The hunt for Wagner tubas

It took a while, but I finally got some quotes on Wagner tubas made from scratch. When I first investigated the issue, the best I could find was "If you have to ask how much it costs, you can't afford it." That's more or less the advice of the Vermont Horns, a group of four horn players who wanted to play Bruckner's Symphony No. 7 in E major. What they wound up doing was borrowing the set from the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

It appears that only the world class orchestras own Wagner tubas, which are then used by whoever plays horn for them that season. Given that the Detroit Symphony plays Bruckner so rarely these days, it's possible that if I assemble a pick-up orchestra, I might be able to borrow their Wagner tubas for almost any time of they year. Nevertheless, and even though the strike is over, I imagine it might be a little awkward to ask for this. Regardless, I want to make sure I have a plan B.

Finally I stumbled upon the page for Osmun Music, sellers of brass instruments. A set of four Wagner tubas (two tenor in B-flat, two bass in F) made by Finke would cost at least $23,600 (including cases) and at least six months. The Hans Hoyer tenor tuba is slightly cheaper while the bass tuba of that brand is more expensive, I'm not sure why. The guy from Osmun Music on the phone told me that the Engelbert Schmid tubas are top-of-the-line; no price quote is given on the website and the only sure thing is that they're more expensive than the other brands.

All four brands offered by Osmun Music are made to order (note also that they don't sell pre-owned Wagner tubas, as they do regular horns, trumpets, trombones, tubas and euphoniums), which means that since I don't play horn myself, I don't know what to ask for. The guy confirmed what I already know about the mouthpieces (that the horn players would use their own horn mouthpieces they already have) but also told me quite a few things I didn't already know, such as that for the order the players can ask for their preferred alloys, whether to lacquer or not, and the number of water keys.

So I'm grateful to Osmun Music, now I don't feel quite as lost in the topic of Wagner tubas.

Living composers are better off without Wikipedia pages

One of the hardest things about being a composer in this day and age is dealing with the extreme public indifference to new music. The kinds of people who want to hear every single little stupid thing Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote, even the works of doubtful authorship (but who completely lose interest when it turns out it was actually written by his father or a contemporary of his father's), couldn't care less about the magnum opus of the oldest living composer residing in their town. So, if you're a living composer and there's a Wikipedia article about you, that means you're a great composer and that your music is worth the investment of listeners' time, right? And that true, lasting success is on the way? Wrong.

Let's consider the specific cases of two Detroit composers, Keith Buckner and Prof. James Lentini. The latter is the very man who approved my admittance to Wayne State University's music program after reviewing a piece I wrote for flute, violin, timpani and harpsichord. There is a Wikipedia article about Prof. Lentini. But the true signs that Lentini has "arrived" are these: one, his music has been reviewed in Gramophone ("alluring Americana," in their view); two, his music has been recorded by Naxos; three, I could go on and on. A couple of weeks ago, the Lentini article on Wikipedia was nominated for deletion, and it wasn't until yesterday that the Wikipediots decided to err on the side of keeping the article.

Keith Buckner was not so lucky with Wikipedia, it would appear at first, but it turns out he was actually luckier: the Wikipediots deleted the article about him. That decision was also made yesterday. On the one hand, Keith has lost a Google search result. But he also has lost the headache of constantly having to monitor Wikipedia to make sure they're not telling ridiculous lies about him that could scare off potential fans. The week leading up to the deletion decision demonstrated this very clearly: according to Wikipedia that week, Keith died in 1996, or 1999, the idiots couldn't make up their mind which (because the truth is he's still alive as of this writing), nor could they make up their mind as to which of the thousands of diseases he supposedly had was it that supposedly killed him (reality is he's not in the best of health, but odds are he'll at least live to life expectancy). Some of the lies about his health were removed just before the article was deleted, but it still contained many other lies that would be a total nightmare for a publicity firm to deal with. For the last month, the top Google result for "Keith Buckner music Detroit" (it's a more common name than I realized) was the truth-deprived Wikipedia article, but now the top Google result is his LinkedIn profile, which he can control to present a deservedly positive image.

Fortunately for Prof. Lentini, the top Google result for his name is not the Wikipedia article, but his own homepage, with a link to the Gramophone review and a link to the Naxos catalog. Still, if I were him, I'd have my secretary monitor the Wikipedia article just in case bored teenagers who can't vandalize Barack Obama's Wikipedia article set their sights on easier targets.

To go back to dead composers for a little bit: does it help Leopold Mozart or Michael Haydn that there are Wikipedia articles about them? No, not one bit. What they need is concerts being put on with their music. In the case of Michael Haydn, I've done my part: the 2010 Music of Engineering concert, which started with Kinetic Energy by Keith Buckner (the "equation piece," as some call it), ended with Michael Haydn's Duo in C major arranged for violin and cello (you can hear this at IMSLP, by the way). To my knowledge, there are no complete recordings of any of Keith's composition on the Internet. But if you live in metro Detroit, you can go to Dearborn Music and buy the Tiger Stadium Postcard, and listen to his Prentis Street Sonata (tracks 3 and 4).

One last thought: there is still no article about Prof. James Hartway (a former colleague of Lentini's) on Wikipedia. And Elena Ruehr, who's getting some nice promotion from WCPE, doesn't have a Wikipedia article either. Ask either of them how they feel about not having a Wikipedia article. My guess is that they'd say they're better off that way. An article in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, now, that's the encyclopedia they'd like to be listed in.