[Trombone-l] trombones and choral music

[Howard Weiner]

At 18:03 02.05.2007 -0700, John Cather wrote:
>You won't notice a physical difference. It's in Bore size and
>mouthpiece mostly. For instance: the earliest trombone in existence
>that I know of in the Neuchel (spelling?) from the early 1500's It is
>pitched in Bb. All other tenor trombones of the period are pitched in
>Bb (or thereabouts) and typically about .400" bore. This one is .500"
>bore and came with a deep mouthpiece. Most believe it was played as a
>bass because of this evidence.

The Neuschel, which is dated 1557, was long thought to be the second 
oldest surviving trombone. But now it is widely agreed that probably 
the only part of it actually by Neuschel is the end of the bell and 
the garland (with the engraved name and date). -- The oldest 
surviving trombone is by Erasmus Schnitzer from 1551. -- I took a 
close look at the Neuschel a few years ago, and even through the 
glass of the display case it really is obvious that the individual 
parts don't match each other. Most likely it was pieced together from 
several instruments, with the basic parts coming from a quart 
trombone. And there is also no reason to believe that the mouthpiece 
is original.

Unfortunately, this is not unusual. Two years ago I was able to 
examine an Anton Schnitzer tenor trombone from 1576. At first glance 
it looked like it was in original condition. But a closer look 
revealed that it had been repaired several times over the centuries: 
among other things, the flat slide stays had been replaced by round 
stays, there were four different ferrule designs, a section of the 
bell had obviously been cut out and replaced, and the mouthpiece was 
clearly from the nineteenth century. (The upcoming issue of the 
Historic Brass Society Journal contains an article about this 
instrument, which has been on display in a Southern Bavarian museum 
for over a century, but was "discovered" only two years ago by two 
conservators from the Nuremberg instrument collection. -- I actually 
discovered it earlier than them, but they got there first. Nu, that's life.)

>The cool thing about this trombone is that it shows that they got the
>ideal basic design of a Bb trombone right away. Perfect from the
>beginning!

Even if the 1551 Schnitzer and the 1557 Neuschel trombones were in 
original condition, we still have a period of fifty to a hundred 
years preceding them during which the  development of the trombone 
took place. The earliest depiction of a trombone is a painting from 
ca. 1495 in a Roman church, although here too there is doubt as to 
how much of this trombone is endebted to later restorations of the 
painting. But nevertheless it was and is a brilliant design that has 
held it's own for over five centuries.

And of course the earliest surviving tenor trombones are aproximately 
in B-flat at modern pitch (A=440), but at the time they were built 
they would probably have been in A at A=ca. 465.

Howard


--
Howard Weiner
h.weiner at online.de
http://howard-weiner.de/

Tosca jumped to a conclusion.