The Tuba – Power and Mystery

The Tuba is the lowest-pitched instrument of the brass family. This horn is used in Symphony Orchestras, in Wind Ensembles, in (British) Brass Bands, in Chamber groups such as the Brass Quintet, and is frequently featured as a solo instrument too.

The modern Tuba is the result of hundreds of years of development, but what we know today as the tuba is quite different from its ancestor…

The Serpent is the ancestor of the tuba:

This beautiful, strange instrument hales from the Renaissance (at least), and comes in different sizes and ranges. Here is an example of a Serpent ensemble (trio, in this case):

And here is Patrick Wibart performing Michel Corrette’s (1707-1795) Sonata Nr.1, Op.20:

And, fantastically!, the Serpent is still played today in a variety of contexts; here is the famous Michel Godard and his trio, performing one of their works…

Serpents are still being made and sold…here is the site for SBERGER’s shop in Switzerland:

https://serpents.ch

And finally, here is the website of Guildhall School of Music professor Jeremy West, who is a kind of ‘activist’ for the Serpent:

https://www.jeremywest.co.uk/biography.html

As orchestras and other ensembles developed, the Serpent was slow to catch up…while still used in Church Music and in the Court, the orchestras of Bach, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven did not feature the Serpent, and the tuba as we know it did not come about until after another ancestor, the Ophicleide, made an appearance.
Here’s an example of this famous, but ultimately short-lived instrument:

The Ophicleide was famously used in Hector Berlioz’ Symphonie Fantastique for the Witch’s Sabbath scene:

Here’s a video of Berlioz’ surreal symphony, at the Dies Irae section; interestingly, this performance includes the Ophicleide AND the Serpent!

There is much, much more about the Serpent and the Ophicleide Youtube…search away!

The big development came with German composer Richard Wagner, who used a version of the tuba that came to be called (for real): the Wagner tuba. It’s more like a French Horn / Tuba hybrid, and has a higher range. Wagner wrote extensively for the Wagner Tuba in his opera tetralogy The Ring of the Nibelungen. Here’s a brief example of this instrument…

Since Wagner’s works, the tuba has become a mainstay of the Symphony Orchestra, growing in size as the size of the European Symphony Orchestra continued to grow.
Let’s take a look at the Tuba we all know and love…

First, the range:

As you can see, the range varies with experience, and can be quite versatile.

Also, note that tubas play in bass clef (really, F clef), and never uses the tenor clef as the trombone or euphonium often do. Also, the tuba is a non-transposing instrument: the note written on the page is the note we hear. This is different from the Double Bass, which sounds 1 octave lower than written. (The guitar is also a transposing instrument, btw).

For those interested, the frequency range of the Tuba is 41 – 262Hz. !

Many twentieth-century composers have written for the tuba, including Ralph Vaughn Willaims, Paul Hindemith, Krystof Penderecki, and John Williams (yes, that John Williams!). Here are some of the notable works from the literature:

And of course, there are many well-known tuba players, from the inimitable Harvey Phillips (Mr. Tuba), who founded the Tuba Christmas tradition, to Jay Rozen, to Oyvind Baadsvik, one of our most famous performers, and the President of ITEA.

Here is Baadsvik performing Vivaldi (he usually does much more Modern, original works, but he’s amazing here too…)

And my friend Jay Rozen, who performs and commissions new works for the horn…

And here is my own teacher, the incredible Velvet Brown, performing Mozart’s Queen of the Night Aria from The Magic Flute:

And please check out Richard Antoine White! Richard is a viruousic tuba player, with an inspiriting story; here’s a quick interview, and you can also check out his book I Am Possible: A Story of Survival, a Tuba, and the Small Miracle of a Big Dream.

https://www.google.com/books/edition/I_m_Possible/fpwOEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover

Now let’s hear some playing!