 Tuba: The biggest brass instrument has a wide, conical bore, giving it a round, mellow tone like a big horn. Tubas have a cup-shaped mouthpiece and usually have four valves. Occasionally a fifth or a sixth valve is added to help the player control intonation, or tuning. Tubas have been built in all kinds of keys, but the standard orchestra tuba of today is pitched in C. Warren Deck, the New York Philharmonic's Principal Tuba, designed his own instrument. When really low-voiced brass instruments began to be developed in the early 1800s, inventors first produced something called an ophicleide (ahf-i-clyde), which was something like a tuba but taller and thinner, and had keys, like a saxophone, instead of valves like a trumpet. Ophicleides looked a bit like a wide brass bassoon with a bell. Newspaper reporters used to make fun of ophicleides, calling them "chromatic bullocks." 
When the tuba was developed in the 1820s and 1830s, it began to replace the ophicleide in bands and orchestras. Tubas made better sound and were easier to play in tune. Hector Berlioz, a French composer who was a talented and adventurous orchestrator, was the first to use tubas in his scores.
Richard Wagner, the German opera composer who had very definite ideas about orchestration, had a special instrument developed for his opera orchestra, which has come to be called the Wagner Tuba. Wagner tubas are like small tubas with rotary valves, and a few later composers - including Bruckner, Stravinsky, and Strauss - wrote parts for them too. Once in a while, you will see a tuba player use an enormous mute. Tuba mutes were introduced in 1897 by Richard Strauss, who wanted the muted effect for his tone poem Don Juan.
|
