1812 - letter B

[bloke]

I've been working on this (TOTALLY out of season, but most tuba audition excerpts are rarely performed - whereas this one is REGULARLY performed) with my huge new-to-me B-flat tuba.

I suspect there are other working tuba players who really haven't taken this excerpt as seriously as it deserves (always played outdoors - often: outside reasonable playing temperature range, EVEN WORSE - these days - most performances SKIP this part, and "cut to the chase" - as it were).
I've MOSTLY only rehearsed/played it (rarely played through it at home), but decided to take a look at it AS IF if were commonly "asked" on auditions, and AS IF the piece were taken more seriously by (some) music critics and musicians - who tend to pooh-pooh it.

Guess what...??

Just like any other exposed/heard tuba passage/excerpt (or even those not so exposed), it requires work/dedication to ACTUALLY phrase the excerpt, and (even) play it with really good intonation.

If you're a working tuba player and - like me - have always (sort of) shrugged this one off, go take a good look at it over the holidays.

[the elephant]

The UNT orchestra (under Anchel Brusilow, who used to conduct Dallas and before that was concertmaster of Philly under Ormandy) was on a tour in Europe (not one of those ego-stroker tours, but funded by the US Department of State as a part of the World's Fair in Seville that year) and we were doing demonstrations and lessons of local music students in Spain. The low brass were asked to do some mouthpiece stuff, and after we all bussed some exercises and such, we buzzed that specific section of 1812. We also believed that you need to know *all* the excerpts of commonly programmed works, even if they are not called on auditions all that often, so we had worked through about a hundred or so low brass excerpts that we thought were worthy of extra attention. (We shared a house together.) It turned out that we - as a quartet - really liked this specific excerpt, so we worked it up very carefully. This was about a year before this trip was announced to us, so we were tickled when someone requested to hear how this would sound because we would not be "just screwing around" when we did it. And it went very well, too.

I still buzz this in the car on the way to work as a part of my daily driving/buzzing routine.

[bloke]

Another oft-ignored/never-on-auditions one (and I've mentioned this before, and would LOVE to see it used as the "sight-reading" for a Chicago Civic, New World Symphony, or any conservatory orchestra audition) is "Cloudburst" (rental only).

[arpthark]

Sorry, "Let 'er Be" was recorded by the Beatles in 1969, not 1812.

[bloke]

Sorry, "Let 'er Be" was recorded by the Beatles in 1969, not 1812.

reported to monitors.
(I was triggered.)