THE TUBA AS A VOICE: VOCAL PRINCIPLES IN SOLO AND ORCHESTRAL TUBA REPERTOIRE OF THE 20TH–21ST CENTURIES

Abstract

This article investigates the phenomenon of the tuba as an individualized “timbral voice” in the solo and orchestral repertoire of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries through the lens of the vocal principle of sound production and phrasing. The point of departure is the observation that the tuba has only relatively recently become an independent object of musicological inquiry. Existing scholarship tends to concentrate on two dominant poles: (1) the orchestral and ensemble functions of the instrument (the brass bass as a structural foundation, issues of texture, balance, and timbral weight), and (2) the establishment of the tuba concerto and the demonstration of the instrument’s technical potential in solo performance. By contrast, the cantabile semantic profile of the tuba–its capacity to sustain vocalized, “singing” musical utterance in both solo and orchestral contexts–has rarely been placed at the center of a comprehensive, dedicated study in either Ukrainian or international research. The present article aims to address this gap by proposing an integrative view of the “tuba as voice”, understood not merely as a metaphor but as a coherent set of historical, repertoire-based, performative, pedagogical, and semantic processes. The article’s object is to clarify how the vocal principle in tone production and phrasing is transformed across different repertorial domains and how it enables the tuba to function as an individualized melodic and dramaturgical agent–moving from the traditional role of a low-register “foundation” toward the status of a subject of musical narration. The methodological framework combines historical, genre-based, performance-analytical, intonational, interpretive, comparative, and systems-oriented methods. This approach makes it possible to trace the relationship between orchestral models of tuba “soloization” and the emergence of a distinctive solo repertoire, as well as to compare the tuba with other low-register instruments (cello, bassoon, bass clarinet, trombone) in terms of the broader cultural semantics of the “low voice”. The analytical corpus includes transcriptions of vocal lyric repertoire for tuba (notably cycles based on Schubert and Vaughan Williams), chamber and orchestral works in which the tuba receives arioso or recitative-declamatory episodes, and scholarly sources that provide the theoretical background (the concept of instrumental vocality; studies on the evolution of instrumental solo and orchestral dramaturgy; and vocally oriented approaches to tuba pedagogy). The article’s scholarly novelty lies in an integrative reading of the “tuba as voice”, in which intonational-vocal, textural-orchestral, and interpretive factors are treated as interacting components within a single semantic field. It is argued that the vocalization of tuba sound cannot be reduced to generalized lyricism: it becomes audible in concrete performance strategies (breath support, articulation as “diction”, wave-like dynamic shaping of the phrase), in a typology of form-building models (arioso cantabile, speech-like recitative, meaningful pauses as semantic signs), and in the changing orchestral status of the instrument, where the tuba increasingly functions as a character, narrator, or dialogic participant. Finally, the article outlines perspectives for further research, including systematic repertoire studies of “tuba arias” within orchestral textures, the expansion of transcription practice, and the development of integrated pedagogical models at the intersection of vocal and brass traditions.