The History of the Tuba Family and Its Related Keys
The history and development of the tuba family and its fundamental keys
Introduction
The tuba is one of the youngest members of the modern day standard orchestra and it is still less than 200 years old. It is also one of the only orchestral instruments which has initially been patented; this was done in Prussia, September 1835 by Wilhelm Wieprecht.
In this modern age we have the full range of instrumentation available for any ensemble, this was not always the case as Herbert & Wallace (1997) quote Ridley:
Medieval and early Renaissance… instruments were normally played in consorts or choruses of their own kind, in various pitches, the bass often being supplied by an instrument of a different character because of difficulty in constructing an effective instrument of the group in a sufficiently low pitch.
(P. 143)
This remained the same with the brass family until the late eighteenth century, but it did have earlier predecessors. In the fifteenth century a simple instrument was invented by Edmé Guillaume called the serpent. These instruments were conical tubes of wood which were curved and then wrapped in leather and coiled to facilitate the finger holes for the instrumentalist. The only similarity it has to its modern day equivalent is that a cup shaped mouthpiece was used to create the sound; it is for this reason that it is classified as being part of the brass family. These were used to reinforce bass vocal lines in choirs; generally they were soft spoken instruments which had little or no dynamic range. They were also adopted by military bands in the late eighteenth century and three keys were added to give improved tuning on certain notes which gave it its name of the serpent militaire. It was, however, its lack of dynamic contrast which led to its repertoire within the orchestral medium being quite limited.
It was due to the efforts of Halari in Paris in 1817 that his search to improve the serpent that led him to developments
Introduction
The tuba is one of the youngest members of the modern day standard orchestra and it is still less than 200 years old. It is also one of the only orchestral instruments which has initially been patented; this was done in Prussia, September 1835 by Wilhelm Wieprecht.
In this modern age we have the full range of instrumentation available for any ensemble, this was not always the case as Herbert & Wallace (1997) quote Ridley:
Medieval and early Renaissance… instruments were normally played in consorts or choruses of their own kind, in various pitches, the bass often being supplied by an instrument of a different character because of difficulty in constructing an effective instrument of the group in a sufficiently low pitch.
(P. 143)
This remained the same with the brass family until the late eighteenth century, but it did have earlier predecessors. In the fifteenth century a simple instrument was invented by Edmé Guillaume called the serpent. These instruments were conical tubes of wood which were curved and then wrapped in leather and coiled to facilitate the finger holes for the instrumentalist. The only similarity it has to its modern day equivalent is that a cup shaped mouthpiece was used to create the sound; it is for this reason that it is classified as being part of the brass family. These were used to reinforce bass vocal lines in choirs; generally they were soft spoken instruments which had little or no dynamic range. They were also adopted by military bands in the late eighteenth century and three keys were added to give improved tuning on certain notes which gave it its name of the serpent militaire. It was, however, its lack of dynamic contrast which led to its repertoire within the orchestral medium being quite limited.
It was due to the efforts of Halari in Paris in 1817 that his search to improve the serpent that led him to developments
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