick coat of dust. It is a Beuscher, stenciled with Carl Fisher. It plays great and I like the sound so much that I bought a matching one off of EBay for parts. They are just short of a hundred years old, about a year apart. As they both came with all of the parts needed, I have a lot of reeds and a spare mouth piece as well. The second came with a mute. I have never seen one. My local music store was happy to sell me the their small stock of reeds at a big discount as well. The sound is very sweet.

Lucky Me,
Charlie C. Chowder

PS It has been fun looking up the music stores stamped on the old paper reed holders.

[BopEuph]

The only C trombones that I know of are specific purpose ("melody", just as with the C "melody" saxes) early 20th Century "preacher" models (often - with a whole-step rotor, much like the CSO York), and limited production (romance language countries, typically) C valve trombones. The overwhelming majority of alto trombones are Eb instruments. Only (still today: very limited production, in spite of Chinese production) "contrabass" trombones are F instruments - surely partially due to virtually no one being able to reach 7th position on an Eb version.

C valve trombones are finding a strong niche in Mexican banda music, and in some Afro-Caribbean genres lately...to the point that many Sam Ash stores carry a couple of Jean Baptiste models in Florida.

[iiipopes]

The 1941 movie, "Here Comes Mr. Jordan" (where a sax-playing boxer is allowed to
return to earth and possess a just-deceased millionaire's body), utilized a C saxophone
as a prop.

Which begs the bad joke: do you know how many C-Melody saxophone players you can fit in a telephone booth? All of them!

[Bob Kolada]

A sort-of "artificial" demand for C tubas (the baby boom, combined with the phenomenon of people who played tuba in high school pursuing band director degrees in the USA - to meet the demands of the baby boom, and their college teachers suggesting C tuba purchases to them...as the "band director degree" thing has always been set up as a studio-lessons-heavy "performance-lite" degree with "some education classes tacked on for good measure") drove the few existing manufacturers to step up their trial-and-error experimentation with C instrument tapers, and these factories began developing "from scratch" (rather than cut-down-from-Bb) C instruments.

My first band director was a clarinet player who was a strong baritone sax player (played the new horn with our 20-25 player high school band while directing) and a surprisingly good baritone player with a really great tone. If he could stray far enough from his principal to have such a good effect on a completely different instrument (really a magnificent tone!) than any aspiring band director should be able to do likewise.


That said, if one is a tuba player in college, wants to pursue a music ed career and truly can't get the hang of other instruments, then at least be a strong euph player. You can play at octave with trombones, tenor and lower saxes, bass and alto clarinets, and play "with" higher instruments as needed for demonstration purposes. Euphonium is a great switch instrument for a lot of things.