Posted by Rick Denney on December 12, 2003 at 13:47:48:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Tuba/Euph Doubling posted by bloke on December 12, 2003 at 03:23:50:
The important thing in what you are saying is that as a tuba player, you want to be able to play passably well on euphonium. You are not trying to compare yourself to a soloist/artist on the euphonium.
It's the same with me. There have been times when the three of us in our band (two tuba players and a euphonium player) have thought of moving ourselves around to solve a specific problem at a specific concert. In this case, the euph player is a professional trombonist, and needed to cover bass trombone in our group. That left it to one of us tuba players to fill the euphonium parts, for an easy Christmas concert. Either one of us could do it, and the part would be covered competently. But neither one of us would consider ourselves euphonium players, or be prepared to compare ourselves to real euphonium players. In the end, we didn't have to do it this way, but it was a useful option. I've also played second euph on occasion in a quartet, though challenging euph parts quickly leave me in the dust.
So, I see no attack, from either perspective. Euphonium is easy for tuba players to play to a minimum standard, but quite hard for anybody to play to an artist standard.
And judging from my experience in amateur orchestras, strings MUST BE quite hard to play even to a minimum standard.
Rick "who agrees to use a good, basic instrument with a good, basic mouthpiece" Denney