Looking back over everything I have written in this blog, I noticed it has been a while since I offered any quotations. And I have never offered quotations about the trombone. And so I figured I’d have a fairly easy time of going to the usual quotation sites and picking some good ones.

Wrong. I couldn’t find very many interesting trombone quotes at all.

This one from Trombone Shorty might explain why:

Most people don’t even know what a trombone is. It’s not that popular as a front instrument . . .  I picked it up and fell in love with it as a kid. It’s a difficult instrument, but I like doing things that seem impossible.

That reminded me of a quotation from Slide Hampton I found not long ago:

A lot of people probably didn’t even know what a trombone was at that time [late 1970s], except in classical music. Often when I would go into the airport with a trombone, people never could figure out what instrument it was. They even asked if it was a guitar–in a case like that!

So here we are, the Rodney Dangerfield of the orchestra and jazz worlds. I suppose, then, that the best plan is to present the best of the online gleanings and then go back into my notes for my books and find some more.

Some possibly familiar trombone quotations

In my opinion, the trombone is the true head of the family of wind instruments, which I have named the ‘epic’ one. It possesses nobility and grandeur to the highest degree; it has all the serious and powerful tones of sublime musical poetry, from religious, calm and imposing accents to savage, orgiastic outburst. Directed by the will of the master, the trombones can chant like a choir of priests, threaten, utter gloomy sighs, a mournful lament, or a bright hymn of glory; they can break forth into awe-inspiring cries and awaken the dead or doom the living with their fearful voices. – Hector Berlioz

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If it please your neighbor to break the sacred calm of night with the snorting of an unholy trombone, it is your duty to put up with his wretched music and your privilege to pity him for the unhappy instinct that moves him to delight in such discordant sounds.- Mark Twain.

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Never look at the trombones, it only encourages them. – Richard Strauss

[Something similar is often attributed to Richard Wagner.]

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I don’t know why, but the trombone makes me very uncomfortable. – Sigmund Freud

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My greatest teacher was not a vocal coach, not the work of other singers, but the way Tommy Dorsey breathed and phrased on the trombone. — Frank Sinatra

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I chose the trombone because the trombone players in the marching band got to be up front with the majorettes (because of the slides) and I loved that! — Quincy Jones

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You blow in this end of the trombone and sound comes out the other end and disrupts the cosmos. — Roswell Rudd

Digging into the files for more trombone quotations

I could swear that I came across an old dictionary definition of the trombone that compared it to an ear trumpet, but, of course, I can’t find it now. If anyone has come across it, please put it in the comments

An article about a shipwreck in the Times (London) explained what a foghorn was by comparing it to a trombone, but that one is way too wordy to get an interesting quote from.

Enjoy this selection.

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Not only church music has now been composed for trombones, but also concertos, sonatas, and solos, and these always have an admirable effect. Only the Catholics of Germany still favor the instrument, and unless help is forthcoming from Vienna, we music fear the gradual and complete loss of this instrument – Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart (written ca. 1784-85, published 1806)

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It [the bass trombone] has the finest effect in funeral processions, and in general in melancholy strains. We never hear it with more pleasure it with more pleasure in England than in Handel’s dead march in Saul. Its use should be rare, and its effects would be more striking. But trombone and double-drums are now so frequently used at the opera, oratories, and in symphonies that they are become a nuisance to lovers of pure harmony and refined tones: for, in fact, the vibrations of these instruments produce noise, not musical sounds. – Charles Burney (1819)

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Mr. Vobaron is an extraordinary artist on the trombone; he sings on this instrument with the sweetness of a horn, and with more good development and range. All of his skill is needed to make it forgivable to take his formidable instrument from the place it must occupy in the orchestra. – Fétis (Revue musicale 1: 1827)

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The public recognized the estimable talent of Mr. Belcke; but it is necessary to acknowledge that a concerto for trombone has something that approaches the prohibited genre among all genres, something so lugubrious that virtuosos who play this instrument should send announcements in the style of invitations to services and burials. – Stephen Heller (Revue et gazette musicale de Paris 12 no. 3: 1844)

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Today it is not true that “he who pays the piper calls the tune”; in the contrary, he who pays the piper must take whatever tune the piper likes best to play and be thankful that the trombone is not thrown at his head. – Joseph Parker, Times (London): 1902

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In the two symphonic poems there was more control in the reading, but very much less in the playing, which was steeped in far too thick an atmosphere of Gustave Doré; the trombones, for instance, in Francesca da Rimini, labouring under an excess of realism, might, from the noise they were making, have been blowing any number of couples in endless circles around the Queen’s hall. – Review of an orchestral concert, Times: 1906

A final warning

Why do so many quotations about the trombone from the last two centuries or so complain about the trombones being too loud?

In part, music did quite nicely without trombones for most of the eighteenth century. They came back into vogue through promenade concerts and other aspects of low-status popular music. Oh, and Rossini operas. That, alone, was sufficient to offend aristocratic ears.

But let’s admit it. Some people might have complained about loud trombones because, well, trombonists were playing too loudly. The situation no longer invites knee-jerk complaints from concert reviewers. It still annoys the audience.

So let’s end this post with words of wisdom from former Boston Symphony Orchestra bass trombonist Douglas Yeo:

“Play the dynamic that fits the context even if it’s different than what’s written on the page. We must also be keenly aware that we can single-handedly damage a colleague’s hearing by playing too loudly or by pointing our bells at someone’s head. We only reinforce the stereotype of brass players being raw, meat-eating dolts when we use our instrument as a weapon.”