Meistersinger on F

[bloke]

soli" (plural)

bloke "To hell with the bassoons. I've got this."

[jtm]

Ya'll are gonna make me finally find a tuba excerpts collection (or, more likely, search IMSLP) so that I can follow along.

[arpthark]

Ya'll are gonna make me finally find a tuba excerpts collection (or, more likely, search IMSLP) so that I can follow along.

I gotcha: https://vmirror.imslp.org/files/imglnks ... r_Tuba.pdf

Letter J is commonly (erroneously) called "the solo."

[bloke]

I don't know how many people ever lucked into hearing the LAPO low brass section do a masterclass during Mr Bobo's heyday - shortly after he purchased his "Tonight Show" B&S Symphonie Model F tuba.

I heard Bobo, Peebles, Reynolds and _________ (sorry...??) do the opening (only) to that Overture with Mr. Bobo playing that instrument, and that's when my eyes were opened - even though I hadn't done enough research at that time to understand that it was written specifically for bass tuba. I believe I was probably about 22 - 23 years old. They were on tour, and a bass trombone friend of mine (who had been a Remington student at Eastman) was also a friend of Jeff Reynolds, so he asked him if they would do a masterclass, and they agreed to do it at the community college where my friend was the chairman of the music department. I've remained an acquaintance of Mr Reynolds since then. (We aren't "buddies"...)There was an evening party at my friend's house afterward to which my friend graciously invited me - to my surprise and pleasure), and Mr. Reynolds talked with me as if I was not just another big dumb kid - which I most certainly was. (This was the year after I left the teaching position at KU, because there was such a huge pile of freelance work at that time in Memphis, and it just made no sense whatsoever to stay with that teaching job.)...

... the point being that I'd never heard a better tuba rendition of the opening of that Overture before, and also not since. It helps me to play it - on my F tuba - to have the memory of that straightforward) interpretation in my head.

I will I add one more thing: Mr Bobo was not disheveled, but in his eyes it was sort of apparent that he might have stayed up too late the previous night. It was also apparent by the expressions on his face and eyebrow-raising that he was blindsided by the excerpts on the music stand, and had not reviewed them prior to the masterclass. The sound and interpretation produced did not reflect what I interpreted to be a lack of sleep and being a bit surprised as he turned the pages of the excerpts.

note: he did not play "the solo", because that only involved the tuba, and not the complete low brass section. They only played the introduction.

more...??
He was wearing a light blue leisure suit.

[jtm]

I gotcha: https://vmirror.imslp.org/files/imglnks ... r_Tuba.pdf

Letter J is commonly (erroneously) called "the solo."

Thanks! It's my own fault for only studying marching sousaphone in school. Stuff like football field Cats medley, and no solos or solis.

[bloke]

I gotcha: https://vmirror.imslp.org/files/imglnks ... r_Tuba.pdf

Letter J is commonly (erroneously) called "the solo."

Thanks! It's my own fault for only studying marching sousaphone in school. Stuff like football field Cats medley, and no solos or solis.

It's a good thing to work on. It's sort of like ice skaters working on their circles and figure eights and such. It's very simple but also absolutely transparent, and the reason that it is listed on the first rounds of so many auditions is because they want to hear if a player can play in time, can play in tune (at least in the white-notes key), can play at appropriate volume levels, can play the appropriate attacks and note lengths, and can also phrase. Again, it's transparent - just like the qualifying rounds for ice skaters as described in the first sentence. Most committees probably aren't even all that concerned about how well the trill is executed, though that certainly offers a chance for bonus points.

[I noticed that the Concertgebouw tubaist (video) was slightly short and punchy in his rendition, but he was being recorded up close, and - knowing what those European halls do with the sound - the way he played it makes perfect sense.]

I'm anything but interested today in getting a job working in a city playing in a symphony orchestra full time, but - if I thought I was up to the task and we're interested, I would use a medium or deep cup mouthpiece on my tuba, so I wouldn't stick out in the sea of foggy contrabass tuba renditions - but might offer a bit more clarity (hopefully, attracting positive attention in that way) than many of them.

[BopEuph]

So, as some of you know, I majored in euph performance, never got a gig out of college on euph (though bass has always put food on the table), euph was stolen, so I decided to start playing tuba instead of replacing the euphonium.

I only own two horns: a Conn 12J, and a Kanstul 5/4 BBb I bought from an old Tubenetter who passed last year. He gave me a really great price, because he didn't think I should only have the Conn with my chops.

I had always approached tuba with the idea of using my euph chops, but the knowledge of a bassist. It's really helped me in commercial music, and I had always kept up my euph daily routine, but really shedding the entire range of the horn, from pedal Bb (not great) to the Bb an octave above the staff (also not great). But I had been doing it on days where I just didn't have something to work on, thus keeping up my chops.

