“The scores of Bach and Handel often call for many trumpets. In their day it was necessary to use a number of trumpets of different size, because no one instrument could play all the notes required.”
THE TROMBONE
Contemporary with the clarion, or claro, was a similar instrument called the buysine; and, like the clarion, it was a straight brass tube with a cupped mouthpiece at one end and a bell at the other. The only difference appears to be that the buysine was enormously long.
This instrument changed in form; and as early as the Fourteenth Century it was actually supplied with a slide! Though it was called sackbut, it shows the beginning of our modern trombone.
The sackbut was made in several sizes. There was a whole band of these instruments. In the Sixteenth Century there was a bass sackbut almost identical with the trombone of to-day.
The trombone may be described as a slender brass tube bent twice upon itself and ending in a bell. In the middle section it is double, so that the two outer portions slide upon the inner ones. We always enjoy watching the performer on the trombone pulling out his instrument at different lengths; and we often wonder how he knows when to stop it at the right points.
There are seven positions for this slide and they have to be learned. There is no guide but the performer’s ear, which has to be as accurate as that of a violinist; and, indeed, we may say that the seven positions, in a certain sense, correspond with the positions on the violin. They are only acquired by constant practice; and when they are once acquired, the performer thinks no more about them but pulls his slide up and down with an air that seems to us almost indifferent.
These seven positions of the slide each give a fundamental tone and its harmonics.
According to an authority: “The slide, being entirely closed, that is to say, the tube reduced to its shortest dimension, the instrument produces (modifying with the breath and the pressure of the lips as in the horn) the harmonics. By pulling out the slide a little, which increases the length of the tube, we have the second position and its harmonics.” Pulling out the tube still farther makes the third position and its harmonics; and so on.
There are three varieties of this instrument: the alto, the tenor and the bass. Each is written in the proper key of the voice whose name it bears.