Ein Heldenleben

Each year, my orchestra collaborates with the German orchestra across the border, the Schleswig-Holsteinisches Sinfonieorchester. We typically play a large work we can combine forces to perform, and this year featured Richard Strauss’ Ein Heldenleben.

I was thrilled to play the tenor tuba part on this masterwork. Wow, what an experience that was! It was something that I had looked forward to doing that really lived up to the hype. Sitting there, being immersed in such dramatic, inspiring music was the kind of experience that I know I will always remember.

I also found it fascinating from an arranging/composing perspective to see how Strauss wrote for the tenor tuba in this piece. Sometimes, he would use tenor tuba for soaring melodies when they went out of range (i.e. too deep) for the horn. Other times, the tenor tuba was combined with the bass tuba to form a unit, a tuba section. The familiar tutti low brass parts were there as well, of course, but I also noticed that Strauss would occasionally use the tenor tuba in place of the bass tuba in a few chorales when it seemed like he wanted a slightly lighter, less dense sound in the low brass. There are also a few sections in which the tenor tuba is given some truly inspired counter melodies.