Posted by Your old Teacher on January 03, 2002 at 22:24:00:
Schoolteachers want papers being relevant,
no-nonsense-straight-to-the-point, and true to the level of understanding
they have achieved themselves. Which does not equal, that they want it to be
true by general standards.
I will provide a synopsis for such a paper:
Brasses in form of trumpets, horns, and trombones had been known for
centuries, when Mozart enriched the world by his musical creativity. Trumpets
were used for war and for royal courts. Horns were used for hunting and for
beauty of sound. Trombones were used for extended playing in the churches.
Hence they had an extendable tubings.
Haydn was less than content with the selection of available notes on the
then valveless trumpet. So when an inventuous trumpeter presented him to a
specimen of the not-yet-invented-soprano-sax-fitted-with-a-trumpet-mouthpiece, he wrote a concert for that virtual instrument.
To transfer the achieved agility to the bass range someone put a trombone
mouthpiece on a bassoon and called it a Russian bassoon. The obvious reason
for that name was, that then, as now, nobody had a chance to verify, what really
happened in Russia.
However very few players had the 4 square inch finger tips needed to cover
these Russian-foxholes-cum-bassoon-tubing-vents. Hence the same mouthpiece
was put on the-not-yet-invented-bass-sax. The sound was obnoxious, a word
nobody could spell. So the resulting instrument was called an ophicleide.
Even if its holes-cum-vents could be shut up, it still was mostly of use in
the "There is a hole in my bucket"-type of tunes.
The Germans as well the French went on and soldered the keys to the tubing
(they could not make the keywork work anyway). Both nations then put valve
mechanisms on the tubing.
The Germans have these minds gyrating around themselves, so they of course
put rotary valves on their
non-invented-saxes-going-through-Russia-to-end-up-as-hole-deprived-ophicleides.
The French went mechanically down another road. As they were not totally
content with the resulting sounds, and as they still had not gotten their
spelling right, they called their valving mechanism pis-tons.
They were so ashamed of themselves, that they exiled a number of these
noise-tool-makers through the not-yet-dug-out-but-already-planned-by-Napoleon-Chunnel to England. Names among others were Bess-on and Disdain.
Hence there are basically two sorts of tubas: rotary-left-belled-Germanoids
and top-pistoned-Franglaises.
The Americans already 125 years ago had an urge to police the world into
their basically visionless mold. So they took the Fra-Brit top pistons and
placed them, where the Germs originally had put their gyrators. No
inventiveness at all. Just a lucky attempt by a skilled repairman in Nome to
make the best out of two wrecked tubas.
Your humble schoolteacher level tuba historian aka. Klaus