Posted by Joe S. on April 23, 1999 at 15:32:33:
In Reply to: "Other" quintet tubas? posted by Leland on April 23, 1999 at 15:08:25:
Big tubas sound pretty neat in quintets. I like the sound of a big tuba on quite a few quintet pieces. Sometimes, though, and on some pieces, the real big horns kind of sound like a brass quartet + "bass". Admittedly, the reasons that I lean towards the small in the quintet are 1/ better pitch (you have to have the right one!) instead of a bunch of crazy fingerings required on most jumbos to get around their generally wild scales when people are listening to absolutely every note played. 2/ A little less work when performing quintetian acrobatics. If I am doing more than one movement of it, I like to play a BIG CC on the old Malcomb Arnold piece, for instance, because of that big-bell English sound, and because the CC fingerings lay better on a lot of the "licks"* (whoops - is that a bad word on this BBS?) than F fingerings.
* Instead of "licks", how about "inspired and possibly notated multi-directional high-velocity sound-stratta"?