2009/5/7 Steve Freides <steve.frei...@gmail.com>: > One of my students, who had seen both a Wagner opera and Bruckner > symphony within the past week, mistakenly assumed I knew something > about Wagner Tubas. I don't, so we looked online together and learned > a few things. The one thing I wasn't sure of was the register - we > found mention of a Bb and an "F basso" - are both of these an octave > _lower_ than a normal French Horn? I had assumed that the register > was the same and not lower. A short list of what's the same and > what's different would be great, assuming a Bb/F double Wagner tuba. >
The Tenor (Bb) Wagner tuba has the same length of tubing as a Bb side of a double horn. The Bass (F) Wagner Tuba has the same length of tubing as the F side of a double horn. Modern instruments are often built as F/Bb double tubas. Because of the wider bore, they tend to be less secure on higher notes. The way in which the transpositions are written out in the parts is by modern standards rather idiosyncratic, and does vary depending on the composer and the work. For instance, In the Bruckner symphonies, the parts are written as 2 tenor tubas in Bb, (written in Bb basso), and 2 bass tubas in F (written In F basso, i.e. sounding an octave and a fifth below written pitch). Wagner himself used three different and incompatible notations in the course of the Ring. So you have to check carefully what the intended transposition is when you come across a tuba part. Regards Jonathan West _______________________________________________ post: horn@music.memphis.edu unsubscribe or set options at http://music2.memphis.edu/mailman/options/horn/archive%40jab.org
