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• Instruments
• Classical
• Late Romantic

Patented in 1821, the ophicleide was a French invention. Although the name is intended to mean ‘keyed serpent’, the instrument is not a serpent, but rather a development of the keyed bugle, undertaken by Halary in Paris. The instrument comes in various sizes with various ranges, but all built to the same pattern. Built in a tight ...

• Instruments
• Classical
• Late Romantic

bell, some mid-nineteenth-century instruments were longer and thinner in overall design, with less of the tubing wound up. In the symphony orchestra, the tuba gradually replaced the ophicleide, on which it was in part based, and was written for by Wagner, Richard Strauss and Mahler. Vaughan Williams’s tuba concerto of 1954 remains an unusual – ...

• Instruments
• Brass
• Electric & Electronic
• Keyboards
• Percussion
• Stringed
• Woodwind

notes’ to be filled in. An alternative way of filling in these notes had been tried earlier using keys, resulting in the keyed bugle, the serpent and the ophicleide, which were found in wind bands and occasionally in the orchestra of the 1820s and 1830s. Valved trumpets and horns began to appear in the 1820s and entered mass ...

• Instruments
• Classical
• Late Romantic

in several countries, the euphonium is a rare visitor to the symphony orchestra, though it is often heard playing the Wagner-horn part in Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben and the ophicleide parts in Berlioz. Styles & Forms | Late Romantic | Classical Instruments | Sousaphone | Late Romantic | Classical ...

• Instruments
• Classical
• Late Romantic

when Strauss took his Symphonia domestica to New York in 1904 finding the necessary four saxophonists proved a major headache. Styles & Forms | Late Romantic | Classical Instruments | Ophicleide | Late Romantic | Classical ...

• Instruments
• Woodwind

to the creation of the saxophone. Sax seems to have been particularly interested in bass instruments, since the first saxophone stemmed from an attempt to improve on the ophicleide. Ophicleide The ophicleide was a keyed brass instrument, developed in the early 1800s, which used a trombone-style mouthpiece. Through the advocacy of composers including Louis-Hector Berlioz (1803–69), Giuseppe Verdi ...

• Instruments
• Classical
• Early Romantic

a set of tuned bars, together with strokes of the tam tam. In the 1840s and 50s he began to use the bass tuba, sometimes to replace the ophicleide, sometimes as an alternative. The Te Deum is notable for being the first time an organ is given a prominent rather than a continuo or obbligato role in the ...

• Instruments
• Brass

a ‘cimbasso’ was in fact just such a contrabass trombone. The instrument Verdi refers to as a cimbasso in his operas prior to this point was more likely a valved ophicleide than a bass trombone. Alto Trombone The alto trombone in Eb or F, a perfect fourth or fifth above the tenor, was in common use between the sixteenth ...

• Instruments
• Brass

In the rest of Europe, however, it was slower to catch on, despite the advocacy of the ever-adventurous Berlioz. In France and England, the change from ophicleide to tuba only took place after the 1870s; players in some orchestras were required to be skilled on both instruments right up to the turn of the century. Types of ...