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The Wagner Tuba: A History.

Article Excerpt
The Wagner Tuba: A History. By William Melton. Aachen, Germany: Edition Ebenos, 2008. [198 p. ISBN: 9783980837910. [euro]24.] Illustrations, music examples, bibliographic references, index.

One of the youngest of brass instruments, the Wagner tuba remains among the least known. At first glance, it looks rather a failure among instruments, one of a number introduced in the nineteenth century with great fanfare that hardly anyone used. The main difference is that it was designed at the behest of the very influential Richard Wagner and used by other composers in several pieces that quickly became part of the international standard repertoire. With its very small but important body of music, it has attracted little scholarly interest until now.

William Melton begins his first chapter, "The Vision," by quoting numerous descriptions of its noble tone quality, but then goes on to point out that its notation has confused both composers and players, that there are more than a dozen names for it in German alone, and that the literature abounds in misinformation and dubious assertions. Wagner first conceived of new instruments in 1853. He was struggling to perfect the Valhalla motive in Das Rhein-gold, the first opera in which he attempted to conceive pitch, rhythm, and instrumentation in a single step. He first intended to have the Valhalla motive played by trombones, but soon decided on Tuben instead. There was not yet any such instrument, but he wanted a sound that...

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