I suspect that for most non-professional horn players, the Wagner Tuba is something that exists only on the periphery of awareness: seldom heard, even less often seen, and virtually never directly encountered in a personal experience. For me it was thus; I knew the instrument existed and had even been in an orchestra where they were used (a performance of The Rite of Spring many years ago), but it had never garnered any particular interest from me.
That perspective started to change only a year or two ago, when I was belatedly in life introduced to Bruckner’s 8th Symphony. I became absolutely enamored of the scherzo–which movement, of course, does not employ any Wagner Tubas–and gradually came to know the rest of it, and that means the Adagio movement, which does have some WT prominence. It was at that point that I knew, someday, I wanted to know this instrument, and learn those parts.
Enter 2020 and the global pandemic of Covid-19. Effectively all community music ceased, along with most other public group activities, and like many others I was left with a lot more time on my hands. In the first few months I was highly dedicated to practicing my favorite horn pieces. I played Bruckner 4 so much that my wife informed me I had to stop for a while. (In revenge, I sneaked a copy of the flute part onto her stand one day, and eventually heard her playing it.) The access to parts through IMSLP enabled me to pass through many of the other Bruckner symphonies: 1, 3, 6, 7–so many sharps! To this moment I still have not really made that symphony my own–and of course, 8.
On July 4th, Independence Day, a day normally I would have been spending with family gathered from far and wide, I was instead seated inside, browsing the internet once again, and watching TV or movies or streaming video. Presumably because of the Bruckner 8 study, I casually started to search for Wagner Tuba instruments. It was not the first time: heretofore I had found current, new instruments in the five-figure price range, and used instruments in the mid-thousands–still a little pricey for a whimsy. But on that day I stumbled onto Wessex Tubas and found they had a Wagner Tuba for sale under $1000. I tried to find any online reviews or other mentions of this instrument and manufacturer, but did not find a lot or any in depth. I consulted by email with my local horn associates, and learned that a local professional player did have one, and had given it the resounding endorsement of “adequate.”
Having long ago learned that opportunity is not a lengthy visitor, and no doubt influenced by the pandemic ennui, I decided that at this price point, and in the absence of any outright negative information found, that this was good enough for me. I submitted my down-payment for an instrument. At the time, the estimated delivery date was given as October. Time passed as it does, and then one day in mid November I received an email that my instrument was ready to ship upon receipt of the rest of the payment. I completed the transaction, and a few days later I received a shipment notification. About a week later, the instrument arrived on my doorstep.
The instrument itself – in which I briefly review it and the playing thereof
As a physical object, the Wessex Wagner Tuba is impressive to behold. I had a prior experience with a Chinese-made instrument, which was not great. But this was something entirely different in appearance. Had I seen this instrument in some other context, I would not have estimated its price to be what I had paid. The case, while proportionally large, seems sturdy and capable of protecting its contents.
The instrument arrived with a mouthpiece, which looks very middle-of-the-road, something like a Conn 2 or Holton medium cup. I blew a few initial notes using this, but quickly set it aside and turned to my regular horn mouthpiece, which unsurprisingly was an improvement. But since the focus of the WT is generally in a lower tessitura, I pulled out my small collection of miscellaneous mouthpieces accumulated over a few decades of horn playing. From these I selected a Hoyer B10, which I had used with success previously when playing natural horn. This mouthpiece has a deep, conical cup, and I found it to be satisfactory with this WT. It also allowed me to keep my normal horn mouthpiece in the horn, an important consideration if switching back and forth between the two instruments, sometimes quickly, as one does in Bruckner. (See more on mouthpieces at the conclusion of this essay.)
This instrument uses a compensating valve system, something found more often in the lower brasses but not as commonly today on horns. Compensating valve systems are explained in detail many other places on the internet, so I will not go into detail. Suffice to say that one can sense the change in the instrument properties when the F-side is engaged, something not experienced on a good, non-compensating double horn, for example. The instrument arrives standing in B-flat, with the F side added by pressing the thumb valve. This is the opposite of how most double horns are configured in the United States, and in initial attempts to play some familiar horn etudes on the WT, I found my fingers did not want to cooperate with this “backwards” configuration. The thumb valve can be reversed, although Wessex does not provide instruction on how to do this; and I considered doing it, but eventually decided to leave it as-received. (More on this decision will follow.)
