Document Type : Original Article
Authors
1 Graduate Student
2 Assistant Professor of Music University of Art
3 Faculty Member of Islamic Azad University
Abstract
The solo instrumental repertoire of tuba family has grown significantly due to the efforts of several artists in these instruments. Tuba repertoire has perhaps the most number of pieces without accompaniment (solo) rather than any other brass wind instruments. As far as the combination of extended techniques in pieces without accompaniment in 1965, extended techniques have been added to the repertoire of this instrument regularly. Although, composers in those days forced to trust incomplete information of the instruments most of the time, because the orchestration booklets usually have incorrect or obviously false information about the instruments and because there are rare and obsolete specialized sources for tuba family.
Extended techniques in wind instruments have been always used by advanced composers and they have changed and advanced during history. Therefore, it is impossible to represent a full list of extended techniques, because music is an ever changing art and creative musicians and composers are always creating sound and new techniques.
This scientific-promotional study aims at representing a comprehensive and available guide of tuba family capabilities through the analysis of the present content and introducing these capabilities. But before discussing about new techniques, first tuba family instruments are introduced and their features and their total structure have been explained for more awareness of the musicians and the composers.
The composer may face with problems in three major fields of interpretation, performance and attitude, also it is obvious that interpreting the musical ideas of a musician are considered as one of the composers’ functions, but the first difficulty field for him is modern works, because these pieces use nontraditional techniques. Some of these techniques have been original and some others have become common in tuba modern repertoire. However, no perfectly standard written language has been evolved yet and the signs of these techniques have been used commonly in different conditions. Usually, the composers use these signs by means of one instruction. As a result of these common and various uses, the composer has to learn a new set of symbolic signs that may have different interpretations in each piece.
It seems that a type of standardization in the written form of these techniques makes these discussed compositions directly and all together. But this statement about modern music and the
discussed techniques have been more resulted from personal experience, because one of the most important points have to be remembered is the successful programming and operating of a concert to represent different experiences to the audience. When the composer has overcome all problems in modern works, he finds the inclusion of these techniques into their pieces compositions very exciting which adds special variety to the program and if it is represented well, it will turn into the audiences’ center of discussion after performance.
The present study is hoped to be a practical available guide about modern capability and techniques of tuba family for those who are interested through investigating pieces, books and theses related to this matter.
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