The Collaborative Process - Solo for Euphonium and orches... hahahaha just kidding.

Hey there folkses. In a hotel room, so I figured I'd pound one out (a blog that is). I'll get to the second half of the last question by the end of the week, but for tonight's collaborazzmatazz Chris sends this:

As a Euphonium player and composer, why do you think that the Euph has failed to make it as a symphonic instrument?

Well... this is actually kinda tricky as my understanding of the issue goes. First of all, I'd like to say to Chris at least Euph is used in some standard orchestral repertoire: Dons Juan and Quixote, Janacek Sinfonietta, The Planets, Ravel's Pictures orchestration, and a handful of others. Nowadays, the euphonium is used to cover many instruments that have either fallen out of common use, or that it can adequately replace. Examples are instruments such as tenor tuba (which is effectively the euphonium), wagner tubas (which apparently a bitch to play and require even more horn players), and French Tuba. It could even be used to replace instruments such as ophecleide and serpent if desired. So for a period at the end of the 19th / early 20th century, it was (in a roundabout way) a standard of extended instrumentation.

Now as I am not an expert in the development of the orchestra and I don't have any of my bookses at my disposal (and I don't know how to or apparently care to look up things on the darpanet), the rest may be a bit of speculation. My guess would be as orchestras around the world focused less and less on new works as composition went in, umm... less audience friendly ways, the orchestra kind of fell in to the standardized instrumentation that the majority of early-mid romantic orchestral works. And when something gets standardized, composers are more likely to write for that instrumentation (well some are, although many will write for whatever and if the orchestra doesn't wanna fill in the instrumentation then they don't play the work). So it kind of ends in a feedback loop, where if it isn't standard, then it is an inconvenience to write for it, but as long as no one writes for it, it won't become standardized. Which is a shame, cause the euphonium really fits nicely in to an orchestra as a conical brass tenor solo voice that can easily chameleon in to many sections. In wind ensembles it is used to add some more presence to horns, smooth out the trombone section, add depth to the tubas by playing in octaves, and the most unusual standard usage is as a solid tenor/bass voice for the woodwind section, especially the clarinets.

Unfortunately, I do not see this trend changing anytime soon, as most orchestral call for scores specify standard orchestration. There are a handful of composers who use the instrument, but not enough to change the paradigm. Anyways... I could go one and may edit this later, cause I'm tired and don't care like proofreading to make sure I didn't say anything idiotic. So get your digs in now.