What the instrument is – in which I understand in more detail what I have purchased
As anyone who is seriously considering purchasing any Wagner Tuba surely knows, there are two types: tenor tuba in B-flat, and bass tuba in F; and in modern times, double instruments in both B-flat and F. Comparing a tenor instrument to a bass by appearance, the bass can be seen to be somewhat larger, and the double is a complicated web of tubing. The Wessex instrument is marketed as “a double Wagner tuba to play in Bb or F,” and yet I found the bass register, using the F “side” of the instrument, to be generally unsatisfactory. The bass tuba parts were playable, but I felt something was not right–this surely was not the sound that Wagner has in his head and worked so hard to make manifest.
In order to further my education and understanding of the Wagner Tuba, I located and purchased two books:
Playing the Wagner Tuba: A Handbook for Hornists, by John Ericson
The Wagner Tuba: A History, by William Melton
The first of these is a very brief descriptive introduction, followed by a selection of excerpts. It is of particular value because in addition to the original notation of the excerpts, there is a transposition to F of the same passage. Given the complexities and inconsistencies of WT notation, this can be very helpful as one finds one’s way at first.
The second is a thoroughly researched account of the development of the instrument in the mid-1800s, its heyday in the immediate post-Wagner period, and then decline and eventual reappearance. While I heartily recommend this book in its entirety, portions of the text can be found also online at https://www.wagner-tuba.com/wagner-tuba/wagner-tuba-history/.
As I expanded my practicing from Bruckner into Wagner’s operas themselves, I was perplexed by the conclusion of Das Rheingold. The notation seems to indicate that both the tenor and bass tubas are playing the same pitches, notated differently. But some of the notes written for the tenors don’t exist on the B-flat instrument. Playing the tenor part in B-flat alto solved that, but I found nothing suggesting that was the intended solution, and furthermore doing so required the tenor tuba to achieve the equivalent of a high C on the horn in F, which seemed highly improbable.
It was at this time that I discovered the following remark at https://www.wagner-tuba.com/wagner-tuba/physical-properties-range/
“The length of tubing [of the tenor tuba and the bass tuba] is the same as the Bb and F horns but with a fourth valve which works the opposite way to the fourth valve of a double horn, taking the Bb tuba down to F and the F tuba down to C.”
This statement clarified a lot of things for me. All single WTs, tenor and bass, past and present, have four valves:
1 – whole step (two semitones)
2 – half step (one semitone)
3 – 1-1/2 steps (three semitones)
4 – perfect fourth (five semitones)
This confirmed what I had begun to suspect early on: the Wessex instrument is, in practice, really only a tenor tuba, where the 4th inline/finger valve has been replaced by the thumb valve and full F-side compensating system. For this reason, I have elected to leave it standing in B-flat and use the thumb valve as if it were the fourth inline valve on a single tenor tuba. I can still play bass tuba parts as required, but in my opinion the sound produced in the lowest register is not the real bass Wagner Tuba sound.
Visual comparison of the Wessex instrument against other modern, true double tubas, such as by Hoyer or Alexander, certainly shows a substantial difference. The specifications of those instruments, however, leave some ambiguity as to how these doubles work. The Hoyer has five rotary valves visible, but only 3 finger keys and one thumb key are obvious. The Alexander model has four rotary valves visible, but the description states “No. of valves: 4; No. of thumb valves: 1.” Meanwhile the single tenor and single bass instruments from both manufacturers have four inline finger valves. So for the moment, the exact operation of these true double instruments remains somewhat a mystery to me.
Conclusions and challenges
The Wessex instrument is one of several inexpensive Wagner Tubas available, all of which appear to follow a similar compensating “double horn” model, and therefore all of which are really tenor tubas only. I would not discourage any horn player from obtaining one of these instruments as an entry point into the world of Wagner Tubas: the more such instruments are in the hands of everyday players, the more opportunities there might be for the Wagner Tuba orchestral repertoire to be performed at the non-professional level. It is my hope that as time goes by, Wessex or another manufacturer will produce a true bass tuba at a comparable price point, so that the full tuba quartet will be accessible to more players and more ensembles.
