Tuba

Uncommon card · No. 84575

The tuba (Latin, "trumpet"; UK: ; US: ) is a large brass instrument in the bass-to-contrabass range. It is a member of the valved bugles, a large and diverse family of instruments characterized by their wide conical bore and use of valves to alter pitch. The tuba usually has three or four valves, although some models have five or six. Descending from the serpent and ophicleide, the tuba was invented in Prussia by Wilhelm Friedrich Wieprecht and Johann Gottfried Moritz and patented in 1835 as the Baß-Tuba, pitched in 12-foot (12′) F. Its five valves provided a fully chromatic contrabass instrument with a deep, full contrabass timbre. The tuba evolved through the 19th century as valves improved, and other makers contributed new designs and sizes. By the 1850s, Adolphe Sax had developed his E♭ and B♭ contrabass saxhorns which became standard in British brass bands, and Václav František Červený developed contrabass tubas in 16′ C and 18′ B♭ in the 1870s. A circular, wearable tuba called the...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Yamaha Corporation, CC BY-SA 4.0