CULTURES OF BRASS PROJECT
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CULTURES OF BRASS PROJECT |
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The origins of the trombone What follows is a discontinuous selection of passages from Chapter 3 ‘The Origins of The Trombone’ from Trevor Herbert’s book The Trombone (Yale University Press, 2006). It contains an introduction to the challenges and issues encountered when dealing with this part of the instrument’s history, and a section in which the relationship between the Renaissance slide trumpet and the trombone is discussed. The particular challenge here is that no examples of the slide trumpet of this period survive, so much of the debate is about the interpretation of what might be pictures of the instrument and the musical evidence that supports the idea of such an instrument. It is important to stress that this is only an extract from what is an important and very substantial chapter in the book; also, that some of the writings of other musicologists on this subject are especially interesting and revealing – leaving aside the actual content of the chapter the subject is a very good example how different historical musicologists can reach different, sometimes contradictory conclusions from the same evidential sources. Read this as a PDF file [61 KB] Trombones and the Moravian Church The place of trombones in the practical and symbolic activities of the Moravian church in the USA is remarkable. At one level it is a story of continuity between the Bohemian origins of the Unitas Fratrum in the early eighteenth century, but at another it reveals something about the way that music has been used as an element to join the routines of ordinary life of religious communities to the central elements of their faith and liturgical practices. The really interesting thing here is the choice of trombones for this function: why trombones? Is it a tradition perpetuated merely by chance or is it because the sonic qualities of choirs of trombones make them appropriate for the accompaniment of Christian worship? It seems that the latter explanation is the case. Trombones were used in the original (early eighteenth-century) church, and this was almost certainly in imitation of the common practice in other churches of using groups including trombones in this way. There are two other important points of interest about this story: firstly that the tradition of using trombones continued in the Moravian diaspora after it died out in most parts of Europe, and secondly that the Moravian activities reveal an unusually long and robust tradition of amateur brass playing. Amateur brass playing did not really become a major activity elsewhere until well into the nineteenth century. The extract is taken from Trevor Herbert’s book The Trombone (Yale University Press, 2006). Read this as a PDF file [64 KB] The Valve Trombone The valve trombone is something of a contradiction. The defining characteristic of the trombone is its slide, which allows the overall tube length to be adjusted by the player. The simplicity of this design also provides for another feature which contributes to the sound quality of the instrument: there are only two bends in the mainly cylindrical tube length of the instrument – one on the bell section, the other on the slide section. The application of valves apparently negates these qualities. However, nineteenth-century inventors saw things somewhat differently. They saw the invention of valves as holding the prospect of improving playing techniques and also having other practical advantages – especially for military musicians. They attempted to design instruments that preserved the essential sound quality of the slide trombone, and many were successful. Certainly the slide trombone was a commercial success, and while there is no statistical evidence to verify it, there is a compelling possibility that more valve trombones than slide instruments were in circulation in the second half of the nineteenth century. This short section from a much longer chapter in Trevor Herbert’s The Trombone (Yale University Press, 2006) outlines some of the issues and the likely origin of the valve trombone. Read this as a PDF file [56 KB]
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