[Trombone-l] Trombone-l Berlioz, Beethoven

[John Cather]

Considering alto trombones were used in Europe for some 300+ years  
prior to Beethoven, I'm not so sure nobody knew they existed.

Without having investigated whether or not Beethoven intended an alto  
for these parts, I've always thought they sound better on Alto and 2  
tenors. I know in France it was common to play a tenor with small mpc  
on alto clef, but the rest of Europe I didn't think that was so common.

I like the big bore cannons we use now, but not for classical and  
earlier music. Alto tbn is a way to drag the others back to a better  
classical sound imho.

Cheers,
John Cather

On Jan 2, 2008, at 10:00 AM, Howard Weiner <h.weiner at online.de> wrote:

>  At the time Beethoven wrote the 5th, the alto trombone was not  
> known in Vienna and Beethoven himself had probably never seen one.