title: Elucidating the Sound of It: A Performance Philosophy of Contrabass Tuba in Symphonic Wind Ensembles
Creators: name: Harvey, James
Publisher: name: Griffith University
Year: 2024
Subjects: subject: bass materiality
subject: performance philosophy
subject: Arnold Jacobs
subject: tuba

description: Elucidating the Sound of It is an artistic tuba performance action research project investigating wind-bass sound and musical performance practice in an adult community wind orchestra. An autoethnographic, musical process philosophy of symphonic wind-brass-bass performance, employing a cognition analysis tool 4E (embodied, embedded, enabled, extended) in a cross disciplinary, humanistic investigation framed within cultural history, classical philosophy, and transpersonal psychology. The thesis discusses bass sound as an elemental, acoustically immersive phenomenon foundational to psychologically affective somatic experiences of musical depth, size, and power. An acoustical sensation, first encountered in landscapes and later replicated to effect somatic awe in ceremonies and rituals for thousands of years. Bass sounds, manifested in more recent times, by massive brass bells, mighty wind driven pipe organs and the eventual development of brass wind-bass orchestral instruments. The tuba, an industrial era, military band, chromatic, contrabass brass instrument was significantly employed by Richard Wagner in composing the Ring Cycle. Wagner expressed an innovative and expansive conception of bass brass symphonic sounds, consequently, establishing an important musical role for tuba in orchestral performance. The playing of tuba in a symphonic wind ensemble is the focus of this performative research, which is framed by the orchestral tuba performance and wind instrument pedagogy of Arnold Jacobs (1915-1998) principal tuba of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (1944-1988). Jacobs (teacher to generations of accomplished brass players and the author) is renowned for his musical knowledge, orchestral experience, and pioneering study of the anatomical and neurological aspects of effective wind instrument respiration. A pedagogy expressed in a personal style of individualized mentoring often conveyed in cryptic oral maxims. Jacobs' teaching philosophy is verified in a growing body of published accounts by former students and his recorded masterclasses available online. Evidence of Jacobs' allegorical, enigmatic, common-sense emphasis of developing an attentive, focused, and imaginative conception of tuba sound and performance excellence. An oral teaching, demonstrated in the thesis to possess meaningful etymological precedents in classical Greek philosophy; an empirical observation that Jacobs' oral teaching style displays cogent pre-Socratic roots. A classical foundation to a process based, metaphorically expressive, performative philosophy articulating an embodied relationship of music, player, and instrument manifesting imaginative musical products; a poetic process Jacobs characterized as Song &amp; Wind. The dissertation evidences its qualitative enquiry of tuba wind-bass sound by both examining and documenting the instruments performative role within a symphonic wind ensemble. The bass parts, encountered and performed in concert, of five wind orchestra masterworks are discussed: Gustav Holst, First Suite in E-flat for Military Band - Percy Grainger, Lincolnshire Posy - Leonard Bernstein, Symphonic Suite from On the Waterfront - Julie Giroux, Symphony IV: Bookmarks from Japan - John Mackey, The Frozen Cathedral. Embedded within the dissertation are recent concert performances of these works demonstrating the authors tuba performance and process philosophy as practiced within a musically accomplished adult community wind orchestra.