A topic I haven't blogged about here that I know of is chamber music for classical guitar and brass instruments. I want to get to the Frank Campo Two Studies for Trumpet and Guitar one day.
But today the blogging theme has been music for the tuba and whether you believe me or not, there is a tiny body of music composed for tuba and guitar.
There's not a lot of literature for guitar with tuba but there is, in fact, a sonatina by Jan Truhlar for tuba and guitar. I'm not aware of anyone in the colloquial West that has recorded that work but if someone, anyone, has recorded the work I'd love to know!
There's a piece for tuba and electric guitar by Gerard Buquet
http://www.gerardbuquet.eu/index.php?id=10
There's no recording I'm aware of for that work.
There is a vimeo performance of Robin Hayward's Travel Stain, a duet for microtonal tuba and guitar! The following link has an excerpt of the performed score, the honeycomb appearance of which has a thematic point to it, since the work took inspiration from the idea of travel stains of bees tracking along honeycomb, coming home without cleaning the shoes, so to speak.
http://www.robinhayward.de/eng/comp/travel_stain.php
The work as a whole, it seems, is over here.
https://vimeo.com/34212439
There's a conversation in German that lasts about 2.25 minutes before the music starts getting performed at 2:26. I don't know German, I'm afraid, so I can't translate any of what's said for you but if you know German and are willing to comment, some synopsis of what was said is appreciated. :)
Microtonal tuba and guitar (which is unamplified!) is an interesting combination and Hayward is a tubist. Hayward developed the first fully microtonal tuba around 2009.
There's some fun use of natural harmonics you can obtain on the guitar just above and just below the third fret, which sound better on (as you'll see in the video) the lowest strings. It sounds like the sixth string is tuned to a low C earlier in the piece and the rest of the strings are in standard pitch. Interesting for me, as a guitarist, is observing how there's some kind of cloth band covering the nut. Given how close the tubist and guitarist are that might be a move to prevent the guitar from automatically resonating with whatever tones the tuba is playing. Having it up on the nut rather than the bridge could reduce sympathetic vibration on the guitar strings but leaving the strings open to sound freely when plucked to play notes in the score. Otherwise if you had a mute placed on the bridge you'd get a constant pizzicato effect.
At 4:43 Hayward plays a charmingly low, boomy D pedal tone.
One of the things you'll see and hear is the guitarist can play natural harmonics regularly and still be heard past the pedal tones of the tuba. Let's just say the tubist has to have impeccable breath control to control the dynamics for that to work.
Ah, by 10:00 I can hear the guitar is using scordatura, most likely.
And there's a speaker shown at the end of the video. Yeah, should have guessed some amplification would be needed for third fret harmonics. I admit it "kinda" feels like cheating. My own preference is that if you're going to tackle chamber music for guitar and brass you should see how far you can go without relying on amplification but ... anyway ... it's a conceptually interesting piece to me even if I would say I vastly prefer microtonality as practiced by the composer Ben Johnston. But since I wanted to blog about chamber music composed for tuba and guitar by covering these various pieces and linking where possible I have covered just about the entire range of formally composed music for tuba and guitar. Here's a link to
Microtonal composers who want to write for tuba, Robin Hayward looks and sounds like the musician and composer you'll want to get in touch with.
I ... uh ... know of a chamber sonata for tuba and guitar somebody wrote ...
This sonata for tuba and guitar was premiered on July 26, 2013 in Seattle at a guitar society event.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHsOLctT6O4
It's a two-movement work. The first movement is a variation form that states its theme and presents variations in which the tuba and guitar alternately solo. The closing variation presents a partly inverted form of the starting theme in inversion and as a chorale played entirely in natural harmonics. This is a case where you can (or should) be able to hear the chorale in harmonics above the tuba pedal points and there's no amplification for the guitar.
Neither is there any amplification for the guitar in this outdoor performance dating from later in 2013.
(the chorale starts at about 2:59 in this second video for the end of the first movement)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uxcgx-QdMl4
The second movement starts about 3:35 and opens with an agitated chromatic riff. The first theme arrives with the entrance of the tuba playing a motto of E rising up to D and falling down to B flat, which is almost immediately given an imitative response from the guitar. Something that might not be too obvious about the first theme of the second and final movement is that it's basically an extended 12-bar blues. Sure, there's a neapolitan substitution where the standard IV chord should be but in terms of harmonic bearing and phrasing it's all a blues theme. You won't get to hear the blues theme presented in its most conventionally bluesy form until near the end of the development at about 6:10 in the video.
After a modulating transition Theme 2 shows up at about 4:48 and is a march. This theme and the earlier theme from the second movement both derive from the first movement theme. The second movement is fairly obviously in sonata form. The development starts at about 5:23. There's a continuing call and response dynamic between the two instruments. As noted earlier, the climax of the development is a presentation of the thematic materials that have appeared throughout the work since the start of the two-movement work as a traditional 12-bar blues. If you want to think of it in some kind of descriptive way maybe it's a Stevie Wonder meets Paul Hindemith kind of thing.
The recapitulation starts at 6:55. Theme 2 returns in the recapitulation at 7:55 and it's at this point that the guitar and tuba trade registers. Where in the exposition the tuba played in an overlapping range with the guitar's accompaniment in the recapitulation the tuba drops down to a lower register where it plays Theme 2 in the tonic key while the guitar shifts up to playing accompaniment above the tuba. At 8:32 the guitar cadenza from the end of the first movement returns and leads the way into a return of the chorale in harmonics on the guitar, now played above gently pulsing pedal tones on the tuba. The work closes with the tuba playing a low E pedal and the guitar completing an E dominant 9th chord in natural harmonics, playing G sharp on the fourth fret of the sixth string and the ascending D natural, F sharp and B natural are all taken at the seventh frets of the treble strings. The work, by the way, isn't published. But it's been filmed and can be heard online.
That, for the moment, might just cover everything written for tuba and classical guitar I'm currently aware of. There is a suite for tuba and electric guitar by Lee Aronson but classical guitarists would probably object that that's not a classical guitar and the scordatura preferring E flat might also not meet approval of classical guitar traditionalists.
So .. that's kind of the span of music for tuba and classical guitar with a few electric guitar works mentioned for good measure.
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