Posted by Klaus on May 14, 2001 at 12:44:04:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: THE horn for Bydlo???? posted by Mike on May 14, 2001 at 11:41:11:
You might be a great tubaplayer, Mike!
But what about taking a course or two in music history and in instrumentation?
Or even try to read a book or two! There might be that problem for you, that the relevant topics have yet to be covered in the comicstrip format.
The whole point is, that every single note in the tuba part of Ravel’s instrumentation of Mussorgskij’s "Pictures of an Exhibition" was intended to be played on the then contemporary French C with 6 valves.
This might seem ridiculous to players of the huge tubas of the German (really of Czech origin) and US traditions.
To understand this, one has to know about French orchestral traditions a century ago.
Trumpets, horns, and trombones were of small, and that was really small, bores. All 3 orchestral trombone parts were played on non-valved Bb tenor instruments.
French oboes and bassoons played with sounds very different from the more robust German traditions.
String bodies hardly were numbered as massively as today.
In this context it still took some player to make the Pic’s part work on a 6v C tuba. But there must have been players, that Ravel trusted to be able to do so. And as shown, the orchestral texture to balance was a very different one compared to the one of today. Which basically is an inflation of the Central European tradition, where every wind instrument has been fighting to develop in volume and projection.
In that perspective the tuba might be quite special, insofar that it peeked 70 years ago incarnated in two York instuments. Still considered more or less as inachievable ideals.
Maybe hornplayers would go for a Kruspe horn of that period, but hardly any trumpeter or trombonist would do symph work on an instrument of that age!
Guess I did got down to the comicstrip level.
Klaus