Berlioz made a great use of this instrument. He said: “The trombone in my opinion is the true chief of that race of wind instruments which I distinguish as _epic_ instruments. It possesses, in an eminent degree, both nobleness and grandeur. It has all the deep and powerful accents of high musical poetry from the religious accent, calm and imposing, to the wild clamors of the orgy. The composer can make it chant like a choir of priests, threaten, lament, ring a funeral knell, raise a hymn of glory, break forth into frantic cries, or sound a dread flourish to awaken the dead, or to doom the living.” As a rule there are three tenor trombones in the Orchestra, but no alto, nor bass. [Illustration: TROMBONE, SYMPHONY SOCIETY OF NEW YORK _R. Van der Elst_] THE BASS TUBA This huge instrument, with the enormous bell standing upright, with valves and horizontal mouthpiece and great coils of shining tubes, is over three feet long! We can never mistake it; for it is the biggest of all the brass instruments. It has the _deepest notes in the entire Orchestra_. Its compass is immense! Four octaves! Having pistons, it can give sharps and flats. Consequently, it is a chromatic instrument. The sound of its voice is solemn, mysterious and lugubrious. It is very rich in its deepest notes. If we do not try to listen for them we shall not be able to distinguish them from the other bass instruments of the Orchestra. The tone of the bass tuba might be described as partaking of both the trombone and the organ. Many of the beautiful effects in Wagner’s _Nibelungen Ring_ are due to this great tuba of five cylinders. Wagner uses it to describe the deep, dark caverns under the Rhine and to suggest the first heavy roll of the waves in _Das Rheingold_; and it is the instrument on which the dragon, Fafner, speaks in _Siegfried_. It is heavy and ponderous like Fafner’s own heavy coils; and it is dark and deep and mysterious, just as we imagine a dragon’s voice might sound in the forest, where his mutterings and threatenings are understood. The bass tuba appealed very strongly to Wagner’s imagination; and the _Rheingold_, _Walküre Siegfried_, and _Götterdämmerung_ are full of its impressive tones. The tuba was invented by a German composer, W. F. Wieprecht (1802-1892), with the help of J. G. Moritz. The bass tuba, like every other instrument, had a direct ancestor. In some families the new generations are nobler and more refined than their ancestors. This is the case with the tuba. As he belongs to the group of horns and trombones, with even a slight relationship to the organ in his deep rolling voice with more velvet in it than even the organ possesses, the tuba might not care to be reminded that his parent is the ophicleide and that he came down in a straight line of ancestry from the rather commonplace and blatant Cornet Family.