Wotan’s Missing Eye? Jonathan Burton acclaims a definitive study of the Wagner tuba
Wotan’s Missing Eye? Jonathan Burton acclaims a definitive study of the Wagner tuba
Review of William Melton, The Wagner Tuba: A History (edition ebenos, 2008).
March 2010, Volume 4, Number 1, 88–92.
‘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.