Music lovers do not often associate the trombone with chamber music. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, it is associated with the trombone quartet, the brass quintet, or less often the brass trio. Few composers have included the trombone in mixed chamber ensembles. None of those works has become well known.

In the19th century, the very idea of trombones playing indoors in a small ensemble would have raised the hackles of classical music lovers. Many had a hard enough time accepting trombones in orchestras.

That’s largely because the trombone had nearly disappeared from musical life in many countries starting in the middle of the 17th century.

Where it persisted throughout the 18th century, none of the music written for it included chamber music. In Germany, most people associated the trombone with daily concerts by the town band from a tower. Outside of church services, that had been its primary role for centuries.

Over the past 60 years or so, musicologists have rediscovered Baroque chamber music with parts for trombone and made it available in modern editions. Some pieces, at least,  have become reasonably well known to audiences who care at all about trombone music. I’d like to provide an overview of the scope of the repertoire.

What is chamber music?

By chamber music, we usually understand secular music for a small ensemble, one instrument or singer to a part. Renaissance madrigals count as chamber music. Small instrumental ensembles participating in a church service do not.

Especially in the Baroque, music has been intended for particular settings: church, theater, concert hall, or outdoor events. Chamber music works best in a small room with a small audience. That ideal, however, came about mostly in the Classical period.

It’s a mistake, however, to define chamber music solely on where it was performed or how many musicians participated. Italians distinguished between the sonata da chiesa for church and the sonata da camera for homes. But music nominally for church could be played in domestic settings. Either kind of music could be heard in theaters.

Members of the nobility who patronized music often commanded their musical households to perform chamber music. They would play either for their employers’ private amusement or to entertain important guests.

The wider public, although often still largely aristocratic, could hear music at various musical academies. In Germany, these often went by the name “collegium musicum.” Depending on their charter and membership, they could offer chamber music––and especially in Germany.

Actually, an audience was not strictly necessary. Quite often, especially in the days before recorded and broadcast music, musicians would gather together to play music for their own enjoyment, whether anyone else heard them or not.

What repertoires of Baroque chamber music used trombone?

Throughout most of the Baroque, the trombone maintained its long-established associations with church music and outdoor music. For the most part, it did not participate in the most innovative Baroque music, such as opera.

Since it seemed such an old-fashioned instrument, it disappeared entirely from many musical centers beginning about 1630. By the 18th century, it was still used in some Italian cities, some German cities, and throughout the Austrian empire.

Trombones took part in some performances of English consort music. Otherwise, we find Baroque chamber music with trombone only in these three areas.

Italy

The whole concept of assigning a particular musical part to a specific instrument originated with Giovanni Gabrieli’s Sonata pian e forte, published in 1597. Like everything else in the collection, it was intended as church music.

Italian publishers issued collections of music for small ensemble, some of which specified trombone parts. My compilation of them does not distinguish between church music and chamber music. The majority of pieces with trombone appeared before 1630.

Northern Italy suffered devastating plagues beginning in that year. When the music publishing recovered, small-ensemble music with trombone parts did not. Not a single piece with trombone appeared in the decade from 1661-1670. After that, one final piece came off the press in 1679.

Of all the various composers of music with trombone parts, none is so well respected or widely performed these days than Dario Castello. Along with Giovanni Martino Cesare, he is the only one identifiable as a wind player. Violins had already begun to drive wind instruments from the dominance they enjoyed throughout the Renaissance.

Germany

I have said that the various musical academies usually had aristocratic membership. That certainly describes the well-known Florentine Camerata, which took a leading role in the development of monodic music. But by the middle of the 17th century, the German collegium musicum wasn’t aristocratic anymore if it ever had been.

Also, the earliest such musical organizations, in Germany as elsewhere, concentrated their attention on vocal music. A group that started in Frankfurt in 1568 grew to include instrumentalists.

The Leipzig Collegium Musicum, founded in 1688 by Johann Kuhnau, marks the beginning of public concert life in Germany. Its earliest performances included chamber music. Telemann and J.S. Bach both led the group, which performed their chamber music.

For the purposes of studying the trombone in Baroque chamber music, however, a collegium founded in 1660 by Matthais Weckmann is more important. One of the most important students of Heinrich Schütz, he wrote at least nine sonatas that include a trombone part. They are virtuoso works for all the performers.

I have not found any general study of German chamber music of the 17th century, but my card file has chamber pieces with trombone by Philipp Friedrich Böddecker, Andreas Hammerschmidt, Nicolaus à Kempis, Johann Michael Nicolai, Daniel Speer, and Johann Theil. These composers represent a wide geographic area; à Kempis worked in Brussels, then ruled by the Holy Roman Empire.

Austria

Although the Holy Roman Empire nominally ruled much of Europe, for the purposes of this article, I consider only activity in certain Austrian centers. Numerous composers wrote sonatas and other small ensemble pieces with trombone parts.

The earliest greatly resemble the Italian repertoire described earlier. In particular, many were composed as church music. Any of them could have served as chamber music as well. Here are some important centers and composers who included trombone parts in some of their small-scale works. The order is roughly chronological and not intended to be exhaustive.

Vienna:

• Giovanni Valentini
• Antonio Bertali
• Johann Joseph Fux
• Antonio Caldara
• Franz Ignaz Tuma

Salzburg: Johann Michael Haydn wrote small-scale works with trombone. Leopold Mozart composed at least one orchestral serenade that includes movements for trombone solo with strings. Otherwise, all the works I can identify are church music and include voices.

Kroměříž:

• Pavel Vejvanovský
• Heinrich Biber (apparently only one piece, but it’s excellent)

Sources:

A history of the trombone / David M. Guion (Scarecrow Press: 2010)
The new Grove dictionary of music and musicians / ed. Stanley Sadie (Macmillan, 1980), s.v. “Chamber music,” “Collegium musicum,” “Weckmann, Matthias”

Photo credits:
Angel trombone and cornett. Public domain from Trombone History Timeline / Will Kimball
Music still life. Public domain from Trombone History Timeline / Will Kimball
Peterkirche. Public domain from Trombone History Timeline / Will Kimball