-"....two instances may here be given by way of illustrating the great utility and eminent service which a bass Ophicleide may, on occasion, render. "Signor Smitoni," an Ophicleide player, was fulfilling an engagement in Genoa, where, owing to some trifling disagreement, he became involved in a serious quarrel. His opponents were 12 to 1. By using his mighty Ophicleide as a club, the player, with many a knockdown blow, scattered his antagonists like ninepins, in true John Bull fashion. Then there is the story of a French transport which sprung a leak and was sinking. A bandsman on board, who played the Ophicleide, perceiving the danger, deftly tied a piece of tarpaulin round the bell of his instrument, corked up the mouthpiece, and secured the open key near the bell with some string. Casting himself adrift, he used the great instrument as a life-buoy, and was safely carried by the tide to the coast of Morocco." (from 'Talks with bandsmen' by Algernon S. Rose, first pub. 1895, Tony Bingham, London)
-"A certain young man played the Ophicleide,
the crowd when they heard it, "take 'im off" they cried!,
But he puffed and he blew,
'til he won them quite through,
"It's so sweet and so true and so soft" they sighed.
(Michele A. Connolly-Lecturer in Biblical Studies, Catholic Institute of Sydney, moved to compose this limerick after a recent Ophicleide concert)
-"That sounds disgusting!!!....what is it?"
An clearly unsympathetic Conductor Edo De Waart at a rehearsal for Sydney Olympics opening ceremony.
-"......marvelous......what a sound....not like anything I have heard....quite extraordinary"
Vladimir Ashkenazy, Sydney Opera House, 2003
-"..I love it...it's perfect....."
Simone Young, Sydney Opera House, 2005
-".........Wonderful.........THAT is the sound that Berlioz wanted!"
Charles Dutoit upon his first Ophicleide exposure
-"Berlioz says that although the bass Ophicleide, in certain cases, does wonders beneath masses of brass instruments, it is monstrous to use it for solos. It's effect is then just as if a bull, escaped from it's stall, had come to play off it's vagaries in a drawing room"
('Talks with bandsmen', Rose,1895)
-"A new instrument, called the double-bass Ophicleide, made for this festival, and now first introduced into England, proved eminently serviceable in the choruses, and whenever 
strength was required. The volume of sound it emits is immense, but the tone is rich and round, and blends with the voices. We are much deceived if this instrument is not destined to operate a great change in the constitution of our orchestras. Well played, it will answer the purpose of four double basses, and it is well calculated to form a third part of the bassoons, which has long been a desideratum. As a contra-bass to the trombones, it will not be found less useful."
(Musical Library, Birmingham festival, 1834)
-"The double bass Ophicleide, or monster Ophicleides, are very little known. They might be useful in very large orchestras; but up to the present nobody in Paris has been willing to play them because of the volume of breath required. This surpasses the lung power of even the strongest man. They are in F and Eb, i.e. a fifth lower than the bass Ophicleides and an octave lower than the alto Ophicleides. In writing for them one must not go above F: It goes without saying that trills and rapid passages are incompatible with the nature of such instruments."(Hector Berlioz, Treatise on Instrumentation)
-"It is strange what cock-and-bull stories one hears concerning the harmless Ophicleide. Perhaps the most general fallacy is that it is exhausting to play, and that it is calculated to shatter the health of any one who takes it up....It is not so much great lung-power for a short time that is required, as a steady duration of breath. Weak men occasionally play big brass instruments better than strong ones, because the former know intuitively how to economize rather than waste their strength in blowing"
(Talks with bandsmen,Rose,1895)
-"Berlioz matches instruments that howl when they meet; he thunders, he rages without lightning and without storm...M. Berlioz is bizarre and ill-ordered, because he lacks inspiration and knowledge; he is violent, because he has no good reasons to offer; he wishes to stun us, because he does not know how to charm us.....There is nothing in these strange compositions but noise, disorder, a sickly and sterile exaltation. He gasps, he prances, he fidgets, he behaves like a demon disinherited from divine grace who wants to scale the heavens by force of pride and will"
(P.Scudo, Critique et Litterature Musicales, Paris, 1852
-"With Ophicleide, cymbals and gongs,
at first didst they wisely begin,
And bang the dull ears of the popular throngs,
as though 'twere to beat music in."
