Wotan’s Missing Eye? Jonathan Burton acclaims a definitive study of the Wagner tuba

‘Literature about the Wagner tuba consists mainly of assertions either dubious or erroneous’, wrote Hans Kunitz in 1968. William Melton, a Philadelphia-born Wagner tuba and horn player in the Sinfonie Orchester Aachen, has set about remedying the situation, in a book he modestly subtitles ‘A History’ but which is far more – an all-embracing and microscopically detailed study of this most elusive of instruments, from its inception as a gleam in the mind’s ear of Richard Wagner, to its belated invention and development, its place in the orchestral and operatic repertoire, and its surprising latter-day rebirth in Hollywood and elsewhere.