Low brass gas|HHWT-News

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Low-brass sections responsible for significant amount of world's greenhouse gases, report states

The United Nation's Environmental Organization, in conjunction with it's International Cultural Committee, recently released a report claiming that the world's trombone, tuba and euphonium players are currently responsible for nearly 18% of Earth's global warming.

CO₂ and methane are natural by-products of low-brass players the world over and copious amounts of their gaseous excretions are expelled daily adding up to literally tons of greenhouse gases being introduced into the atmosphere each year. Methane is of particular concern since, while less abundant, it is over 20 times more efficient than CO₂ at trapping infrared radiation through the “greenhouse” process.

Digestion in both animals and people produces methane gas as a result of bacteria reducing food matter to nutrient and caloric forms which are more readily useful to the body. Trombone and tuba players, having four stomachs, create far more of the gas than other musicians. In fact, the report noted that even though they make up just 5% of an orchestra by number, up to 75% of all musically-related methane comes from the low-brass section, predominantly during the final movement of Mahler symphonies.

Notable exceptions include Mahler's fourth symphony, in which the typical finale is replaced instead with a song for soprano and orchestra from his Des Knaben Wunderhorn, and his eighth symphony, during which, as several surprising studies have shown, the methane output of the alto section bests that produced by the remainder of the chorus and the entire orchestra combined. This unexplained result, however, is apparently less statistically significant during outdoor matinee performances with original tempos.

Though not specifically discussed in the UN report, the problem studied in orchestras is believed to be far worse in the world's concert bands, which can consist of more than 40% low-brass musicians.

The report goes on to warn that the low brass emissions problem “needs to be addressed with urgency” but also is optimistic that “major changes in impact could be immediately achieved at reasonable costs.” One possible option suggests that if orchestras consider replacing just two Romantic-period works each performance season with Classical-period ones a significant reduction in greenhouse gases would be measurable by 2050.

Another output reduction possibility, deemed highly impractical by some experts, focuses instead on the input and requires changing trombone and tuba players' diets from beer and chalupas to mineral water and rice cakes.

Finally, there are those in the world who prefer to see this low-brass gas problem as a solution of sorts by somehow using the bio-by-product as a renewable energy source. Methane as a fuel is plentiful, readily available and burns cleaner than coal or gasoline making it far more environmentally friendly than most other traditional energy sources. At this time, however, no feasible method for capturing the useful gas from either end of a low-brass player has yet been devised. At least not without significantly and detrimentally altering the musician's tone quality.

Limited interest has been shown in the rather unpleasant possibility of extracting methane directly from the intestines of deceased low-brass players. One notable exception is Svenska Biogas, a Swedish company involved in environmentally safe natural gas production. However, to date substantial moral and ethical obstacles remain.

As humans continue to learn of the wide and varied ways in which our lives impact the environment around us it is important to remember that old, time-honored saying: The first step in solving a problem is simply proving that one exists at all. If this is true then the winds of change certainly seem to be breaking.