The Solo Tuba: Re-evaluating instruments, timbres and performance practices
Adler-Mckean, Jack LU
(2025)
In Performance Research
29(6).
p.24-31
- Abstract
- This article explores how quantitative organological analysis can be implemented alongside historical musicology to help stimulate creativity in performance practice while promoting a diversity of timbre that is often lost amidst the hegemonic propagation of homogenized, normalized modern musical instruments. The tuba family provides an insightful case study demonstrating how the history and development of a musical instrument can shape its employment by contemporaneous performers and composers. The instrument is commonly seen as having a solo repertoire that dates back to the mid-twentieth century. Every nation has their founding father: Arcady Dubensk (USA), Paul Hindemith (Germany), Alexey Lebedev (Russia), Ralph Vaughan Williams (UK),... (More)
- This article explores how quantitative organological analysis can be implemented alongside historical musicology to help stimulate creativity in performance practice while promoting a diversity of timbre that is often lost amidst the hegemonic propagation of homogenized, normalized modern musical instruments. The tuba family provides an insightful case study demonstrating how the history and development of a musical instrument can shape its employment by contemporaneous performers and composers. The instrument is commonly seen as having a solo repertoire that dates back to the mid-twentieth century. Every nation has their founding father: Arcady Dubensk (USA), Paul Hindemith (Germany), Alexey Lebedev (Russia), Ralph Vaughan Williams (UK), and so on. Opportunities for band tuba sections to play solos can be found a generation or two earlier, although the tubist Mary Rasmussen argued in 1954 that ‘the published literature for tuba is insufficient at all levels from beginning to virtuoso’. Such turn-of-the-century works date from an age when bands featured basses which, at the time, would have likely been described as bombardons or saxhorns rather than tubas, instruments which are remarkably similar to tubas in common international usage today. Traditions pre-dating this period are therefore largely unrecognized by musicians today; the instruments and repertoire discussed herein have, as far as can be ascertained, never before been rigorously analysed or publicly documented. In order to examine the solo tuba world before the advent of the modern instrument, this article looks into the history of the bass tuba itself, assessing the earliest extant instruments and newly-uncovered repertoire from the lands where it first found common usage, as well as presenting novel methods of quantitative comparative timbral analysis. Recordings are also provided of such repertoire made using one of the first modern reproductions of an original bass tuba, including a Concertino composed by the instrument's co-inventor, Wilhelm Wieprecht. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/630b5f0c-821b-484b-97b3-2f6499212d69
- author
- Adler-Mckean, Jack
LU
- organization
- publishing date
- 2025-12-19
- type
- Contribution to journal
- publication status
- published
- subject
- in
- Performance Research
- volume
- 29
- issue
- 6
- pages
- 24 - 31
- publisher
- Taylor & Francis
- ISSN
- 1352-8165
- DOI
- 10.1080/13528165.2024.2537555
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- 630b5f0c-821b-484b-97b3-2f6499212d69
- date added to LUP
- 2025-04-12 22:30:42
- date last changed
- 2026-01-12 09:08:31
@article{630b5f0c-821b-484b-97b3-2f6499212d69,
abstract = {{This article explores how quantitative organological analysis can be implemented alongside historical musicology to help stimulate creativity in performance practice while promoting a diversity of timbre that is often lost amidst the hegemonic propagation of homogenized, normalized modern musical instruments. The tuba family provides an insightful case study demonstrating how the history and development of a musical instrument can shape its employment by contemporaneous performers and composers. The instrument is commonly seen as having a solo repertoire that dates back to the mid-twentieth century. Every nation has their founding father: Arcady Dubensk (USA), Paul Hindemith (Germany), Alexey Lebedev (Russia), Ralph Vaughan Williams (UK), and so on. Opportunities for band tuba sections to play solos can be found a generation or two earlier, although the tubist Mary Rasmussen argued in 1954 that ‘the published literature for tuba is insufficient at all levels from beginning to virtuoso’. Such turn-of-the-century works date from an age when bands featured basses which, at the time, would have likely been described as bombardons or saxhorns rather than tubas, instruments which are remarkably similar to tubas in common international usage today. Traditions pre-dating this period are therefore largely unrecognized by musicians today; the instruments and repertoire discussed herein have, as far as can be ascertained, never before been rigorously analysed or publicly documented. In order to examine the solo tuba world before the advent of the modern instrument, this article looks into the history of the bass tuba itself, assessing the earliest extant instruments and newly-uncovered repertoire from the lands where it first found common usage, as well as presenting novel methods of quantitative comparative timbral analysis. Recordings are also provided of such repertoire made using one of the first modern reproductions of an original bass tuba, including a Concertino composed by the instrument's co-inventor, Wilhelm Wieprecht.}},
author = {{Adler-Mckean, Jack}},
issn = {{1352-8165}},
language = {{eng}},
month = {{12}},
number = {{6}},
pages = {{24--31}},
publisher = {{Taylor & Francis}},
series = {{Performance Research}},
title = {{The Solo Tuba: Re-evaluating instruments, timbres and performance practices}},
url = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13528165.2024.2537555}},
doi = {{10.1080/13528165.2024.2537555}},
volume = {{29}},
year = {{2025}},
}