As of: February 3, 2024, 7:00 a.m
By: Carina Ottillinger
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Florian Mayrhofer plays with the Unterbiberger Hofmusik.
Here with the sousaphone, a form of the tuba.
© Private
The tuba was named instrument of the year.
It's high time for musicians to clarify the most important questions.
Above all: Are tuba players really such good kissers?
District – no more being an outsider.
The state music councils have chosen the tuba as instrument of the year.
For Mayor Stefan Schelle from Oberhaching, it was high time: “The perfect choice, finally!” In the Feldkirchner brass band, the envy subsided: “You can’t say out loud that the trombones were so far ahead of us,” says Tobi Geschwendner and laughs.
And tuba player Heinz-Konrad Wilhelm from the Höhenkirchen-Siegertsbrunn wind orchestra also wants something to change.
“Tuba always goes down.” Some people confuse his instrument with a trumpet.
“It's no longer a laughing matter, but rather a crying one.” The tuba is the foundation of all brass music.
Heavy instrument
Mayor Stefan Schelle from Oberhaching.
© Private
Many people have seen Mayor Schelle on the tuba.
He has been playing in the Deisenhofen brass band for 30 years.
“I am at home in Bavarian-Bohemian music,” says Schelle.
Schelle inherited a trombone from his great uncle from Egerland.
From there it wasn't far to go into the deep metal.
He learned to play the tuba “from a professional from the Luftwaffe Music Corps”.
Heinz Wilhelm from the Höhenkirchen-Siegertsbrunn brass band.
© Private
Heinz-Konrad Wilhelm has also been playing in the Höhenkirchen-Siegertsbrunn band for three decades.
With 60 active members, it is one of the largest in the district.
Wilhelm is one of three tuba players.
He fell in love with the tuba when his father took him to the trombone choir as a young boy.
Wilhelm Marsch loves playing most of all.
“The challenge is to stay in rhythm.
A melody is more memorable.” Schelle agrees and adds: “It’s really hard to carry eleven kilograms in 35 degrees for a six-kilometer-long pageant.”
Large air volume
Paul Aderholz and Xaver Zach (r.) play in the Höhenkirchen-Siegertsbrunn youth band.
© Private
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Every Wednesday evening, Wilhelm meets his younger musician colleague Paul Adelholzer in rehearsal.
For the 19-year-old from Waldperlach, his hobby is a balance to his studies.
He started in school.
“With the tuba you need a large volume of air,” says Adelholzer.
The depth is particularly challenging.
“The deep tones come with the right lip tension.” Adelholzer also plays in the youth band.
Like Xaver Zach from Brunnthal.
Two years ago he switched from the euphonium to the tuba.
“The lower tones suit me better,” says the 19-year-old.
With the tuba he had to develop a feeling for the right air.
“Because of the large mouthpiece, large, full lips are an advantage.” Like his older colleague, the apprentice carpenter likes to play the March Homeland.
He says: “Without the tuba, Bavarian folk music would sound pretty empty.”
Friedrich Ampenberger and Michael Haller (r.) from the Aschheim brass band.
© Caro Ross
Michael Haller and board member Friedrich Ampenberger from the Aschheim brass band can confirm this.
“If we take a breather at the same time, the conductor waves us off and asks what’s going on with the tuba players.” In most pieces, he and Haller don’t have long breaks.
“We can’t rest for a few bars like the tenor horns,” says the 44-year-old and laughs.
But Ampenberger and Haller understand each other blindly.
You know exactly when the other needs a breather, then the other simply plays a little louder for a moment.
Tobi Gschwendner from the Feldkirchen brass band.
© private
There is support from the neighboring chapel.
Tobi Geschwendner regularly helps out with the Aschheimers.
The 43-year-old has been playing in the Feldkirchen brass band since 1994.
“The tuba is the most beautiful and certainly the most impressive wind instrument,” he says.
Even as a little boy, Gschwendner played his grandfather's brass music records.
"Grandpa!
Um-Ba-Ba!” He first learned the tenor horn and then switched to the tuba for reinforcement.
“I was always impressed by how the basses growl in the back row.” There is something cozy, almost inconspicuous about it.
But Geschwendner also likes to impress in a solo.
The difficult thing about his instrument is “holding back,” he says.
“To play deep tones loudly over several bars.” Ampenberger and Gschwendner prefer to play the younger, less dusty brass music.
“The main thing is polka!”
Annoying clichés
Florian Mayrhofer is even a professional tuba player.
He has been playing with the Unterbiberger Hofmusik since his student days.
His main groups are MaxJoseph and Buffzack.
He regularly helps out in the brass band Moop Mama.
The clichés that the tuba has to contend with – tuba players are fat, tall and have swollen cheeks – bother him: “None of that is true,” says the 33-year-old.
“You play the tuba with little pressure.
It's all about air, less about strength." Anyone who has the technique of air and lips can play anything.
Mayrhofer has something against the fact that more and more tuba players are performing as soloists.
For him, the tuba remains an accompanying instrument.
It was invented to have a deeper instrument than the trombone.
“It’s nice to support other instruments and make them sound good.”
The best kissers?
The tuba players from the district do not entirely agree on whether tuba players are the best kissers, as some people claim.
“You would have to ask the ladies that,” says Schelle.
“But it sounds plausible.” This makes sense for young player Xaver Zach – because of the trained lip muscles of every tuba player.
And no one has complained to Tobi Geschwendner and Friedrich Ampenberger yet either.
You would have heard that tuba players' lips are particularly supple after a long performance.
Further news from the Munich district can be found here.