For me as a currently isolated player, the biggest challenge of the Wagner Tuba is determining and producing the correct sound. Clearly, Wagner had an orchestral color in his mind that he could not obtain from existing instruments. We know that it was designed be something between a horn and a trombone, and to extend the contrabass tuba sound upward. The contemporary descriptions of the sound are always along the lines of something noble, mystic, and evocative of the spiritual, and a certain gravitas. From these things, we can assume that it should not sound just like a horn, nor just like a trombone. But the modern large-bore orchestral double horn is a different animal from the horns of Wagner’s time. Would he, today, still have deemed it necessary to have incorporated his unique tubas into his orchestra to realize the sounds he imagined? The question cannot be answered.
Other miscellaneous items
The following are some comparative instrument specifications that I accumulated during my initial WT education.
Bore sizes (as found on the manufacturer’s web sites)
Wessex “double” WT: 11.89 mm (0.470″)
Alexander 111 F Bass WT: 13.5 mm
Alexander 108 B-flat Tenor WT: 12.5 mm
Alexander 110 Double WT: 13.5 mm
Hoyer 822 B-flat WT: 12.5 – 13 mm (0.492″ – 0.511″)
Hoyer 824 F bass WT: 14 mm (0.551″)
Hoyer 4826 double WT: 13 – 14 mm (0.511″ – 0.551″)
Hoyer 6802 double horn: 11.90 mm (0.468″)
Mouthpieces
Hoyer B10
“deep cup and #10 bore (4.915mm)” [#10 = 0.193″ / 4.90 mm]
Presumed to be same as SKU 700440:
Rim: Ø23,7mm (Outer diameter. I measured mine at 23.75 mm. Inner diameter measured 16.63 mm
Cup: 16,8mm [could this be inner diameter?]
Bore: Ø4,9mm [#10]
Measured rim thickness 3.67. Mathematical result using the ID/OD numbers is 3.56 mm. Average of these is 3.615 mm
Lawson custom combination
(I have my original, actual-Lawson mpc. with this configuration, and a reproduction of same recently obtained from Osmun music.)
Rim: Contour P10G, Diameter 695 (17.653 mm) [I measured my Osmun copy as 16.8 mm ID and 24.51 OD]
Cup: F670
#11 throat and Lawson’s 3/8 concave back-bore (#11 = 0.191″ / 4.85 mm)
I measured the rim thickness (cross section) as 3.81 mm. Mathematical result using the ID/OD numbers is 3.855. Average of these is 3.8325.
Yamaha YAC HR32D4 Standard Series
Rim Inner Diameter (mm): 17.48
Rim Contour: Semi-flat
Rim Thickness: Standard
Cup Depth: Semi-deep (double cup)
Throat (mm): 4.50
Backbore: Seminarrow
Playing Characteristics: “Largest double-cup in the lineup. Also ideal for Wagnerian tuba. Large cup volume for a dark, heavy sound and easy low notes.”
(See Yamaha’s full mouthpiece catalog https://usa.yamaha.com/products/musical_instruments/winds/mouthpieces/frenchhorns/downloads.html#product-tabs to decipher some of these subjective descriptions.)
Yamaha HR-BACON THOMAS BACON Signature Series
Rim Inner Diameter: 17.99 mm
Rim Contour: Standard
Rim Thickness: Standard
Cup Depth: Semi-shallow (V-cup)
Throat: 4.50 mm
Backbore: Semi-wide
Yamaha HR-30C4
This is an old mouthpiece that I used for a long time ago on horn. It’s a real pea-shooter and I would never consider it for WT, but since I have it in my possession it offers a way to objectively measure some of Yamaha’s subjective descriptions.
Rim Inner Diameter (mm): 17.28mm [Yamaha’s specification]
Rim Outer diameter (mm): 24.30 [as measured by me]
Contour: Semi-flat
Thickness: Standard [I measured 3.85 mm. Mathematical result from OD/ID calculations: 3.75; average = 3.80]
Cup Depth Standard: (U cup)
Throat (mm): 3.98
Backbore: Standard