Posted by Rick Denney on February 11, 2004 at 18:48:08:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Tubas, not music posted by Jack Bauer on February 11, 2004 at 16:25:02:
Like Joe says (and like I said before), stick around. The talk will turn to the sorts of topics you bring up again. If you want to bring them up, I suggest that you try doing it one at a time, and develop your thinking behind the question so that it challenges others to think about it.
I like the Rochut studies as well. I recently acquired a trombone and have been playing them on their intended instrument, and I see their value even more clearly--trombones require careful technique to play legato.
I tend to prefer music that is technically within my grasp, but still musically interesting. That includes the Marcello sonatas arranged by Little among other transcriptions of Renaissance and Baroque music, and anything that is more about tune than technique. I practice the modernish stuff, but I do it just to see if I can.
I always have the Bach Cello Suites near to hand. There are perhaps two of them that I can make any sense of at all, but it's sometimes satisfying to be a wave crashing on that rocky shore.
One of these days I'll play the Air from Air and Bourree really well. It's still a goal. I've been working on it for about 30 years.
The music that has my attention at the moment is current band stuff, including a challenging transcription of Academic Festival Overture. If find that I enjoy playing Brahms more than listening to it. And the tuba music (which I don't listen to that often) that is running in my head right now is the Gregson Concerto, with the orchestral accompaniment. That accompaniment makes the music, by the way--it's just another tuba contest piece with the piano reduction.
If you want brooding grandeur, listen to Vaughan Williams's 4th Symphony. The tuba part is unplayable by me, but I occasionally hack at parts of it just to see if I'm getting better.
Rick "who, like others, has written at length about every one of these subjects on many occasions on this forum" Denney