You should purchase a copy of Clifford Bevan's The Tuba Family. The second edition is available from Piccolo Press, and I'm sure someone still remembers the contact address.NuPhil wrote:what is the real difference between a saxhorn, wagner tuba, french tuba and a euphonium? no its not the beginning of a bad joke, I really want to know. ie. bore size, sound, overall size, traditional vs. non traditional number of valves.
Saxhorns are upright instruments with bells pointed up and top-action valves, originally intended as a family of instruments from soprano to bass. French makers still market tenor tubas as "saxhorns," but there is little if any functional difference between them and other non-compensated tenor tubas. Some have as many as five valves. Bore size is in the 14-15mm range. Length is 9 feet, like any Bb baritone or euphonium, and the bell diameter is in the 10-inch vicinity.
Standard euphoniums, as originally figured by Boosey, Besson, Hawkes, Highams and so on are based on the saxhorn configuration (Besson, for example, was originally a French company). In the last two or three decades, bore sizes have trended upward, as have bell sizes. On British and British-inspired instruments, compensating valves are used on the more expensive instruments. They are 9 feet in length and therefore pitched in Bb. There is little functional difference between an American-style baritone and a British-style euphonium. The baritones tend to be older designs and therefore tend to have slightly smaller dimensions, but not by as much a margin as the differences between tubas of different lineage. Here are two typical examples: My 1938 Reynolds baritone has four valves, an upright 10.5" bell with top-action valves (saxhorn configuration), and a bore of .56". My 1974 Besson New Standard euphonium has four compensating valves, an 11-inch bell, and a bore of .58" (except through the compensation tubing, which is larger). Overall, it seems a little beefier, but the differences are not substantial. Many American-style baritones had front-action valves, which is a distinctly American configuration for tenor, bass, and contrabass tubas.
The French C tuba is also a saxhorn-style instrument, pitched in C (8 feet length of the open bugle), and equipped with six valves to cover the tuba tessitura. In all other dimensions, it is similar to a euphonium.
I would classify all Bb saxhorns, American-style baritones, the French C tuba, and euphoniums as variations on the general theme of tenor tuba. There are also rotary-valved instruments of German heritage in this category, and they also provide some differences. Though everyone has preferences and strongly held reasons for those preferences, all are generally interchangeable. From an organological perspective, I consider them to be conical-bore equivalents of valved bass trombones.
The sounds range from brighter for the narrower instruments to deeper for the fatter instruments, but they all have a mellowness characteristic of instruments with a conical taper. The variation of sound is no greater than the variation of sound across, say, contrabass tubas pitched in BBb or CC.
British baritones are different instruments. They compare to the tenor tubas above the same way that tenor trombones compare to bass trombones.
Wagnertuben are completely different than any of the above. They are slightly conical instruments of smaller general dimensions fitted with very small mouthpiece similar to French horns. They are usually played by hornists, and many have the valves on the left hand for the convenience of horn players. From a distance, they follow the general upright configuration of saxhorns, but their taper design is more like a horn.
Rick "amateur organologist, but only for tubas" Denney
