BACKGROUND
As a point of reference, it is helpful to briefly examine the origins and use of the trombone before the eighteenth century. The trombone is related to the slide trumpet, or tromba da tirarsi of the Middle Ages. One problem with the early slide trumpet was that the player had to hold the mouthpiece section while moving the main body of the instrument to produce variances in pitch. When this instrument was folded to create parallel tubes that could slide, the result was a more efficient instrument that has changed very little in design over the past five hundred years or more.
Sackbut was the English term for the early trombone. This name is derived from the Franko-Spanish term saquebote. In Germanic countries it was called the Busaun and later the Posaune. The term trombone is actually derived from an Italian word meaning "great trumpet." Documentation of the use of the trombone dates back nearly five centuries from a wide variety of sources. These sources indicate a common usage of the trombone. Records of the Great Council of Brandenburg, dated 1414-18, cite the use of Posaunen and Pfeiffen in a street parade. A painting entitled The Assumption of the Virgin by Filippino Lippi depicts a trombone and is dated to the late fifteenth century. A fresco in the Accademia delle Belle Arte at Florence by Matteo di Giovanna also depicts a trombonist with a wedding band dated before 1495. Sebastian Virdung's treatise Musica getutscht from 1511 contains a woodcut of a tenor trombone. As early as the second half of the fifteenth century, the trombone was well established in European court and town life.
Nuremberg was a major center for the manufacturing of brass instruments during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Through the guild tradition, families of brass instrument builders maintained a virtual monopoly on the production of these instruments for well over a century. Even the brass instruments used in Venice came from Nuremberg. The earliest extant trombone was built by the Nuremberg maker Erasmus Schnitzer and is dated from 1551.
Accurate and detailed references to the trombone were made in the treatises Harmonie Universelle (1636) by Marin Mersenne, Syntagma Musicum (1619) by Michael Praetorius, and Daniel Speer's Grundrichtiger . . . Unterricht der musicalischen Kunst of 1687. The trombone of the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries was similar to a contemporary small bore tenor trombone, but with thicker walls and less flare of the bell. Although the early trombone was very similar to the contemporary instrument, performance practice considerations were quite different.
The tonal concept for the early instrument was "a very soft, clear sound, ideal for consort work with viols, organs, recorders and voices." The Harmonie Universelle (1636) by Marin Mersenne contains a passage concerning the proper sound of the trombone. Mersenne wrote, "It should be blown by a skillful musician so that it may not imitate the sounds of the Trumpet, but rather assimilate itself to the sweetness of the human voice, lest it should emit a warlike rather than a peaceful sound." Henry George Fischer describes this manner of performance as having "more to do with the mode of attacking the notes rather than the instrument's volume." He attributes Mersenne's statements as referring to the military trumpet rather than the cornetto. This military approach to tone and articulation is described in Girolamo Fantini's Modo per imparare a sonare di Tromba (1638). Unlike the military trumpet, the early trombone was expected to blend with the softer dynamics of voices.
Before the eighteenth century, use of the trombone was quite varied, including civic and court ceremonies, as well as opera and church music. For example, Margaret of Bavaria entered the city of Mantua in 1463 accompanied by 107 "trombi, pifari and tromboni." Court uses of the sackbut included the ceremonial music of the orchestra of King Henry VIII. Later English court music composed by John Adson (?-1640), Richard Alison (fl. 1592-1606), Anthony Holborne (fl. 1584-1602), and Matthew Locke (1621-1677) also featured the sackbut. German nobleman and composer Landgraf Moritz von Hessen (1572-1632) also included trombones in his orchestra.
The trombone was often used in early operas and intermedii to depict supernatural and underworld scenes. In 1539 Francesco Corteccia composed music for the early intermedio Il Comodo by Antonio Landi, using four trombones to accompany the character "Night." Intermedi by Alessandro Striggio (Psyche and Amor, 1565) and Giovanni de' Bardi (La Pellegrina, 1589) also used the trombone in a representative manner for descents into the underworld. In Monteverdi's Orfeo of 1607, trombones play during scenes taking place in Hades. In his Il returno d' Ullysse in patria (1640), a choir of trombones portray the wrath of Poseidon in one scene. Christoph Willibald Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice (1762), Alceste (1767), Iphigenie en Tauride (1779), and Echo et Narcisse (1779) all use trombones to signify supernatural or funereal aspects.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart continued this underworld association of the trombone in Don Giovanni (1787) with trombones accompanying the warnings of the "Stone Guest." In his Idomeneo (1781), trombones and horns accompany the voice of Neptune. Die Zauberflšte (1791) is Mozart's third opera to make use of trombones. A solemn image also was associated with the trombone as it became an important symbol of the "voice of God" and holy judgment in sacred music and opera. This dual association of the trombone with the underworld and God seems at first contradictory. In both roles however, the trombone represents awe, supernatural forces, fear, and eschatological matters. The "voice of God" depicted was that of a stern Lord to be obeyed sounded by an instrument thought to be ancient in origin.
