The Wagner Tuba: A History (review)

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 Rheingold, 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 would invoke Norse legends and, no less important, create a better blend in the brass section. He planned to use four pairs of horns, the last two of which would double on the new instruments, high and low tuba in each pair.

Archeologists had unearthed several examples of the ancient lur in 1797, in good enough condition that they could be played. Their sound was exactly what Wagner needed, but they were not chromatic. Numerous firms, including Moritz, Sax, Červený, and Alexander, supplied military bands with valved instruments of the type now known as saxhorns. Wagner knew about them, but was not satisfied with the sound. He needed something with the flexibility of saxhorns and the sound of the lur.

Chapter 2, “The Apprentice,” deals with the beginning of Wagner’s relationship with Hans Richter, a professional horn player, and their collaboration. Richter became Wagner’s copyist and secretary, and eventually a noted conductor. The chapter culminates in a description of the premiere of Das Rheingold (Munich, 1869). Contrary to assumptions of earlier writers, Melton finds no evidence that Wagner tubas yet existed for that performance.

Nor did they exist the entire time Wagner was preparing to have the scores for his Der Ring des Nibelungen published. Without actual instruments and people who could play them, he had trouble deciding how to notate their parts, as detailed in the third chapter, “Trials and Transpositions.” During this same time, he was also trying to build his theater at Bayreuth. Wagner had a falling out with his patron, Ludwig II of Bavaria, who refused to have anything to do with the Munich premieres of Das Rheingold and Die Walküre. Finally, the king cut off his funding, and it looked like the operas would never be presented and that the new tubas would never be built.

In “Fruition,” chapter 4, Ludwig relented. Construction on the theater continued, and Wagner completed his plans for the first Bayreuth festival. Richter’s part was to hire singers and orchestra personnel and to see that the new tubas were ready. He notified Wagner in a letter dated 25 September 1874 that they had been ordered from Munich brass maker Georg Ottensteiner. The first concert in which they were used took place the following March. Melton provides detailed analyses of how the new instruments functioned dramatically. Unfortunately, Ottensteiner’s tubas were technically deficient and had poor intonation. Moritz made better ones in 1877, and Alexander better ones still in 1890. Several other firms subsequently made Wagner tubas, but the Alexander models turned out to be definitive.

Chapter 5, “The Disciple,” is devoted to Anton Bruckner, who first heard the new instruments at Bayreuth in 1876 and...