Re: Re: Tuba solos in the orchestra!


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Posted by Richard on January 15, 2001 at 19:58:45:

In Reply to: Re: Tuba solos in the orchestra! posted by No Sow Lo on January 12, 2001 at 16:38:31:

Your point is well taken, a lot of the solos cited are hardly more than exposed licks for us starving mortals to create banquets, but you can't dismiss something like the Finale of Mahler's 6th. Choosing the tuba to present the initial statement of the principal theme is historically unprecedented in symphonic writing. It is comparable in its beauty and idiomatic aptness with the horn opening of Schubert's Great C Major (but even that was a unison for two horns). Moreover there are so many exposed and soloistic demands throughout the 6th that we could claim it as Mahler's "tuba" symphony, very much as the 3rd is so unprecedented for the trombone, and the 5th is so intensely soloistic for the trumpet and the French horn.

We have to observe the debt Mahler owed to Wagner. Acts I and II of Siegfried begin with their principal themes given by the tuba.

Later on down the thread Revuelta's Sensemaya is cited. An intensely soloistic piece, and as with Mahler and Wagner, the principal theme, and a very extended and complex one, given by the tuba.

Why don't we have more? Composers lack the imagination, the inspiration, and the (sp?) cajones.


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