... which would seem to imply that the euphonium and Wagner tuba are basically the same thing except for inaudible details like the oval shape and rotary valves of the latter, although the WT would presumably take a horn mouthpiece which would tend to give it less "buzz", while the baritone, apart from missing the 4th valve and associated tubing, has a narrower flare which would tend to give it a harder-edged and more focused sound, slightly in the direction of the trombone. Is all that true?

In his other, earlier book about the orchestra, Anatomy of the Orchestra, Norman del Mar devotes just over two pages to the saxhorn family, the tenor horn, etc. In the same book, he spends a whole six pages discussing the Wagner tuba, at the end of which he writes that

"though neither Wagner nor Bruckner ever prescribed mutes for the Wagner tubas, Strauss introduced them into Elektra and Schönberg wrote a splendid veiled solo passage for muted Wagner tubas at the beginning of part 3 of the Gurrelieder".

..(he then quotes the passage concerned, which, sadly, I can't scan and upload)...

and then he rather spoils it all by adding

"Nevertheless, undeniably effective, even magical, as this passage is, the use of mutes for Wagner tubas is a side issue".

Whilst I can see (especially from the rest of his paragraph on that subject) why he concludes this, I cannot really agree with him just because he thinks that it somehow negates Wagner's original purpose for the instruments. Oddly enough, the passage concerned is more like Wagner than Wagner himself; had someone played it to Hitler, he'd probably have bowed his head in respect (provided that this person did not go on to tell him that it was by a Jew, of course...)

Best,

Alistair

I'm reliably told by a nearby brass player that this is true, and that the euphonium is more like a tuba, although I'm afraid the finer details of how this relates to their construction seem to have gone in one ear and out the other.

I asked him whether it should be the horn players or the tuba who double on euphonium in an orchestra and he said actually it should be the trombones, although some tuba players would take it on as a second instrument. He did mention that euphoniums in orchestras are often played terribly and that if you really want to hear a euphonium you should hear a proper euphonium player play it, when it sounds fantastic.

Fascinating topic (partly because it's one of those areas I can never quite get my head around and love hearing what other people have to say).

Quite so, hh, although there's something about tubas in particular which is very hard to record - the sort of "spatially-unfocused" way they have of sounding as if the sound is coming from all around rather than just from the instrument, which I don't think is so true of narrower-bore instruments like baritone and tenor horns. Could this be one reason why tubas are very rarely used in music for small combinations of instruments? (because of their tendency to "envelop" the ensemble) - maybe there could be musical circumstances where that would be an interesting thing to happen.

It is, I think, down to the individual player adapting the ways of playing his/her instrument for the purposes of, say, a chamber music setting. I've never written for (bass) tuba in such a setting but have included a euphonium in a piece for large wind ensemble (22 instruments, all different, so in one sense a "chamber" kind of context) and also written two pieces for euphonium and piano.

Even the idea of some of the contrabass members of wind families (clarinet, sax, bassoon) having some kind of legitimate life in a chamber music context is far from fatuous to me (although one might draw the line at such a context for the otherwise wonderful contrabass trombone unless the ensemble involved is reasonably large).

Best,

Alistair

Much better to get the same person to play all three.

By this you mean that one must take into account how much more dissonant various intervals are going to sound, or?

Duly noted.