The Trombone in Britain before 1800

By Dr. Trevor Herbert

Several years ago when I was working as a trombone player in London, I began research for a higher degree at the Open University, where I now teach. I completed the thesis in 1984. In July of 1989, I gave a talk at the 18th International Trombone Workshop in Eton on the subject of my research which was "The Trombone in Britain before 1800". The talk was a précis of my past research. This article is a précis of part of my Eton talk - in fact, it is no more than a mildly adapted version of the introduction. When I was making some minor revisions to it for the purpose of this publication, it dawned on me that I could take this opportunity to stimulate among BTS members some active interest in the history of the trombone in Britain. So, towards the end of this piece, I make a suggestion about the use of this magazine as a forum for information about the history of the trombone in Britain. This would capitalise on the national character of the membership of the BTS, and, perhaps, provide valuable information for students of trombone history.

'The Trombone', Johann Christoph Weigel (1661-1726), copper engraving from Musicalisches Theatrum."The Trombone", Johann Christoph Weigel (1661-1726), copper engraving from Musicalisches Theatrum.

Comparatively little has been researched and written about the use of trombones in the Renaissance to late Classical period. There have been a number of helpful American studies, including an excellent book by H. G. Fisher on the Renaissance sackbut (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1984). There have also been some very good foreign European papers. In my view, the best general work on the trombone is the relevant parts in "Brass Instruments: their History and Development" by Anthony Baines (Faber & Faber, 1976).

The contribution of musicologists to trombone history is valuable but slight. Most books on Renaissance or Baroque music make scant and sometimes bland reference to the trombone. The standard, general histories of music for this period say more or less the same things. The points made are broadly correct but have a dull lack of detail.

People dealing with general historical musicological issues cannot be blamed for omitting detailed attention to the trombone. There is little specialist research for them to base their ideas on. However, it is interesting to reflect, or perhaps I should say speculate, on why such a dearth of scholarship exists and why what does exist has not been fully integrated or synthesised into mainstream musicology. It is my hunch that social attitudes to the trombone, which perhaps have always existed, contributed to the problem in a number of ways. First, trombone people are usually immersed in the business of playing trombones. Second, musicologists since the 19th century have almost all been pianists and organists with a minor sprinkling of soft chamber musicians and they have, naturally enough, based their efforts in that direction - their starting point is their own experience. Thirdly, and as a consequence of the first two points, trombone playing and research has created for itself a ghetto, an insularity that, in some respects, organisations like the British Trombone Society and the International Trombone Association promote and even celebrate.

Within the general dearth of scholarship that I have alluded to, the history of the trombone in Britain hovers like a giant question mark. Hardly anything - no specialised research - has ever been done on it. Interestingly enough, the most important paper ever written about the trombone was written by an Englishman. I am referring to the clergyman and amateur musicologist, Canon Francis Galpin. His paper to the 1906 meeting of the Musical Association (now the Royal Musical Association) entitled "The Sackbut: Its Evolution and History" had the significance to the study of the history of the trombone that Faraday's paper to the Royal Institution had to the effective development of power by electricity. At a stroke, Galpin put the history of the trombone into a rational perspective. Less than a decade earlier, distinguished scholars were happily accepting that references to the trombone in the Old Testament were literal, perfectly correct and plausible and that the drawings of harps in Graeco-Roman manuscripts were really incomplete drawings of trombones. But, what Galpin had to say about the trombone in England was typically accurate but brief. The task he had set himself was to describe the general evolution of the trombone, not its use in Britain.

The reason why a study of the trombone in Britain was necessary is that Britain was different in this period from the rest of Europe - culturally and politically different to the extent that it produced different styles and different musical practices. No-one would dispute, for example, that English consort or English virginal music was different in the 16th century from its Italian equivalents, so it follows that the was that trombones were used may have been equally idiosyncratic.

Furthermore, it struck me that there was a number of questions to which answers were needed. Many of these questions were common enough in music scholarship but had a particular bearing in British music. For example, the question of instrumentation.

The practice of designating lines of music to particular instruments, in the way that modern scores do today, did not become standard until the 19th century. There are only a handful of works composed before 1600 from any country which we know - indisputably from the original score - were intended to be played by trombone. But by 1537, about 12.5% - one eighth - of the massive cost of providing music for the court of Henry VIII was taken up by the cost of paying significant monthly wages to up to twelve full-time trombone players and occasional extras. These people must have been employed to play something - the questions are what and when. The idea that 16th century composers did not ascribe instruments to each part because everyone was happy for any part to be played by any instrument is misleading. Though a great deal of flexibility prevailed, there were conventions that applied to all musical performance. The main task, therefore, was to get closer to understanding the conventions that applied to the trombone.

The problem was where to start - bearing in mind that there are few secondary sources to go on. As there is little designation of trombone parts, another starting point is the documentary sources that mention the trombone or words that mean trombone. Here, too, there are problems - what word or words in Britain mean trombone in the early 16th century? Sackbut or its various adulterated forms and spellings - shagbutt, shakebush and so on - is well known; (interestingly enough the spelling sackbut is used less frequently than its variants in the 16th century). But the word sackbut also means something else in this period - it means a barrel of wine. Author made a play in the dual meaning of the words right into the 17th century. Fletcher's "Rule a Wife", first performed in 1623, contains the line "in the cellar he will make a dainty music among the sackbuts", and in Middleton and Rowley's "The Spanish Gypsey" (1623), one character says "you shall have your dinner served trumpets" to which he receives the reply "no, no, sackbuts shall serve you".

