Posted by Frederick J. Young on December 18, 2001 at 11:48:31:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Why is low range bad on F's? posted by Rick Denney on December 18, 2001 at 11:03:01:
Phil claimed the recording suffered from bad recording techniques and poor conditions in the hall. Also keep in mind that none of the orchestras of that time would play softly whilst accompaning a tuba. When Phil and I played the Concerto (usually with Phil on piano) we held the low tempi you mention. When I asked Phil why they did not agree with the markings on the music he replied that the markings did not agree with the tempi RVW had wanted. Phil claimed that RVW had some basic problem when he assigned metronome settings to tempi. For example, RVW's idea of the last movement is a heavy Germanic waltz
performed by the obese! That would not be lightning fast as some tubists would have it. Also RVW did not want an extra high phrase involving high G# in the first movement cadenza. I have recording of my performance with Phil on piano in 1957. That performance resulted in Phil becoming professor two weeks later in the CMU Music department. I also have a record of Phil playing it on the tuba in about 1965 with band accompaniment.
With regard to the strange behavior of F tubas on or near low C I would think it has to do with the overall taper of the instrument and of the mouthpiece. As it is hard to get accurate dimensions for tubas I have not analysed many. I played a Nirschl clone of a York Eb. It had no trouble in the low register and played well throughout the range of the instrument. However, it was unnecessarily out of tune, even for a simple 5 valved instrument. One could go crazy pulling slides to play in tune.
Arnold Jacobs had a Wiener 6 valve F tuba. The idea was to use the right hand three valves for 1,2,3, & 23 combinations. Then the 4th valve for 5 semitone lowering. To go lower one would hold the 4th valve down and use the 3 left hand valves to descend as on a CC tuba. However, the first time I played the instrument I found it wanted to make a D when the 4th valve was used. Arnold told me to lip it down to a C which wasn't too hard to do. Strangely combinations with the 4th valve worked as they should. The whole tuba wasn't very well in tune, however.