The use of the trombone in chamber music was common during the seventeenth century as well. "A Preliminary List of Seventeenth-Century Chamber Music Employing the Trombone" by James Roberts lists separate trombone works by fifty-five seventeenth-century composers. Technically demanding trombone passages were written in many ensemble works including those of Heinrich Biber (1644-1704), Darius Castello (fl. 1600), Giovanni Picchi (fl. 1600-25), and Matthias Weckmann (c. 1619-74). These technical passages rivaled string parts in many works.
In its early history, a family of trombones existed as depicted in plates included in the Syntagma Musicum by Michael Praetorius (c. 1571-1621). The smallest instrument is the Alt or Discant Posaune, followed by the Gemeine Posaune or tenore, and two types of bass trombones, the Quart and Quint Posaune and the Octav Posaune. The Quart and Quint Posaunen are respectively pitched a fourth and a fifth lower than the Gemeine or tenore posaune. The bass trombone pitched in F was more common than the instrument pitched an octave below the tenor trombone in Bb.
How did this trombone family sound? Ben Peck of the New York Sackbut and Cornetto Ensemble recounts that a modern brass player once stated to him, "the thing that really struck me was how awful these instruments sound by themselves and how well they sound together." Peck states, "By themselves, the instruments sound airy and have no resonance. Together, it's a different story." The comparison of early musical instruments with modern ones is at best difficult. Modern predilections and expectations can influence our opinions, particularly in the area of tone production. This "airy," non-resonant tone described by Ben Peck may be precisely what made the early trombone appropriate for the ensemble and obbligato accompaniment of voices.
There is disagreement regarding the use of the alto or tenor trombone in early music. Clyde Wigness writes that, "The accepted practice during that time was to specify the type of trombone intended for the part by notating the part in the clef-name of the instrument." Johann Philipp Eisel partially addresses this issue in his work Musicus autodidactos, oder der sich selbst informirende Musicus of 1738. He asks in his text:
What is to be noted concerning the clefs? Nothing more than this, that the alto trombone has the alto clef as prescribed in the parts, where as the quint and quart trombones generally have the bass clef as prescribed in the parts. Whoever understands then that which was stated before will also be able to find their way easily in this.
However, Eisel does not refer to the use of the gemeine (ordinary) or tenore trombone in this passage regarding the correlation of clefs with instruments. David Guion mentions many technical and historical errors in Eisel's Musicus autodidactus regarding slide positions and the origin of the instrument. There is the implication that Eisel was not as authoritative as Daniel Speer or Mersenne concerning trombones and performance practice. A century earlier, Michael Praetorius asserted in his Syntagma Musicum that if a player was available who could play the high parts on a tenor trombone, then he should be employed because the sound of the tenor trombone is always superior to that of the alto. He then identifies two trombonists (Phileno of Munich and Erhardus Borussus of Dresden) who had mastered the high register of the tenor trombone.
Obviously, some flexibility with regard to the type of trombone used during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was permitted; however, an examination of the registers and tessituras found in this study of obbligato trombone parts indicates that the alto trombone was probably used more than the tenor trombone as a soloistic instrument at the Viennese court during this time. There are a few exceptions seen in certain compositions by Marc Antonio Ziani, Joseph I, Josef Krottendorfer, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
The domination of the tenor trombone (over the alto) and a changing role for the trombone began during the nineteenth century. The alto trombone fell out of favor during this time due to the tonal considerations and the dynamic demands of Romantic orchestral music. Hector Berlioz advocated a sound quality for the trombone that was "menacing and formidable" and encouraged the use of only tenor and bass trombones in French orchestras. This was quite a change from the tonal concepts advocated by Mersenne two centuries earlier in 1636. The alto trombone is occasionally used in German and Austrian orchestras today, but is generally regarded as a curiosity by trombonists in other countries and is rarely used. Although Brahms, Schumann, and Beethoven specifically indicate the use of the alto trombone in their symphonies, the great majority of contemporary orchestral players prefer to use the tenor trombone instead.