In honor of the 150^thanniversary of Hector Berlioz’ death, this seems like a good occasion to examine what he wrote about the trombone.

Although his Grande traité d’instrumentation et d’orchestration modernes (1843, 2^ndedition 1855) is the first important orchestration treatise, it stands in a tradition that dates back nearly half a century.

Many other authors have written orchestration textbooks since then, but none have had Berlioz’ influence.

André Braun issued the earliest extant treatise devoted entirely to trombone some time before 1795 in Paris. He was the first author to describe the trombone as an instrument in B-flat with seven chromatic positions. Earlier writers had implicitly described a tenor trombone in A with four diatonic positions. Alto trombones were shorter and bass trombones longer. Braun implied that all trombone parts could be played on a B-flat instrument.

Joseph Fröhlich (Bonn, 1811) and Andreas Nemetz (Vienna, 1827) more explicitly said that the only difference among alto, tenor, and bass trombones was the size of the mouthpiece. They did, however, acknowledge the existence of other sizes.

Augustin Sundelin wrote the earliest textbook of orchestration for composers that I know of (Berlin, 1828). He didn’t follow Braun, Fröhlich, and Nemetz in considering only one size of trombone. His chapter on trombone devotes separate sections to alto, tenor, and bass. He also clearly had little regard for orchestral trombonists. He wrote

It [the alto trombone] sounds splendid on sustained or rather short chords. This, in connection with the following kinds of trombone [tenor and bass], is not advisable at the beginning of a piece without all the rest of the ensemble, because this instrument does not have a reliable means by which it can gauge its pitch, and for this reason, such a passage always starts impurely. If there is already music before or other instruments playing at the same time, then perfect purity can be presupposed,

Georges Kastner wrote the orchestration treatise used at the Paris Conservatory (1837). He copied some ideas from Sundelin, including reservations about trombones finding their pitch.

Kinds of trombones

Berlioz notes the existence of soprano, alto, tenor, and bass trombones. Only the Germans ever used soprano trombone, and he had never seen one in France. In fact, not every French orchestra had alto trombones, and bass trombones were rarer still in France.

Alto trombone

It appears that Nemetz unintentionally described typical French practice. No matter how a trombone part was labeled, players used a tenor.

Berlioz, however, composed trombone parts for alto in E-flat, notated in alto clef, until 1835. About his Symphonie fantastique, he wrote, “the alto trombone part must not be played on a big trombone as is often done in France: I demand a true alto trombone.” But beginning with Le cinq mai,he essentially gave up and wrote the upper two trombone parts in tenor clef.

In the orchestration treatise, he considers the low notes on the alto weak and the top notes shrill. In another writing, he recommended excluding it from theater orchestras.

Tenor trombone

“The tenor trombone is incontestably the best of all the trombones,” writes Berlioz. Unlike the alto, he declares it has good tone quality throughout its range. It can easily play passages too rapid for the bass trombone.

He also notes that some French composers wrote low E-flat in third trombone parts, a semitone below the lowest note available on a tenor trombone. They did so, carelessly, because earlier music contained that and even lower notes. But those earlier composers had bass trombones available to them.

Bass trombone

Berlioz never personally heard a long bass trombone until Johann Strauss, Sr. visited Paris with his orchestra in 1837. He describes its character as “majestic, formidable, and awe-inspiring.” He notes that German orchestras had bass trombones in E-Flat and F and that English orchestras used a bass trombone in G.

He also notes a seven-semitone gap between the top pedal note and the lowest note in seventh position. Therefore a different selection of notes was available or not available on the different bass trombones.

Berlioz stresses that composers should therefore know which one was available. Otherwise, the bass trombonist may have to take some notes up an octave, which would ruin the bass line. He declares the lack of bass trombones in Paris a misfortune.

In common with most nineteenth-century authors, Berlioz notes that playing bass trombone fatigues even the most robust players. It requires much more air, as well as a handle on the slide so the player could reach the outer positions. The bass trombone can’t play as quickly as other sizes, both because of the clumsy handle and because the notes take longer to speak.

In the second edition of 1855, Berlioz mentions that Adolphe Sax had added a piston valve played with the player’s left thumb. Every orchestra should have one. Actually, Christian Sattler of Leipzig thought of it first. Berlioz was also under the mistaken impression that this valve filled in the gap between the lowest second partial and the pedals.  Actually, it supplies only six of the seven semitones.

Technical characteristics of the trombones

Like other brass, trombones play the notes of the overtone series. Unlike natural trumpets and horns, the slide gives them seven different series to choose from. Therefore they can play all the chromatic notes in their range.

Berlioz acknowledges a range of two octaves and a major sixth. He counts from the lowest note in seventh position through the tenth partial in first position. He considers the top note very difficult in every case. But with the alto and bass trombones, he also includes the ninth partial as very difficult.

