All bear witness to a continuingly eager and expansive climate in brass-instrument thinking amidst which it is enormously impressive but not miraculous that Wagner should have sought his new colours for The Ring. Each one of these could be matched in one respect or another to types thought of my manufacturers and bandmasters during the period when the operas were composed. Thus particularly the Wagner tubas (as they are always professionally described in England even if some purists insist on 'tuben' as in Wagner's scores).