Helicon

(Gk. helikōn: ‘the mountain of the Muses’, but apparently confused with helix: ‘a coil’; Fr. contre basse ronde; Ger. Helikon; It. elicon; Sp. helicón).

A valved brass instrument made in the same pitches as the tubas in F, E and BB (B') but in the circular form of instruments depicted on Trajan’s Column (for illustration, see Cornu) and imitated in one form of the tuba curva used during the French Revolution. The helicon has a small forward-looking bell and the tubing encircles the player’s head, passing beneath the right arm and resting on the left shoulder. It may thus be comfortably carried for long periods by a player on foot or mounted. The helicon was produced by Ignaz Stowasser, Vienna, in 1845 (Austrian patent 5338 of 1848), following either a suggestion of Wieprecht or a Russian prototype. An early example by Stowasser, in BB, is in the Nuremberg Collection (D-Ngm). The helicon has since been made throughout Europe and the Americas. Metzler’s ‘Sonorophone’ (London, 1858) is essentially the same instrument, while Sax’s Saxotuba was modelled on the Tuba curva, with the addition of valves. The Sousaphone, which is similarly constructed but has a larger bell, is called ‘helicon’ in southern Europe.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Waterhouse-LangwillI

D. Charlton: ‘New Sounds for Old: Tam-Tam, Tuba Curva, Buccin’, Soundings, iii (1973), 39–47

C. Bevan: The Tuba Family (London, 1978)

C. Bevan: ‘The Saxtuba and Organological Vituperation’, GSJ, xliii (1990), 135–46

ANTHONY C. BAINES/CLIFFORD BEVAN