Posted by James on May 25, 2003 at 14:43:12:
In Reply to: Etude Recommendations posted by Scott on May 23, 2003 at 22:25:05:
After reading all of these posts I was reminded of a story that I heard at the regional ITEC in Fort Worth this past weekend. I was honored to get to listen to a lecture by Mr. Harvey Phillips given on the topic of his life of music and his recordings. He told a story and perhaps many of you have heard it before but for those of you that haven't he said something along the lines of this. He was going to his practice room while he was in Julliard and he heard all these people playing the horn concertos of beethoven, mozart, strauss, and etc. along with all the other great literatures of all the other instruments and all he had was "asleep in the deep", "solo pomposo", and "bezelbub" and other tuba solos of the early 1900s. He went to Vincent Perischetti and asked what could be done to improve the tuba literature. Perischetti said something about all the composers want you to play their music and play it well and he also said what are you (Mr. Phillips) doing about the problem.
Ok so my thinking is that if you want to get etudes and method books out there that will help you get better as a musician both technically and musically then yes look at all the tuba books out there. However as a tuba player myself I feel as though we can only advance so far with these books. Other instruments that have been around longer than the tuba have better books I feel and can help develop the well-rounded musician. So to get to the point. Consider etude books for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and the rest of the brass. In doing this I feel as that we will advance the tuba and euphonium to a higher level and who knows... we could be the instrument that everyone wants to play. ( I hope so).
Take this with a grain of salt but atleast think about looking outside our own literature.
Sincerely,
James Benton