Context

Performance

Instrumentation

f tuba solo and wind band -- 2222 4330 12 0, pf/cel, cb

Classification

Tubakonsert

Tuba och piano

Subject heading

Xm

Xf

Language

First performance

Date

1978-05-20

Location

Aalborg/Danmarks radio

Performers

Michael Lind, Stadsorkestern

Background

Tribute to

Michael Lind

Comments about the work

The tuba player who would dare leave the anonymity of the orchestra must search long and hard for musical support. He who would take center stage with tuba in hand and play Swedish music has at most about ten works that could be called tuba concertos. Among these, one might name Erland von Koch’s and Torbjörn Iwan Lundquist’s from 1978 and Hans Eklund’s from 1982.Tuba buffo by Julius Jacobsen (1915­1990) is a short work of less than ten minutes that is strongly imbued with Jacobsen’s notorious ability to sail over genre boundaries: from pure light entertainment music, through jazz, and on to the realms of modern classical music, all seemingly carefree. It is true that the basic tone of the work is classical, but for that very reason, the jazz colorings found in above all the harmony and sometimes rhythm of Tuba buffo are that much more palpable.It is in other words a diverse work, more or less cast in an outgoing classical style of the playful variety such as that Igor Stravinskij shows off in among other works Circus Polka. It is also easy to make a tuba concerto comical—the aura around the instrument leads both composers and listeners perhaps too easily towards such thoughts. But in spite of his light touch and playfulness, Julius Jacobsen seeks not only the most obvious in Tuba buffo. Between the fast scale passages and phrases that allow the tuba to hop from a high to a low register, Jacobsen also lets the tuba burst into softly swaying, intimate, lyrical song. Thanks to this, Tuba buffo is a concerto that both fulfills and contradicts prejudices about the tuba as an instrument. At the end of the 1970s, Julius Jacobsen wrote several works for tuba in different combinations. Tuba buffo is from 1977 and was premiered in 1978 in Aalborg, Denmark—Jacobsen’s native country until he moved to Sweden in the middle of the 1940s. The soloist at the premiere was another Danish Swede, the tubaist Michael Lind, who has himself contributed greatly to the expansion of the Swedish repertoire for the instrument.

List

The work

Composer

Julius Jacobsen

Title

Tuba buffo : concerto

Duration

9 minutes 30 seconds

Composition year

1977

Information

Identification number

136905

ISMN

M-706866-71-7

Work administrator

SUE (Edition Suecia)
Box 17092
Stockholm
Phone: 08-783 88 00
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.svenskmusik.org

Edition number

513

Format

SCORE

Reference to physical copy

L-343

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