In addition, he describes three notes below this vast range, the pedal notes. No one had described them or called for them before. Berlioz mentions only the top three. Nowadays, many trombonists can play pedals in every position, including trigger notes.

He claims that trombonists of his acquaintance knew nothing about them until he insisted that they work on them. He calls the pedals weak on the alto, magnificent on the tenor, and awe-inspiring on the bass if anyone could play them.

The slide makes the full chromatic compass available throughout the entire range. In the low register, however, adjacent notes require long shifts of the slide. So Berlioz warns composers to become familiar with slide positions to avoid impossible or unreasonably difficult passages that would be simple on cello or bassoon.

Other writers further state that, because of the slide, trombones can’t play rapid passages. Berlioz declines to describe the limitations on how when passages become unplayably fast. He says only that the handle on the bass trombone makes rapid passages more difficult than on the alto or tenor.

Finally, he describes lip trills. They are only available in the top octave of the trombone, and only as whole-tone trills.

Using trombones in the orchestra

I regard the trombone as the true leader of the race of wind instruments that I have described as “epic.” It possesses nobility and grandeur to a high degree and has all the solemnity of high musical poetry, ranging from a calm, imposing, devotional aura to the wild clamors of an orgy. It is up to the composer to make it chant like a chorus of priests, or utter threats, then muffled groans, then a subdued funeral knell, then a resounding hymn of glory, then a piercing shriek, then a mighty fanfare for the waking of the dead or the death of the living.

This often-quoted passage shows Berlioz’ interests in emotion and special effects. Not for him is the use of orchestral color for strictly musical ends. Trombones have a different tone quality at different dynamic levels. Berlioz describes the effects of each.

He pans earlier composers who used a single trombone for “the servile, pointless, grotesque task of doubling the bass line.” The practice started at about the time of the French Revolution. Third-rate composers working for the Opéra Comique routinely restricted the trombone to playing a simplified bass line loudly in its low register.  Some of those operas must still have been in the repertoire for Berlioz to take any notice of this vulgarity.

He insists that trombones don’t match the double basses in sound. (But he wrote in the chapter on the harp that trombones and brass instruments in general blend better than any other instruments with the harp.) He recommends that composers should use trombones only for special effects. Also, he claims that “a single trombone in an orchestra always seems rather out of place.”

Criticism of other composers

In another writing, he even criticizes Mozart for the trombone solo in his Requiem. “Why just one trombone to sound the terrible blast that should echo round the world and raise the dead from the grave?  Why keep the other two trombone silent when not three, not thirty, not three hundred would be enough?” Perhaps because three trombones in unison would drown out a solo singer.

Berlioz’ contemporaries mocked him for loving loud noises. He vehemently denied the accusation, pointing out another misuse of trombones.

If the trombones shriek like demons at the Opéra, you would think you were hearing the chorus of furies in Ihpegénie en Taurideor the entrance of the Commendatore in Don Giovannior the nuns’ orgy in Robert le Diablewould you not? But no . . .

At the Opéra Comique an old chap is upset at losing his snuff box—three trombones! He rejoices when he finds it—three trombones! A blind man drinks a glass of cheap wine—three trombones!

He sarcastically identifies the perpetrator of this kind of cheapening of the trombone’s effect as “the present leader of the so-called School of Melody,” Rossini. He complains that such a name for Rossini portrayed Beethoven and Weber (and, although he didn’t say so in print, Berlioz himself) as a School of Violence and Noise.

Berlioz’ own practice in composing trombone parts

In the treatise, he identified the composers who properly appreciated the trombone: “Gluck, Beethoven, Mozart, Weber, Spontini, and a few others.”

As a composer, Berlioz followed his own advice. Trombone parts in his works exhibit the range of moods and characters he describes. He composed fearlessly for trombones, too. He called for a wide range, including, of course, pedal notes. While other composers thought the slide meant trombones could not move quickly, Berlioz wrote some rapid passages, although nothing unreasonable.

In his fourth symphony, Grande symphonie funèbre et triomphale (1840), he wrote a trombone solo. But that work was intended for military band. Like most of his contemporaries, he must not have regarded military music as high art.

Antoine Dieppo, the first trombonist to play the solo, frequently played solos on promenade concerts, that mainstay of low-status music. No one ever wrote a solo for him to play in “legitimate” orchestral music. Might orchestral history have been different if Berlioz had thought differently about musical values and special effects?

Sources:
Berlioz’s orchestration treatise: a translation and commentary / Hugh MacDonald (Cambridge University Press, 2002)
A history of the trombone / David M. Guion (Scarecrow Press, 2010)
The trombone: its history and music, 1697-1811 / David M. Guion (Gordon and Breach, 1988)