The serpent’s place was taken by the ophicleide, which is said to have been invented in 1790, by Frichot, a French musician living in London; but Regibo of Lille had made some improvements in the serpent ten years earlier. Probably Frichot carried Regibo’s improvements a little farther. First, the new instrument was called the serpentcleide; afterwards by a combination of two Greek words, meaning “snake” and “key.” Its voice was coarse and the instrument lacked suppleness. Besides, it was difficult for the performer to play precisely in tune. Mendelssohn wrote for it. It goes down into the depths (sixteen-foot A) in Elijah and it is used in the Clown’s March in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.[28] Wagner uses it in Rienzi; Berlioz, in the Amen Chorus in the Damnation of Faust; and Bizet, in Carmen.
Taste became too refined for the ophicleide; and its place was taken by the double-bassoon until the bass tuba was brought to perfection. The sonorous, majestic, velvety roll of the bass tuba has very little resemblance to the race from which it came. To-day its plebeian origin is forgotten and the bass tuba might be classed as belonging to the trombone, or even to the horn family. It seems a little unkind to remind it of its coarse ancestor, the serpentcleide.
“Minds have been confused,” writes Cecil Forsyth, “partly by Wagner’s unfortunate misnomer Tuben for a family of instruments only one of which is a true tuba and partly by a number of inaccurate descriptions in which the distinction between the whole-tube and the half-tube groups of valve-brass have been overlooked.
“The orchestral godfather of all this group of instruments was Richard Wagner. His intention was to introduce a new tone-color into the orchestra akin to, but different from, that of the horns. The new instruments were to be (and actually were) modified horns. In particular they were to be strong and contrast with the trombones and trumpets and were to have an even compass of about four octaves. Wagner’s idea was to write eight horn parts and so arrange the parts for his new instruments that four of his horn-players could be turned over at any time to play them.
“The instruments were to have a bore slightly larger than that of the horns, but much less than that of the tubas. The instruments were to be arranged in two pairs—a small high-pitched pair and a large low-pitched pair. They are all modified horns, but Wagner called them tenor-tuben and bass-tuben. This group of the so-called Wagner tubas is made up of two distinct types of instruments—a quartet of two high and two low modified horns and one true tuba.”
This is the bass tuba described above.
BASS TUBA, SYMPHONY SOCIETY OF NEW YORK
Luca Del Negro