that brass instruments could now explore the bass register, and soon after 1835 bass tubas started being manufactured in Germany. Essentially a keyed bugle by descent, the bass tuba (confusingly, the name tuba comes from the Latin word for trumpet) has a very wide conical bore and as a result requires a good deal of puff. Although the ...
The tuba is essentially a large, valved bugle, designed to take the bass part in an orchestra or band. Like the trumpet, it is sounded by buzzing the lips into a mouthpiece. It is conically bored, like the horn, and consequently has a smooth, velvety sound. History The tuba is a youngster among brass instruments; ...
A brass instrument with the tubing curled in an elliptical loop ending in a small bell and fingered using four valves, this is a type of tuba probably based on the saxhorn. When writing the Ring, Wagner wanted a brass instrument to bridge the gap between the French horns and the trombones. The 1853 sketch for Das Rheingold specifies ...
, asked Philadelphia instrument makers J.W. Pepper to modify an instrument called the helicon; the company named the final result in his honour. The helicon was a circular bass tuba created in Vienna in the 1840s; the sousaphone added a detachable bell pointing straight up on early versions, and later in a forward direction. In fact there is no ...
instruments were also invented, many of which have stayed in brass bands and wind bands ever since. The cornet, the euphonium and saxhorn families, the flugelhorn and tuba all emerged in the 1830s and 1840s, and mass production enabled brass and wind instruments to be produced at a cost that ordinary people could afford. This resulted in ...
hall, but it can be heard in Vaughan Williams’s London Symphony and Constant Lambert’s (1905–51) Rio Grande (1927). Styles & Forms | Late Romantic | Classical Instruments | Bass Tuba | Late Romantic | Classical ...
number of available tone colours. The main difference from the chamber orchestra is its use of a full brass section of three trumpets, four horns, three trombones and tuba, which was possible after valved brass instruments became commonly available in the 1840s. To match the extra volume this created, there also tend to be more string players ...
, the rotary valve is operated by a lever and the internal mechanism swivels, not unlike a stopcock. Styles & Forms | Late Romantic | Classical Instruments | Wagner Tuba | Late Romantic | Classical ...
the Eb baryton is the modern baritone, the Bb bass is the euphonium and below that are the Eb and Bb contrebasse saxhorns. Introduction | Brass Instruments Instruments | Tuba | Brass ...
, with a shared playing technique and a shared quality of sound. After early experiments with a shape modelled on the trumpet, he built the entire family on the tuba model. Although the expression ‘saxhorn’ has largely dropped out of currency, the effects of Sax’s conception have endured. The E flat soprano saxhorn can be heard today in the ...
eb'. Like the baritone saxophone, the bass is more commonly heard playing melodies than bass lines – in most wind and big bands the bass is taken by the tuba or double bass. Although popular at the beginning of the jazz era, the bass saxophone was rarely used after the 1930s until a revival of interest from the 1990s ...
bore and a series of finger holes. At the beginning of the nineteenth century three or sometimes more keys were added to it. The serpent was eventually displaced when the tuba was invented. Although often thought of as a Baroque oddity, the serpent had a long life as an instrument in church choirs of the kind Thomas Hardy writes about ...
The sousaphone was made to the specifications of the American bandmaster John Philip Sousa (1854–1932). A type of tuba, it has a dramatically wide bell, although it has been argued that the size of the bell has nothing to do with sound production or tone quality and everything to do with being eye-catching. The instrument encircles the player, ...
flute, oboe, trumpet and French horn had all found their places in the ensemble; trombones gained a position in the orchestra at last. The coming of the bass tuba in the 1830s eased out the serpents, which had been introduced to provide some bass reinforcements for the trombonists. Meanwhile, the English horn made a comeback, and ...
A trombone is a brass instrument sounded by buzzing the lips into a mouthpiece. It is peculiar amongst brass instruments in using a double ‘U’-shaped slide to alter its pitch. The early history of the trombone is confused, mostly due to a lack of clarity in naming instruments. It is generally accepted that the immediate precursor to the trombone was ...
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