Here are some composers that are noted (no pun intended)for their use of Tubas in there work, and some composers that I like!!! I will be updating this often and adding more composers.



Charles Ives is a noted 20th century composer. while he isn't famous for using Tubas, I like is work so he is here in the hall of fame.




Ives, Charles (1874-1954)


Born in Danbury, Connecticut on 20 October 1874, Charles Ives pursued what is perhaps one of the most extraordinary and paradoxical careers in American music history. Businessman by day and composer by night,Ives's vast output has gradually brought him recognition as the most original and significant American composer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Inspired by transcendentalist philosophy, Ives sought a highly personalized musical expression through the most innovative and radical technical means possible. A fascination with bi-tonal forms, polyrhythms, and quotation was nurtured by his father who Ives would later acknowledge as the primary creative influence on his musical style. Studies at Yale with Horatio Parker guided an expert control overlarge-scale forms.




J.P. Sousa, need I say more????




Sousa, John Philip (1854-1932


American bandmaster and composer, born in Washington, D.C. At the age of 13 he was apprenticed to the Marine Band, the official band of the president of the U.S. At the age of 18 he began to play the violin in theater orchestras. Appointed leader of the Marine Band in 1880, he resigned 12 years laterto form his own band. Sousa's Band, as it was called, achieved great popularity during many tours of the U.S. and Europe. Sousa, a perfectionist, raised the level of performance and instrumentation of the concert band. He composed so many marches, he is known as the March King. His marches, recognized as distinctively American as well as brilliant and stirring, include Semper Fidelis (1888), Washington Post March (1889), King Cotton (1897), and the most popular of all, The Stars and Stripes Forever (1897). Sousa also composed 11 comic operas and 2 symphonic poems and invented the sousaphone, a large bass tuba with circular coiling and an upright bell. He wrote an autobiography, Marching Along (1928).



Wagner was famous for his heavy Tuba parts in his work and he used a type of tuba called the wagner tuba.




Wagner, Richard(1813 - 1883)


Wagner was a remarkable innovator both in harmony and in the structure of his work, creating his own version of the Gesamtkunstwerk, dramatic compositions in which the arts were brought together into a single unity. As a man he was prepared to sacrifice his family and friends in the cause of his own music and his overt anti-semitism has attracted unwelcome attention to ideas that are remote from his real work as a musician. In the later part of his career Wagner enjoyed the support of King Ludwig II of Bavaria and was finally able to establish his own theatre and festival at the Bavarian town of Bayreuth. He developed the use of the Leitmotiv (leading motif) as a principle of musical unity, his dramatic musical structure depending on the interweaving of melodies or fragments of melody associated with characters, incidents or ideas in the drama. His Prelude to the love tragedy Tristan und Isolde led to a new world of harmony.




I am a huge fan of the Boston Pops Orchestra, and of Steven Spielberg's movies, so he has to be in here for that. Mr. Williams also has written a Tuba Concerto!!!!




Williams, John(1932 - )


In 1958, the silver screen was introduced to who would become the most popular film composer ever, John Williams. Working with great directors, such as Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Oliver Stone, his music has captured our hearts, music that tells its own story. In 1977, John Williams composed the music for Star Wars, a score that saw the return of symphonic music to the big screen and changed the film music industry forever.




More famous for his choral workes, Ralph Vaughan Williams also composed a Concerto for Tuba. This is enough for me to put him into my hall of fame.




Williams, Ralph Vaughan (1872 - 1958)


One of the leading English composers of his generation, Vaughan Williams was a pupil of Parry, Charles Wood and Stanford, and later of Bruch and Ravel. In his work as a composer he went some way towards creating a specifically English musical idiom, influenced by his interest in folk-song, but coloured by his own personal vision and language.




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