A yet further complicating factor is that other words and terms mean trombone at this time. Scottish sources at the end of the 15th century speak of payments to a man called Drummond for playing the draucht-trumpet. I am sure that this is either a trombone or the single-slide "slide trumpet". Also, dictionaries of the period refer to the "Tuba Ductilis" as the proper name for the instrument that is known as the sackbut.

One has to exercise great caution when examining documentary sources of this period. So wide are the ranges of spellings that anything can mean anything. I am, therefore, extremely grateful to Sir Thomas Elyot, who, in 1534, published a book called "The Castel of Helth", a sort of 16th century mixture of the F-Plan Diet, Jane Fonda's keep-fit method and aerobics for beginners. In it he recommends "The entrayles which undernethe the myddreffe, be exercysed by blowynge, eyther by constraynte, or playenge on the Shaulmes, or Sackbottes, or other lyke instrumentes whyche doo requyre moche wynde". This apparently trivial source is historically important because it is the first literary English source (at least the earliest known to me) that unambiguously states that the sackbut is a musical instrument that is blown!

In fact it is possible to deduce from more circumstantial evidence that trombones were introduced into Britain at the end of the 15th century, within a few years of the accession of the first Tudor king, Henry VII. The players were unlikely to have been regular employees of the court. They were foreign - although they had German names it is likely they came from France; that is why a derivative of the Franco-Spanish word saquebote was used. By 1501 payments are found in the account of Charles of Austria: "To Hans Nagle and Hans Broen, players of the saquebute of the king of England £37.10s in that they recently played before His said Highness for his pleasure..."

After the death of Henry VII and on the accession of Henry VIII in 1509 two changes occur in the pattern of employment of trombonists at the English court. First, we see the beginnings of what I might describe as "career" trombonists. People start appearing in the payrolls regularly year after year who are in receipt of regular monthly wages and are always designated as sackbut players. Second, there are more of them. Seldom less than five, often ten or twelve. These sorts of numbers are sustained through to the end of Henry VIII's reign in 1544. The main reason is that, from the 1520s, a number of Venetian immigrants, expert trombonists, who though they disguised their names were Jews escaping persecution, settled and multiplied in London, passing the skills down from father to son. Among these was the famous Bassano family.

Though the subsequent reigns of Tudor monarchs in the 16th century never matched the excesses of Henry VIII's musical establishment - and it has to be said that Henry VIII's court never showed a hint of restraint - trombones were always included as a defined, designated and apparently well-organised part of the musical establishment. If any dies or were pensioned off, they were promptly replaced.

I have concentrated on the court in the 16th century because of the centrality of the court in English artistic and intellectual life. It tended to influence cultural activity and all other musical practice was merely an imitation of it. However, trombonists did exist outside the court. The most important employers were the waits. These were civic musicians employed by and for cities. The waits, which had existed since the Middle Ages, were ascribed particular functions such as performing at designated ceremonial occasions, but there is lots of evidence that they performed more widely as well. For example, many of them freelanced in theatres. The first record of trombonists being employed as waits is found, understandably enough, in the records of the Corporation of the City of London. A Minute of the Corporation Meetings for 1526 reads: "And yt is agreed (at humble petition of the ... wayts of this citie) that Mr Chamberleyne shall at the coste of the (city) pay for an instrument called a sackbutte for the wayts of this citie...". In the manuscript source, the word sackbutte is attempted several times and scored through by the scribe, probable indicating that the word was unfamiliar to him. Such records are subsequently found throughout the country, very often in the provinces, linked with the music for special occasions in cathedrals.

There was in Britain, then - in London and the provinces - a network of professional trombone players. What, and when, did these people play? It is not my intention in this article to address these questions (though I did say it at the BTS/ITA conference). I would say, however, that it is possible to get a closer understanding of the way instruments like the trombone were used in the 16th century by fitting together diverse fragments of information. Some of the conclusions are surprising - certainly they contradict many of the common assumptions. There is a great deal of work to be done. Throughout Britain, there are probably references to trombones in local archives offices, cathedrals and libraries. Printed books, particularly those compiled or written in the 19th and early 20th centuries by learned antiquarians are a particularly rich source. These antiquarians were scrupulously detailed in their work. There are hundreds of volumes that have never been looked at for this purpose. It would be good if this magazine published information from BTS members everywhere. They could make a major contribution to our understanding of the subject.

Trevor Herbert was born in Cwmparc, Wales, and was educated at St. Luke's College, Exeter, the Royal College of Music and The Open University. He played modern and early trombone with many leading London orchestras and chamber and early music groups before joining the staff of The Open University, where he is now a Senior Lecturer in Music. He continues to play for the Taverner Players and Wallace Collection. He is a frequent broadcaster and has published numerous important books and articles in international journals relating to brass instruments. He is a contributor to The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and The New Dictionary of National Biography as well as several other major reference works.

Resources

  • 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

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