Tuba#8: Litterature

Last week I've played with the Amfifanfare to animate a books exchange organized by the Orvault public library. I've bought a book on music of 1895.

I think that I've been decided to buy it seeing descriptions of instruments of this time that we just regret today, as ophicleide, whose physical design could have inspired Adolphe Sax for the development of saxophones, but who have been replced by tubas and saxhorns :

The chapter dedicated to the cornet is delighting : ''The instrument which asks the least study, but also the most vulgar ; its very short tuba allows it to emit no more than bass harmonious, from 2 to 8 no more, and its sound misses totally nobility and disctinction. […] occasionally, it claims to imitate the horn and the trumpet, heroic instruments ; but this imitation often looks like a load ; it's the kid of Paris of the orchestra, and its place is better in a band for public dancing or musical café than in the Opera or the big symphonic concerts, where it woul be happy to see it disappearing.''

Maybe you know the history : first was the cornopean, hybrid of a natural trumpet and a horn allowing to get closer to the sound of the first one while benfiting from the easy execution from the second's valves. Valves have been improved by Charles Sax (Adolphe's father) in the early 19th century, Adolphe reaching the cornet years later. He was helped by Jean-Baptiste Arban, professor of the Conservatory of Paris, who wrote the learning method which is the base all over the world for the corent players and the trumpeters.
The current cornet is using a Perinet-like system from the early 20th century and is used for the novice children (less heavy and requiring less air) inspite of a different game playing.


The cornet was already in the description of the trumpet (as natural of course, without slide nor valve) : ''this beautiful instrument would, regrattably ! disappear from the orchestra, where it place is invaded either by chromatic trumpet, or, more inconveniently, by the cornet, the type of triviality […].''


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Well, it's nice to read, but my tuba's valves are still blocked...


LAVIGNAC Albert, 1895 :  La musique et les musiciens. Librairie CH. DELAGRAVE, Paris.




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