Friends and Relations: The Contrabass Trombone

By Dick Tyack, Bass/Contrabass Trombone with the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

Contrabass trombone in F/D/B flat by Thein

For most musicians, the earliest known sighting of this reputedly wild and unruly instrument dates back to the middle of the last century when - so we're told - Wagner waved his Magic Baton and caused several instruments to be "invented" for use in his amazing series of operas, the Ring cycle. (Other examples include the bass trumpet, the bass clarinet and the Wagner tubas.)

Michael Praetorius: Syntagma Musicum However, it's a matter of surprise to many brass players to discover that the contrabass trombone has been around in some shape or form for a very long time. Back in 1619, the German composer and scholar Michael Praetorius published a book called Syntagma Musicum - a very thorough compendium of the musical equipment and practices of his day. In this, he describes and illustrates no fewer than five trombones of different sizes - the Golden Age of the sackbut, indeed!

Four of the five comprise: the Alto (in E flat or F); the Tenor in B flat (described as "the ordinary trombone"); the Quartposaune (pitched a fourth lower, in F); and the Quintposaune (a fifth lower than the tenor, in E flat). The latter two could, at times, have been one and the same instrument, since Praetorius' print shows a mighty handle attached to the tuning slide, which could be pushed backwards to lower the whole affair by about one tone. (Imagine the following scenario: you are cruising along playing a Schütz church motet on your F sackbut, which has six positions only, taking you down to low C. At the climax of the piece, you find a massive plagal cadence, requiring a bottom B flat. To cope, you thrust your tuning slide handle into reverse by about a foot - and impale the stomach of the contralto behind you with the fine baroque metalwork which decorates the butt-end. End of Promising Romance!)

But I digress. Praetorius' lowest instrument is an Octav-Posaune in B flat; an instrument which then, as now, must have been of very limited usefulness. It seems to have had a single slide, making it twice the length of the modern trombone, and could produce a pedal E in seventh position. It sounds like a trombone of great visual interest - and was doubtless the death of many a baroque viola player.

For the next mention of large trombones for serious use, we must move to the early years of the 19th century. (The shadowy history of the trombone in the 18th century is a subject for better researchers than myself; why, for instance, did Bach and Handel write so little for it? And why, at the very end of the century, did Haydn - in The Creation - write a semi-virtuoso part for the bass trombone, having virtually ignored the instrument throughout his career?)

Michael Praetorius: Syntagma Musicum During the lives of Beethoven and Schubert, and for most of the 19th century, the bass trombone in general use in Continental Europe was pitched in F. [Webmaster: See The 18th Century Bass Trombone for a discussion of this, which has implications for our understanding of the 19th century bass trombone.] We also know that an instrument in E flat was in use in Berlin in the 1840s, since the French composer Berlioz - a sensitive soul, evidently - reports hearing two of them together, and being appalled by the noise! Another historical snippet is that in 1816, a maker named Gottfried Weber, who was based in Mainz, published an article describing his invention of a double slide (i.e. with four tubes moving in parallel, instead of the usual two) which would facilitate a true contrabass in B flat of a manageable length and capable, like Praetorius' instrument, of working chromatically down to pedal E. It seems doubtful that many such trombones would actually have been built at the time - but the idea was in circulation, and when Wagner was composing Das Rheingold in 1853-4, he clearly had it in mind. In due course, he ordered one to be built by Moritz of Berlin; and the use of a B flat contra for the Ring became the norm for many years.

Miraphone Contra
Contrabass trombone in B flat/F by Miraphone

However, if you look closely at Wagner's music, it soon becomes clear that as he worked on the later operas, he needed a fourth trombonist who could occasionally venture into the high register. Die Walküre has a notorious high F sharp at the beginning; and Götterdämmerung contains high E flats and Ds. Das Rheingold, by contrast, contains the only pedal E in the cycle, and does not venture above the stave.

Assessing the whole picture, which includes more recent works by Schoenberg (Gurrelieder), Strauss (Elektra) and Puccini (Turandot), it isn't surprising that most players - especially in Germany - have taken to the F instrument as the norm. The sound, though necessarily bigger than (and different from) any B flat/F trombone, is still manageable, and in good hands can blend with the rest of the section. In my experience, the B flat contra just cannot do this; indeed, one distinguished maker has referred to it as "a tank".

A number of valve layouts are available on the F trombone. The "bottom line" is always to be able to produce the semitone above your pedal note - that is, F sharp in the present case. Alexander, among other makers, produce a double-valve trombone in F/C/D, which gives you (approximately) a low B flat in first position with both valves down, and means that the low F sharp can be taken in a short seventh position.

