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is feuilletonistic criticism of the highest degree; one can hardly fault her for including
it here. Still, one wishes one had seen more
of Brecht at the opera prior to that.
Stephen Luttmann
University of Northern Colorado
MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS
Wagner needed, but they were not chromatic. Numerous firms, including Moritz,
Sax, Cerveny, 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 Wagners relationship
with Hans Richter, a professional horn
player, and their collaboration. Richter became Wagners 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 Walkre. 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. Richters part was
to hire singers and orchestra personnel and
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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, Ottensteiners 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 decided to use them in each of his last three
symphonies. Melton analyzes the role of
the tubas within the symphonies and
chronicles their earliest performances,
some of which to Bruckners disappointment omitted the tubas.
The next chapter, Wagners Heirs,
opens with a discussion of the use of the
tubas by the next generation of German
composers. Most of the composers and
their music have dropped out of sight, but
Richard Strauss used Wagner tubas extensively in works between Guntram (1893)
and Die Frau ohne Schatten (1919). Beginning with Elektra (1909), he demanded the
utmost virtuosity of them. The chapter concludes with a more general consideration
of performances of music with Wagner
tubas outside of Germany (where tonally
less robust instruments like saxhorns were
substituted) and the state of manufacturing
tubas in Germany. Once all of the German
opera houses had sets of tubas, there were
many manufacturers and virtually no market until military bands all over Germany
adopted them early in the twentieth century.
Modern Voices, chapter 7, traces the
use of Wagner tubas in the music of Arnold
Schoenberg, Igor Stravinsky, Bla Bartk,
Gustav Holst, Leos Jancek, and two littleknown Danish composers. None of these
composers used the tubas in more than two
works, and although several of the works
are concert staples, they have often been
performed with other instruments substituting for the Wagner tubas. Only a few
were composed after World War I. By the
end of World War II, with hardly any recent
Book Reviews
miere of Das Rheingold, on p. 27, at the end
of chapter 2. We do not learn who the first
manufacturer actually was, or the performance at which the new instruments were
first used, until p. 46 in chapter 4. It would
probably have been helpful to enumerate
all of the important problems with the earlier literature and a brief statement of what
he found in his sources in one place as part
of a general introduction. That way, the
material would be easier to find, and the
details about common errors would not interrupt his primary narrative.
Throughout the story, Melton attempts
to cram in as many details as possible, no
matter how tangential. Until I got to the
last chapter, I was beginning to think that
he was padding to make up for not having
enough important information to justify a
book on the subject.
There are more than one hundred endnotes in six of the eight chapters. There are
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multiple endnotes in virtually every paragraph. Unfortunately, they are not limited
to bibliographic references. Considerable
information that should have been integrated into the text is hidden in the notes.
There is no separate bibliography, which
will make it unnecessarily difficult for any
scholar who wants to follow up on Meltons
work.
Anyone interested in Wagners music,
the development of orchestration, or the
history of brass instruments will find much
of interest in Meltons book. The organizational problems will not get in the way of
casual reading. They make careful study
more difficult than it needs to be, but on
the whole, this book is a welcome addition
to the literature.
David M. Guion
University of North Carolina at Greensboro