Posted by Rick Denney on March 13, 2001 at 10:34:47:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Early Tubas In U.S. posted by Paul Scott on March 12, 2001 at 21:59:12:
Excellent! This is the sort of info I was looking for. The horn in your picture of the Boston Symphony sounds like any of the small saxhorn-style Eb tubas that seem to have been widely produced in the U.S. during those years. I'd suspected that they were used in orchestras, but did not know for sure. If that old Henry Distin (just to name one example) was an orchestral instrument, then we would look on it in a new light.
This combined with Lew's information leads me to believe that the front-action piston horns were originally band instruments. It is possible, for example, that Sousa wanted all instruments facing the same way, and Helleberg, his star tuba player, set the standard. So, the folks who wanted pistons just had to find a way to install them such that the bells would face the same way as Helleberg's horn. If we could find any evidence for such a scenario, we sould fill in a huge gap in our historical understanding.
I'd bet that someone out there knows the answer to this question. It's just a matter of finding that person.
Rick "Not a historian but susceptible to the bug" Denney