Contrabass trombones
  1. Boosey contrabass trombone in C (1880) known to players as "King Kong"
  2. Boosey contrabass trombone in C played by Godfrey Kneller
  3. Thein contrabass trombone in E flat/B flat with double slide built for Dick Tyack

The Thein brothers of Bremen have evolved their own model in F/E flat/B flat. This means, of course, a very big second valve section and a first valve of only one tone - seemingly an odd arrangement, but one which does mean that you don't have a vastly long slide with seven positions and a handle. The main slide extends to a normal arm's length (i.e., about seventh position on a B flat trombone) which can provide all the notes - albeit with very few alternative positions in the low register. I think, too, that most of us would find it strange to play an instrument on which the thumb valve provided something other than a perfect fourth.

This brings me to a description of my own solution to the problem, which is a double-slided trombone in low E flat, which has one valve lowering it to B flat. It was custom-built by the Thein brothers in 1987, after many years of cogitation and loose sketches on my part - mostly scribbled out during long rehearsals with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. I make no great claims for it; but the finished product came out exactly as I hoped, and it happens to work for me. Having sat next to E flat tubas for years, I fancied that I could learn to play in E flat, with positions exactly equivalent to those of an alto trombone - and I didn't want to carry around all the extra metal of a two-valve system. Fine tuning is, of course, pretty critical, but the instrument happens to be very well in tune with itself, and the short slide means that if you occasionally have something fast to play, you have a good chance of getting around it. For the rare passages containing a pedal E, there's an alternative slide for the valve section which tunes it down to A flat instead of B flat - the equivalent of having a first position E flat on the bass trombone.

"What is it like to play the thing?" a provocative question, which should never be addressed before lunchtime! Well, of course, any contra is very demanding of breath; and as a bloke of merely average lung size, I'm very aware of this. However, there are many ways of coping. They include: snatching little breaths between notes as a "top-up"; raising the bell in very sostenuto passages; omitting the occasional unimportant note; asking the third trombone to fill in for you on a long, loud note; knowing when a timpani roll will cover your breathing (yes, even timpanists have their uses!); judging just when to breathe during a pause note so you don't peter out before the end - and so on. (This last is complicated by the Sod's Law which states that most conductors will hold a pause until 0.5 seconds after you've run out.) Bass trombone players will recognise these habits as automatic, but on the contra, they're just a bit more vital for survival.

On the good side, you can sometimes think like a tuba player on a quiet low note and relax into it, letting the resonance "carry for miles" in the words of the late Harry Spain of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Or, as in the savage "Rap-Bap" of Siegfried's Funeral March, you can destroy crystal chandeliers a hundred yards away - as Dai Trotman, a distinguished professor at Covent Garden, is reputed to have done. Suffice it to say that playing the contrabass trombone can range from the knackering to the terrifying, but if you are that privileged to sit, as I do, at the bottom end of a superb brass section, then it's worth every minute. (Sorry, violas!)

Resources

  • Syntagma Musicum
    Part 2
    De Organographia
    (Historical treatise on musical instruments).
    Facsimile reprint of the original edition Wolfenbüttel 1619.
    by Michael Praetorius
    Published by Bärenreiter Verlag
    ISBN 3-7618-0183-1

  • The Cambridge Companion to Brass Instruments
    (Cambridge Companions to Music)
    by Trevor Herbert (Editor), John Wallace (Editor)
    Published by Cambridge University Press
    Publication date: October 1, 1997
    ISBN: 0-521-56522-7

  • Brass Instruments
    Their History and Development
    by Anthony Baines
    Published by Faber & Faber
    Publication date: 1976
    ISBN: 0-571-11571-3

  • The Trombone
    The Instrument & its Music
    by Robin Gregory
    Published by Faber & Faber
    Publication date: 1973
    ISBN: 0-571-08816-3

  • Doug Yeo Website
    by Douglas Yeo, Bass Trombonist in the Boston Symphony Orchestra

Dick Tyack Dick Tyack plays bass and contrabass trombone at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. He graduated with a B.Mus from the Royal Northern College of Music and Manchester University, and subsequently played with the Bournemouth and BBC Symphony Orchestras, before succeeding Gerry McElhone at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in 1990.

Picture: Dick Tyack with contrabass trombone in BBC Symphony Orchestra Promenade concert of Verdi's Requiem (left-right: Tony Parsons, 1st; Henry Hardy, 2nd; Ron Bryans, 3rd; Dick Tyack, 4th.)