June Wagner, age 11, of Birmingham, Ala., for her question:

IS THE TUBA AN OLD INSTRUMENT?

The tuba is the lowest pitched of the brass wind instruments. It was patented in 1835 by a Prussian bandmaster named Friedrich Wilhelm Wieprecht and a German builder named Johann Gottfried Moritz.

The tuba has a wide conical bore, three or four valves, a deep cup shaped mouthpiece and vertically coiled tubing with an upward pointing bell. The instrument was one of several efforts made to provide a suitable valued brass bass for the wind band.

Antecedents of the tuba included the serpent (an S shaped, cup mouthpiece wooden bass with finger holes) and the ophicleide (a keyed bass bugle).

The tuba is normally built as a bass in E flat or F and as a contrabass in BB flat or C. Its range is about three and one half octaves.

A tuba with circular coiling is a helicon. The sousaphone is a variety of helicon. Wagner tubas are four valve instruments with a narrower bore, designed for the German composer Richard Wagner.

The term tuba is also applied to other low brasses, especially saxhorns.