| Subcontrabass tuba | |
| Related: | Tuba |
| Hornbostel Sachs: | 423.232 |
| Hornbostel Sachs Desc: | Valved aerophone sounded by lip vibration |
| Musicians: | Gerard Hoffnung |
The subcontrabass tuba is a rare instrument of the tuba family built an octave or more below the modern contrabass tuba. Only a very small number of these large novelty instruments have ever been built. Most are pitched in thirty-six-foot (36′) BBB♭ an octave lower than the BB♭ contrabass tuba, their fundamental note B♭ corresponding to a frequency of 15 Hz – such a slow vibration that it can scarcely be perceived as a note.
The first instrument of this sort was designed by Parisian instrument maker Adolphe Sax. He built a French: bourdon saxhorn in 52′ E♭ and exhibited it at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1867, although there is evidence that it was in fact built some years earlier, and possibly appeared at the 1851 Great Exhibition in London.[1]
An instrument built by French instrument maker Gustave Auguste Besson was brought to the United States by Carl Fischer on the suggestion of American bandmaster Patrick Gilmore, who planned to tour with it in 1893. It is now owned by the Harvard University Band, who have restored it and feature it occasionally in their concerts.
In 1956, British musician Gerard Hoffnung used a 32′ C subcontrabass tuba built in 1899 in the first of his comedic Hoffnung Music Festivals. He commissioned a work for it, Variations on "Annie Laurie" by Gordon Jacob, which he performed in the festival.[2] [3] [4] A tuba pitched in FFF was made in Kraslice by Bohland & Fuchs, probably during 1910 or 1911; it was destined for the World Exhibition in New York in 1913.[5] This tuba is playable but two players are needed: one to operate the valves, and one to blow into the mouthpiece. Frederick Young plays a King BB♭ tuba that was converted into a double tuba (in BB♭ and EEE♮) by Dietrich Kleine-Horst (of the Herbert Gronitz Brass Instrument Company in Hamburg, Germany) in 1990.[6] (The added EEE side is what makes it a subcontrabass tuba.)
On the other extant examples, the valve tubing was intentionally built to be non-functional; they are made to look like tubas, but are essentially giant bugles that can only play a single harmonic series. One such display instrument, built by Besson, survives at the Horniman Museum in London, after spending several decades as the shop sign for Boosey & Hawkes.[7] Another, built by Bohland & Fuchs in 1912 for Carl Fischer, is nick-named "Big Carl" and still owned by Carl Fischer Music.[8]