(Punch magazine,1852, commenting on Louis Jullien's 'over-use' of brass instruments)
(below,Andre Bissonet)
-"When seen slowly ascending, as it were, from the floor, among the gentlemen of the orchestra, considerable consternation arose, some imagining that, as steam is now made to do everything, they were about to witness a novel application of its powers to the manufacture of sweet sounds, by means of some machine of which the funnel was the first part introduced to their notice. But, when Prospere stepped forward, and, boldly grasping the brazen pillar, proved that one small mouth could bring out its mighty tones, merriment and delight took the part of surprise and perhaps dismay."
(Musical Times, London, upon Mr Prospere playing the monster Ophicleide at Hanover Square Rooms in 1846)
-"We have no Ophicleide class, and the result is that, out of a hundred or a hundred and fifty blowers of that difficult instrument in Paris at the present moment, there are scarcely three fit to be admitted into a well-arranged orchestra. M. Caussinus is the only proficient in it."
(Hector Berlioz, Memoirs, a letter to Monsieur Humbert Ferrand lamenting the scale of teaching at the Paris Conservatoire in 1846)
-"It must be admitted that the inferiority or certain parts of the German orchestras is quite disgraceful. The instruments are poor, and the performers are far from knowing all that can be got out of them: I speak of the kettle-drums, the cymbals, the big drum, the cor anglais, the Ophicleide, and the harp. But this defect is evidently due to the style of writing of certain composers, who attach so little importance to these instruments that their successors, who write in another style, are unable to get anything out of them."
(Hector Berlioz, Memoirs, 1843)
-"The Ophicleide, or rather the thin copper instrument shown to me under that name, was quite unlike a French one, and had scarcely any tone. It was therefore rejected, and replaced after a fashion by a fourth trombone."
(Hector Berlioz, Memoirs, 1843, On visiting Mendelssohn and his orchestra in Leipzig)
-"Before he left he stood in wonder before a monstrous piece of musical plumbing called the Ophicleide which stood, dusty and majestic, in a corner....and dammit it really was a twelve-keyed, 1824-era, 50-inch, obselete brass Ophicleide. The storekeeper explained how his great-grandfather had brought it over from the old country and nobody had played it for two generations except an itinerant tuba-player who had turned pale green on the first three notes and put it down as if it was full of percussion caps."
(Theodore Sturgeon, And Now the News....,Short stories, 1954)
-"In all the theaters there is in front of the stage a black pit filled with wretches who blow and scrape, equally indifferent to what is shouted on the stage and to what buzzes in the boxes and seats. They are possessed by one thought only: earning their supper. This assemblage of poor creatures is what is called an orchestra, and this is how an orchestra is generally constituted: two first and two second violins, usually; very rarely a viola and a cello, almost always two or three double basses....This formidable regiment of string instruments is pitted against an enemy consisting of a dozen keyed bugles, six piston trumpets, six valve trombones, two tenor tubas, two bass tubas, three Ophicleide's, a horn, three piccolos, three small clarinets in E flat, two clarinets in C, three bass clarinets(for lively tunes), and an organ (for ballet music). I should not forget four bass drums, six snare drums, and two gongs. There are no longer any oboes, bassoons, harps, kettledrums, or cymbals, these instruments having been consigned to deepest oblivion."