Imagine my surprise when the range and lip trill of Meistersinger is MUCH easier today than it was for me about three years ago. I wish I had a bass tuba so that I could do bass tuba stuff, but I don't. But today is the first time I don't feel handicapped because of that. My range is solid enough to do this excerpt.

So stoked!

[arpthark]

[I noticed that the Concertgebouw tubaist (video) was slightly short and punchy in his rendition, but he was being recorded up close, and - knowing what those European halls do with the sound - the way he played it makes perfect sense.]

In a lesson I had with a certain Northern friend of ours, he basically gave me the advice, in the soli section, to be mindful of the hall and treat every attack like a mini fortepiano. I think that is also a byproduct of the large tuba he is most famous for playing.

[bloke]

[I noticed that the Concertgebouw tubaist (video) was slightly short and punchy in his rendition, but he was being recorded up close, and - knowing what those European halls do with the sound - the way he played it makes perfect sense.]

In a lesson I had with a certain Northern friend of ours, he basically gave me the advice, in the soli section, to be mindful of the hall and treat every attack like a mini fortepiano. I think that is also a byproduct of the large tuba he is most famous for playing.

person of old...came up with that
subsequent person...noticed it, considered it, employed it

known: person of old (also "old school") added a great deal of vibrato - during the fade-outs.

[russiantuba]

..Meistersinger to state “Perform on C tuba”.

This was the case for the most recent St Louis audition

Cincinnati was the one I referred to. I had actually started the audition process on F tuba and they sent out a revised list to have the Bach Sarabande 8vb on “C tuba”, and stated “C tuba” on meistersinger. I guess if you play BBb tuba you weren’t going to be considered…

[russiantuba]

Some boring academic stuff about Wagner...

During one of my DMA candidacy exams, I was asked to explore the tuba's history through its development through organology as just part of the question, and one thing asked in person was to find the first piece written originally for tuba and not a predecessor, or one of the first pieces with justification (I know we had discussed this on the last site a little back in my younger days).

With that being said, my professor mentioned Flying Dutchman or Eine Faust being one of the first. After flipping through original editions, etc., I came to the conclusion that Eine Faust (1839-40) was the first, just 5 years after the Moritz patent. The fact that it starts with a soli with basses (yet more of a prominent voice) was part of this conclusion, the lowest note was only playable on an ophicleide in Ab, which was quite rare for the time, as the main keys were C and Bb (and from my recollection appeared in the first edition as a bass tuba), and that even if playable, it would have some of the weaker notes that I don't think Wagner would have put to open the overture unless it was for tuba.

Over the years, publishers tend to score works for instruments without knowledge (i.e. putting bass tuba, contrabass tuba, changing from ophicleide to tuba as some Berlioz works, etc.), but even with all of this, for an instrument that was barely 5 years old after being invented to be featured in such a role is quite a feat, plus the fact we know that he was very demanding in what instruments he asked for in his later music dramas and the scoring of such even makes the use of F tuba more predominant for this role.

I will still work this on both tubas since some committees and teachers seem to hear with their eyes.

[bloke]

..Meistersinger to state “Perform on C tuba”.

This was the case for the most recent St Louis audition

Cincinnati was the one I referred to. I had actually started the audition process on F tuba and they sent out a revised list to have the Bach Sarabande 8vb on “C tuba”, and stated “C tuba” on meistersinger. I guess if you play BBb tuba you weren’t going to be considered…

I could guess at who selected that list and wrote those specifications, but I'm not going to post my guess here.
---------
Anyone with a fairly wide-ranging set of experiences- and who has played Scheherazade - will quickly notice that the lower pitches define the range of a three-valve E-flat tuba. Maybe I'm committing horrible sins every time I do it, but I play the opening figure free of those limitations. Maybe I'm micromanaging and overstepping my authority, but - when playing with younger trombonists who've not played the piece before - I always encourage them to put a sostenuto/crescendo on the 3rd and 6th pitches of that opening figure as well.

[BopEuph]

I guess if you play BBb tuba you weren’t going to be considered…

The funny thing is, whether or not that was their intention, they wouldn't have known the difference of the right player knocked it out of the park on any instrument. They'd only know after seeing the horn.

Yes, each instrument has its own characteristics, but a good musician can work around them and make them less obvious.

[russiantuba]

I guess if you play BBb tuba you weren’t going to be considered…

The funny thing is, whether or not that was their intention, they wouldn't have known the difference of the right player knocked it out of the park on any instrument. They'd only know after seeing the horn.

Yes, each instrument has its own characteristics, but a good musician can work around them and make them less obvious.

