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Tubas and Other Large Horns
Tubas
Wagner Tubas
Helicons and Sousaphones
Euphonium
Tubas
The designation of an instrument as a tuba was first used by the Romans, as one of the names for signal horns used in the field. Today, the instrument usually referred to as a tuba is more properly the bass tuba of the symphony orchestra.The bass tuba was invented fairly recently, in about 1835, by Moritz and Wieprecht in Berlin. Before that, there was an instrument called an "ophicleid," which was also a keyed instrument in the bass range, illustrated below.
Ophicleid
The tuba now provides the bass fundament of the brass section of an orchestra, and often of the orchestra itself. It is often used in humorous ways, which is how children are sometimes introduced to it. Although in some music the tuba plays only long, slow bottom notes, very good tuba-ists can play amazingly fast passages almost as flexibly as a French horn!
Tubas are played with a large cup mouthpiece, and can have as many as six valves.
A G. LeBlanc Tuba
Wagner Tuba
Wagner tubas were invented by Johann Moritz for use in Wagner's Ring. They are intended for use as a bass voice that is a cross between the horns, trumpets, trombones, and bass tubas. They were designed to be played by horn players, so they have horn mouthpieces and are keyed using the left hand.
Wagner Tuba
Helicon and Sousaphone
Because large tubas are hard to handle, some builders designed them in circular form; these instruments were called helicons. They are held with the bell on the player's left shoulder, with the tube passing under the left arm. However, because the instrument was projected to one side, when they were played in concert, much of the sound was lost.
John Phillip Sousa modified the instrument to have the bell project over the player's shoulder; this instrument is called a sousaphone.
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Helicon
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Sousaphone
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Euphonium
The euphonium, or baritone horn, was originally designed by the concertmaster Sommer of Weimar in 1843. It is a wide-bored (the bore is conical) valved bugle in the baritone range--a brass instrument of the tuba family, smaller and higher in pitch than a tuba, with a range of B-flat below the bass clef to B-flat in the treble clef.Today, the euphonium is used primarily in concert bands and military bands. It has a very mellow and smooth tone, and has taken the place of Richard Wagner's tenor tuba (not the Wagner tuba pictured above), in that all of the music originally written for the tenor tuba is now typically performed on the euphonium.
Euphonium
Information Sources
Information on this page was derived from the following sources:
Kruckenberg, Sven (1993): The Symphony Orchestra and its Instruments. Gothenburg, Sweden: AB Nordbok (Crescent Books edition distributed by Random House).
Wade-Matthews, Max (2000): The World Encyclopedia of Musical Instruments. London, UK and New York, NY: Lorenz Books.
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