Trombone

A lip-reed aerophone with a predominantly cylindrical bore, the trombone is a musical instrument in the brass family. The most frequently encountered trombones are the tenor and bass counterparts of the trumpet. The trombone is usually characterised by a telescopic slide with which the player varies the length of the tube.

History

Until the early 18th century, the trombone was called the sackbut in English, a word with various different spellings ranging from sackbut to shagbolt and derived from the Spanish sacabuche or French sacqueboute. This was not a distinct instrument from the trombone, but rather a different name used for an earlier form. Other countries used the same name throughout the instrument's history, viz. Italian trombone and German Posaune. The sackbut was built in slightly smaller dimensions than modern trombones, and had a bell that was more conical and less flared. Today, sackbut is generally used to refer to the earlier form of the instrument, commonly used in early music ensembles. Sackbuts were (and still are) made in every size from alto to contrabass, though then as now the contrabass is very rare.

Related Topics:
18th century - Sackbut - ''trombone'' - ''Posaune''

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Renaissance & Baroque periods

Used in great numbers in 16th century Venice under Andrea Gabrieli and more especially his nephew Giovanni Gabrieli and later Heinrich Schütz in Germany in their canzonas, sonatas and ecclesiastical works, while the trombone was used continuously by the Church and with some degree of regularity from the time of Claudio Monteverdi onwards as an addition to the opera house orchestra and to represent the supernatural or the funerary, it remained rather rare in the concert hall until the 19th century. During the Baroque period, Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel used the trombone on few occasions; Bach used it in combination with the cornett to evoke the stile antica in some of his many cantatas and Handel in the Dead March from Saul, Samson and Israel in Egypt, all of which were new examples of the oratorio that were popular during the early 18th century.

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Classical period

The repertoire of trombone solo and chamber literature has its beginnings in Austria in the Classical Era where composers such as Leopold Mozart, Georg Christoph Wagenseil, Johann Albrechtsberger and Johann Ernst Eberlin were featuring the instrument, often in partnership with a voice. Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart used the trombones in a number of their sacred works, including two extended duets with voice from Mozart, the best known being in the Tuba Mirum of his Requiem. The inspiration for many of these works was no doubt the virtuosic playing of Thomas Gschladt who worked in the court orchestra at Salzburg, although when his playing faded, so did the general composing output for the instrument. The trombone retained its traditional associations with the opera house and the Church during the 18th century and was usually employed in the usual alto/tenor/bass trio to support the lower voices of the chorus, though Viennese court orchestra Kapellmeister Johann Joseph Fux rejected an application from a bass trombonist in 1726 and restricted the use of trombones to alto and tenor only, which remained the case almost until the turn of the 19th century in Vienna, after which time a second tenor trombone was added when necessary. The construction of the trombone changed relatively little between the Baroque period and Classical period with the most obvious feature being the slightly more flared bell than was previously the custom.

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Romantic Period

During the late Classical and Romantic eras, composers from across Europe and beyond wrote for the instrument. The first example of its use in a symphony was in 1807 in a Symphony in E♭ by the Swedish composer Joachim Nikolas Eggert, though the composer usually credited with its introduction into the symphony orchestra was Ludwig van Beethoven in the last movement of his Symphony No. 5 in C minor (1808); he also used the trombones in Symphony No. 6 in F major ("Pastoral") and Symphony No. 9 ("Choral").

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Leipzig, in particular, became a centre of trombone pedagogy as for the first time in centuries the trombone began to be taught at the new Musikhochschule founded by Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy. Mendelssohn's bass trombonist, Karl Traugott Queisser, was the first in a long line of distinguished professors of trombone at the academy in Leipzig and several composers penned works for him, including Ferdinand David (Mendelssohn's concertmaster), Ernst Sachse and Friedrich August Belcke, whose solo works all remain popular today in Germany. Queisser almost single-handedly helped to re-establish the reputation of the trombone in Germany and began a tradition in trombone-playing that is still practised there today. He championed and popularised Christian Friedrich Sattler's new tenorbass trombone during the 1840s, leading to its widespread use in orchestras throughout Germany and Austria. Sattler's influence on trombone design is not to be underestimated; he introduced a significant widening of the bore (the most important since the Renaissance), the innovations of Schlangenverzierungen (snake decorations), the bell garland and the wide bell flare, all of which are features that are still to be found on German-made trombones today and were widely copied during the 19th century.

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Many composers were directly influenced by Beethoven's use of trombones and the 19th century saw the trombones become fully integrated in the orchestra, particularly by the 1840s, as composers such as Franz Schubert, Franz Berwald, Johannes Brahms, Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Richard Wagner, Hector Berlioz, Gioacchino Rossini, Giuseppe Verdi, Giacomo Puccini, Franz Liszt, Richard Strauss, Anton Bruckner, Gustav Mahler, Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Alexander Borodin, Bed?ich Smetana, Antonín Dvo?ák, Charles Gounod, César Franck, Claude Debussy, Camille Saint-Saëns and many others included trombones in their operas, symphonies and other orchestral compositions.

