Posted by Rick Denney on June 16, 2003 at 09:30:43:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Who's Copying Whom? (Long) posted by WTH on June 14, 2003 at 17:53:20:
Chuck, I'm not sure what your complaint is. The instruments (at least the types of instruments) used by the masters of the past give us insight into the sounds produced by orchestras of those periods. It seems to me historically interesting and has nothing to do with voodoo or mystery. Mystery can only be dispelled by fact, and plausible speculation based on fact (or as a prod to uncover more fact).
My interest in tracing the roots of the fat contrabass tuba in orchestral usage is historical as much as it is musical.
One comment made by Jacobs after his retirement is telling. He said that he was gratified that the current tuba player in the Chicago Symphony had chosen to use his York in the orchestra. This statement tells me that Mr. Jacobs did not have a built-in expectation that Pokorny would use that instrument, and that the decision by Pokorny to use it was in part a vindication of Jacobs's own views on the special nature of the York in particular, vis a vis grand orchestral instruments in general. I have always said that the fat contrabass is as popular as it is largely because of the work Jacobs did with his. He called it the Stradivarius of tubas, but plenty of violin players might balk at playing any given real Strad in any given situation.
What causes me to question Anderson's statement is not his credentials, and not the lack of accuracy of other authors on orchestration, but rather the near-complete dearth of instruments he describes on the used market. We find plenty of examples of small saxhorn-style Eb instruments from the 19th century with top-action pistons (I have one myself even if I did mutilate it, heh, heh), and we see even a few examples of rotary BBb instruments of that period. Sousaphones from the very early 20th century exist, as do over-the-shoulder saxhorns, saxhorn-style instruments with rotary valves and right-angle action, and a plethora of euphoniums from that era. Where are the F tubas he mentions? The rotary F was in common usage in Europe, apparently, and we see examples from as far back as the 1920's or 30's. Presumably they were used in Europe going all the way back to Moritz and Wieprecht, which was, of course, an F tuba with five valves. But I've never seen one with an American importer's mark, or one with provenance suggesting usage in an American orchestra.
If the fat contrabass has its roots in the popularity of the sousaphone during the professional band era (early 20th), then it would take a while for the lap tubas of similar proportions to make their way into the hands of orchestra professionals. It isn't implausible that the orchestral players of the early 20th were the poor cousins of the professional band musicians, given the popularity and financial success of the touring pro bands of the era, and that some younger and more adventurous orchestral players might have envied the big sound of the band players. If so, they might have tried to bring that sound to their orchestras, just as some adventurous conductors might want the big sounds of German orchestras, too. This may not have been Jacobs's motivation, but it rather sounds to me like it was indeed Stauffer's motivation. Stauffer recounts using a Conn Orchestra Grand Bass in an orchestra gig as early as the 1940's, when Jacobs was still a minor figure and before high-fidelity recordings could feed any trends in sound concepts, at least those that affect tuba players. This suggests to me that Jacobs's preference for such an instrument was not singular, at least by the war period.
And authors such as Anderson would probably want to be fairly conservative in their descriptions, avoiding any influence of current fads, so that their book will remain valid for longer. Of course, that desire is undermined if the current fad they avoid happens to really be a trend. But the use of the 6/4 instrument in orchestras wouldn't have been common, and might even have been beneath Anderson's notice. Even if he'd known of Donitelli's new instrument, he might have thought it the product of Stokowski's lunacy depending on his opinion of "modernity".
Bevan tells us that the euphonium was the orchestral tuba in Britain before the Barlow F and after the ophicleide, and that is a possibility in the U.S. as well, at least in some orchestras. If that is the case, then the small Eb tuba might well have been considered the oversized instrument of the day. But there is still that image of the 1879 Cerveny rotary Bb in Bevan, and the pictures of Helleberg using a rotary contrabass tuba around the turn of the century. I don't know if the rotary contrabass was an alternative to or a successor to the Eb or the euphonium. But if the three or four-valve F was used in the late 19th century, there should be a few surviving examples, it seems to me. Perhaps I've missed them and you have seen them.
What also interests me is that Anderson used the term "compensating" to describe the function of the fourth valve. From his wording, it seems that he intended that term in the general sense, and not to describe the four-valve automatic compensation system of Blaikley.
Rick "who doesn't apologize for being interested in history" Denney