This. One of the musicology faculty at my MM was a Juilliard trained tubist (studied under Don Harry) and took the Pittsburgh audition when Sumner won it. He mentioned a guy from Germany was only able to travel with his F tuba and did Ride and (maybe) Fountains on his F. He advanced to the semi final round.

I encourage anyone to try Fountains of Rome on F tuba. For me in this “dusting the cobwebs and trying to learn the excerpts trip”, doing this helped me slot easier on the big horn

[BopEuph]

This. One of the musicology faculty at my MM was a Juilliard trained tubist (studied under Don Harry) and took the Pittsburgh audition when Sumner won it. He mentioned a guy from Germany was only able to travel with his F tuba and did Ride and (maybe) Fountains on his F. He advanced to the semi final round.

Like I said earlier. As stupid as it sounds, I think I'd more likely just grab a euph for bass tuba parts than a tuba. It would be easier for me to wrap my head around. I doubt anyone would really notice, if I did the job right.

But, I'm floored as to how decent Die Meistersinger just sounded on my Kanstul without having played it for about two years. The E was very clear, the lip trill was very clean.

[arpthark]

I encourage anyone to try Fountains of Rome on F tuba. For me in this “dusting the cobwebs and trying to learn the excerpts trip”, doing this helped me slot easier on the big horn

I've mentioned this before, but in order to "graduate" to F tuba during my college studies, Skip Gray had us play Meistersinger, Ride, Fountains, and the big excerpts from the Ring Cycle (Giant, Dragon, etc.) on a cruddy little Meinl Weston 6 valve F tuba that had the sixth valve linkage broken off and taped open. Doing those excerpts convincingly on that sub-par instrument (dubbed "Flowerpot") showed that we could finesse the air in the low range and we could then move on to the school-owned B&S or buy our own F tuba or whatever. I went through that process really early in my studies, and I kind of wish I had stuck with the big horn a bit more.

[bloke]

When a bunch of advancements were being made in flute embouchure hole design and flute tone hole spacing, a bunch of old school flute teachers (particularly those whose Boston, Massachusetts-made professional flutes suddenly didn't play as well as new marching band Taiwan made flutes) were saying that students need to play the old-style flutes - where you had one tiny little spot that would sort of make the flute vibrate okay with your embouchure and you had to roll in and roll out to adjust (tuning) for the incorrect spacing of the tone holes - in order to become a stronger flute player, so I sort of reject the idea of working really hard on a sh!tty tuba and risking forming some really bad habits. I sort of wonder if those flute players - and maybe a tuba instructor - were jealous of better instruments that were coming along 30 or 40 years ago.
Even as a young man, I knew that even the best F tubas were sh!tty, had heard a couple of B&S F tubas on stage - and played one, and knew that those weren't sh!tty - like all the rest, so I finally bought an F tuba (sometime around age 27, and several years after I had walked away from working in academia). Even the person who fetched my tuba for me (I believe with special permission to fly into East Germany and pick one out at the factory - as they lived in Berlin) was trying until the very last minute of the last day to talk me into buying an Alexander F tuba, but I knew better - even as a very young man, and told them absolutely not (with all due respect to the Alexander-philes)... I also played the adulterated versions that were suddenly coming out ("P......... Model), didn't like them as much, noticed that they were more than double the price I had paid for mine, and felt actually a little bit relieved that I bought an F tuba when I did, feeling like I bought it just exactly the right time - neither too early nor too late... and not too long after that (reunification), they began being hydraulically formed, so...

... I'm always wondering off topic...sorry.

[daktx2]

I encourage anyone to try Fountains of Rome on F tuba. For me in this “dusting the cobwebs and trying to learn the excerpts trip”, doing this helped me slot easier on the big horn

Fun story about this, I once attended a tuba masterclass in the Bay Area. Jeff Anderson was coaching a pretty talented undergraduate through Fountains of Rome. The only tuba Jeff brought was his F (definitely B and S, I think it was a Symphonie but I wasn't quite close enough to tell) and at one point he picked it up and played a good chunk of the excerpt through. He encouraged the students to do the same thing as an exercise. Jeff, as always, sounded pretty great!

[jtm]

... and took the Pittsburgh audition when Sumner won it. ...

I was in high school across town from Sumner, so I got to see him at the region and city bands and stuff like that. Fortunately, I was playing bassoon, so it was fun to be in bands and orchestras with him, rather than intimidating.

[Mary Ann]

I have not tried it yet, but that trill on an Eb would be "interesting." I think one would have to hold down 23 for the B, and then pull the 1st slide quite a bit and use the 1st valve for the A, and you'd be blowing through all those valve slides.
Well now I have tried it, and a better player than I am could do it.