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The 19th century also saw the erosion of the traditional alto/tenor/bass trombone trio in the orchestra. While the alto/tenor/bass trombone trio had been paired with one or two cornetts during the Renaissance and early Baroque periods, the disappearance of the cornett as a partner and eventual replacement by oboe and clarinet did not fundamentally alter the raison d'être for the trombones, which was to support the alto, tenor and bass voices of the chorus (typically in an ecclesiastical setting), whose harmonic moving lines were more difficult to pick out than the melodic soprano line. The introduction of the trombones into the orchestra, however, allied them more closely with the trumpet and it did not take long for the alto and bass trombones to be replaced by tenor trombones, though the Germans and Austrians held on to the alto trombone and long F or E♭ bass trombone somewhat longer than the French, who came to prefer a section of three tenor trombones until after the Second World War.

Related Topics:
19th century - Cornett - Renaissance - Baroque - Oboe - Clarinet - Trumpet - Alto trombone - Bass trombone - Second World War

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By the time the trombone gained a regular footing in the orchestra, players of the instrument were no longer usually employed by a cathedral or court orchestra and were therefore expected to provide their own instrument, though while military musicians were provided with instruments by the army and instruments like the long F or E♭ bass trombone remained in use there until approximately the time of the First World War, the orchestral musician understandably took to the instrument with the widest range which could be most easily applied to play any of the three trombone parts usually scored in any given work - the tenor trombone. The appearance of the valve trombone during the mid-19th century did little to alter the make-up of the trombone section in the orchestra and though it remained popular almost entirely to the exclusion of the slide instrument in countries such as Italy and Bohemia, the valve trombone was ousted from orchestras in Germany and France. The valve trombone continued to enjoy an extended period of popularity in Italy and Bohemia and composers such as Giuseppe Verdi, Giacomo Puccini, Bed?ich Smetana and Antonín Dvo?ák scored for a section of valve trombones.

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Especially with the ophicleide or later the tuba subjoined to the trombone trio during the 19th century, parts scored for the bass trombone rarely descended as low as the parts scored before the addition of either of these new low brass instruments and only later in the early 20th century did it regain a degree of independence. Experiments with different constitutions of the trombone section during the 19th and early 20th centuries, including Richard Wagner's addition of a contrabass trombone in Der Ring des Nibelungen and Gustav Mahler's and Richard Strauss' occasional augmentation by adding a second bass trombone to the usual trio of two tenor trombones and one bass trombone, have not had any lasting effect as the vast majority of orchestral works are still scored for the usual mid to late 19th century low brass section of two tenor trombones, one bass trombone and one tuba.

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20th Century

In the 20th Century the trombone maintained its important position in the orchestra with prominent parts in works by Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler, Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, Maurice Ravel, Darius Milhaud, Olivier Messiaen, Igor Stravinsky, Dmitri Shostakovitch, Sergei Rachmaninov, Sergei Prokofiev, Ottorino Respighi, Edward Elgar, Gustav Holst, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Benjamin Britten, William Walton, Jean Sibelius, Carl Nielsen, Leoš Janáček, George Gershwin, Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein and Béla Bartók.

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In the second half of the century, new composers began giving back to the trombone a level of importance in solo and chamber music. Pieces such as Edgar Varèse's Octandre, Paul Hindemith's Sonata and Luciano Berio's Sequenza V led the way for lesser-known composers to build a wider repertoire. Popular choices for recital music today include Stjepan Sulek's Vox Gabrieli, Jacques Casterède's Sonatine and Jean Michel Defaye's Deux Danses. The best known trombone concertos from this period include works by Derek Bourgeois, Lars-Erik Larsson, Launy Grøndahl, Jan Sandström and Gordon Jacob.

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Numerous changes in construction have occurred during the 20th century, including the use of different materials, increases in mouthpiece, bore and bell dimensions, new valve types and the innovation of different mute types.

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Today, the trombone can usually be found in wind ensembles/concert bands, symphony orchestras, marching bands, military bands, brass bands, brass choirs, etc. It can be part of smaller groups as well, such as brass quintets, quartets, or trios, or trombone trios, quartets, or choirs (though the size of a trombone choir can vary greatly from five or six to twenty or more members). Trombones are also common in swing, jazz, salsa, and ska music.

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◄ Trombone: Construction

Trombone: Types of trombone ►

~ Table of Content ~

►	Introduction
►	Construction
►	History
►	Types of trombone
►	Technique
►	Variations in construction
►	Selective Bibliography
►	See also
►	External links

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