(Hector Berlioz, Evenings..., projecting the future Italian orchestra in the year 2344)
(left, Detail from "George Street and the Squatters Exchange", Sydney,1861, by Samuel T. Gill)
-"The Psychiatrist went to his car and got out his bag of tricks. And so it was that late in the afternoon, when MacLyle emerged stretching and yawning from his nap, he found his visitor under the spruce tree, hefting the Ophicleide and twiddling its keys in a perplexed and investigatory fashion. Maclyle strode over to him and lifted the Ophicleide away with a pleasant I'll-show-you smile, got the monstrous contraption into position, and ran his tongue around the inside of the mouthpiece, large as a demitasse. He had barely time to pucker up his lips at the strange taste there before his irises rolled up completely out of sight and he collapsed like a grounded parachute. The Psychiatrist was able only to snatch away the Ophicleide in time to keep the mouthpiece from knocking out MacLyle's front teeth." ( Theodore Sturgeon, And Now the News...,Short stories,1954)
-"It figures in modern operatic music; and in the hands of its only living player, Mr Samuel Hughes, is deservedly a popular solo instrument" (Groves Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 1889, London)
-"At Her Majesty's Theatre I saw a performance of Mozart's Figaro that was trombonized, Ophicleided-in a word, copper-bottomed like a ship of the line. This is an English habit. Neither Mozart, nor Rossini, nor Weber, nor Beethoven has managed to escape re-instrumentation. Their orchestra is not sufficiently spicy, and it is deemed imperative to remedy the defect. Besides, if the theatres have regular performers on the trombone, Ophicleide, bass drum, triangle, and cymbals, they are obviously not hired to twiddle their thumbs. This is an old story and it would seem about time to drop it."(Hector Berloiz, Evenings...., reflecting on a 1852 trip to England)
-"Berlioz says that the alto-Ophicleide has been neglected because it's tone was disagreeable,ignoble and wanting in precision"(Talks with bandsmen, Rose,1895)
-"...the pole, and the players appeared only in outline against the sky; except when the circular mouths of the trombone, ophicleide and French horn, gleamed out like huge eyes from the shade of their figures."
(The Return of the Native, Thomas Hardy)
-"...the trampling of our feet had grown to a solemn music, joined by instruments that were not trum-pets nor ophicleides nor any others that were known to me."(The Urth of the Sun,Gene Wolf)
-"...victorious Prussian Army, Pickelhauben flashing in the sun, marched through the Brandenburg Gate, to the thrilling silver flourishes of trumpets, ophicleides, and kettledrums..."(The Arms of Krupp: The Rise and Fall of the Industrial Dynasty that Armed Germany at War, William Manchester)
-"...from their necks, externs who gabbled in rude tongues, and beggars who showed their sores, feigned to play flagolets and ophicleides, and pinched their children to make them weep. I confess I was much interested by all this..."(Shadow and Claw, Gene Wolfe)
-"....my murmur is scored in the manner of Berlioz for ten thousand trombones fortissimo, and ophicleides in bass clef."(Prejudices; A selection: The Husbandman, H.L. Mencken)
-"He(Guilmartin) was engaged for the Promenade concerts in 1893, and, I believe, amongst other music, gave that familiar Ophicleide solo on the melody of "Oh Ruddier than the Cherry". Enough has, however, been said to show that good Ophicleide playing is not yet, like the Dodo or Mastodon, extinct." (Talks with Bandsmen,Rose,1895)
-"...and his uncle who tried to commit suicide by shutting his head in a carpet bag, and his father who played Ophicleide and died insane as they all do..." (Virginia Woolf, Selected letters/to Vanessa Bell-1916)
-"Shakespeare was an extraordinary musician; and his solos on the Ophicleide, whilst in the Orchestra of the Globe Theatre were much admired"(The Comic Almanack), London, 1846
-"The highest tones are of a ferocious character, which has not been utilized appropriately. The medium range, especially if the player is not skilled, recalls too closely the tone of the serpent and cornett; I believe that it should rarely be used without the cover of other instruments. Nothing is more clumsy--I could almost say, more monstrous--nothing less appropriate in combination with the rest of the orchestra than those more or less rapid passages played as solos in the medium range in certain modern operas. They are like an escaped bull jumping around in a drawing room."(Hector Berlioz, Treatise on Instrumentation)
