Chapter 2: The Ascent of the Tenor Trombone

Ken Shifrin: The Alto Trombone in the Orchestra: 1800-2000

2:1 Berlioz

At the epicenter of the changes occurring in the mid-nineteenth century stood Berlioz, whose writings, both musical and literary, are central to this thesis. Despite his overall preference for the tenor trombone,²  This oft-quoted lament, first made in 1842 and repeated in his Traité of 1844, reflected Berlioz's despair over the absence of the alto trombone due to the loss of the notes b' - f" ('les sons hauts, tels que Si, Ut, Re, Mi, Fa, peuvent être fort utiles...'³), giving us a clear indication of what he considered the uppermost useable range on the tenor trombone. Kastner concurred:

Le Trombone Alto qui est d'un usage général en Allemagne, ne se rencontre en France que dans fort peu d'Orchestres, ce qui est très malheureux, car le Trombone Ténor destiné à le suppléer ne peut pas monter aussi haut, et le compositeur se trouve privé d'employer les notes dont il pourrait tirer grand parti.⁴

On the other hand, Berlioz found the alto's sound somewhat unpleasant; and that the low notes d down to A were of particularly poor quality ('d'un mauvais timbre'⁵) and best to be avoided, especially since they were excellent on the tenor trombone:

Son timbre est un peu grêle, comparitivement à celui des Trombones plus graves. Ses notes inférieures sonnent assez mal; il est d'autant plus raisonnable de les éviter en général, que ces mêmes notes sont excellents sur le Trombone Ténor.⁶

Nevertheless, Berlioz's opinions of the alto, expressed in 1842 and again in 1844, give the clear impression that despite its limitations he felt there was a definite place for the alto trombone in the orchestra, basically as an upper-register aid. Indeed, on the autograph score of the Symphonie Fantastique (1830), Berlioz wrote by the first trombone part: 'Il ne faut pas comme on le fait souvent en France jouer le trombone alto sur un grand trombone, je demand un véritable alto'⁷ (Figs. 2.1, 2.1a).

Figure 2.1: Berlioz, Symphonie Fantastique, autograph score page 1⁸

Figure 2.1a: Berlioz, Symphonie Fantastique, autograph score page 1, inset, shows an enlargement of the relevant passage.

"Je demande un véritable trombone alto"

However, in a letter to Louise Bertin, singer/pianist and daughter of the editor of the Paris Journal des Débats, written three months prior to publication of the Traité and nearly a year after submitting the manuscript for publication,⁹ Berlioz expressed a less well-known opinion which at first blush appears to contradict his previous statements about the alto trombone. Based on his conducting experiences in Berlin, he wrote:

Observations réiterées, faites à Berlin, m'ont conduit à penser que la meilleure manière de grouper les trombones dans les théâtres, est, après tout, celle qu'on a adoptée à l'Opéra de Paris, et qui consiste à employer ensemble trois trombones ténors. Le timbre du petit trombone (l'alto) est grêle, et ses notes hautes ne présentent que peu d'utilité. Je voterais donc aussi pour son exclusion dans les théâtres.¹⁰

Dr David Mathie contends that there is 'no contradiction [between the two opinions because] Berlioz only refers to the opera and theatre orchestras, not the symphony orchestra'.¹¹ However, as Guion points out, in France:

after 1791 it appears that most public concert music was performed in theatres by theatre orchestras. Perhaps for this reason, trombone parts in French concert music did not differ significantly from those in theatre music.¹²

Moreover, whether a trombone section plays upon or below the stage, the concept of ensemble and blend are essentially the same. In truth, Berlioz's two opinions are not difficult to reconcile, for what he appears to be saying in his letter to Mademoiselle Bertin is that, provided there is no loss of the notes b' - f", for reasons of sonority, balance and section blend it is best to replace the alto trombone with a tenor. He also advocated using the bass trombone only in section with the three tenors.¹³

Kastner differed with Berlioz:

... le Trombone-Alto, le Trombone-Basse très répondu en Allemagne est presque inusité en France: on comprend que ce sont là un grand désavantage pour nos compositeurs... Quelques professeurs semblent s'en applaudir, en disant que l'unité de timbre d'une harmonie si flatteuse, dans les orchestres ne peut s'obtenir que par des instruments égaux: nous ne partageons aucunement leur opinion à cet égard, et nous voyons avec pein les compositeurs Français adoptir presqu'exclusivement l'usage d'écrire les presqu' trois parties de Trombones pour le Trombone tenor... Nous pensons que c'est un grant tort de n'avoir point conservé les trois timbres différents du Trombone Basse, Ténor et Alto dont la diversité nous parait fort utile et fort désirable.¹⁴

Gevaert also lamented the 'malencontreuse transformation'¹⁵ of the trombone trio into a section of three tenors:

Par cette innovation regrettable le troupe des trombones a vu son étendu s'amoindrir d'une octave entière. Ses qualités sonores et techniques en ont reçu une atteinte non moins sensible: en effect, le trombone ténor manque d'aisance et d'éclat dans le haut; au-dessous d'ut2 il n'a guère de puissance et aucune mobilité.¹⁶

According to Macdonald, 'Berlioz wrote for the alto trombone in his early music with the upper trombone part notated in the alto clef, at least through the composition of Harold en Italie (1834)'.²⁰  With regard to Harold, the first trombone part is not particularly high by today's standards, and it is doubtful that many professional trombonists are aware that Berlioz had intended the first part to be played on an alto. As Hans Bartenstein states:

Auch die 1. Pos. des 'Harold en Italie' ist noch im Altschlüssel notiert und geht mehrmals bis h', was laut Gr. tr. schon fast über der Umfangsgrenze der Tenor-Pos liegt, aber tatsächlich von ihr ausführbar ist.²¹

The alto trombone was also used, according to Julian Rushton, in early performances in Germany of the 'Marche Hongroise' from Berlioz's La Damnation de Faust (1846).

The first trombone was taken by an alto instrument; the manuscript part contains several alterations to accommodate it, sometimes a change of octave, sometimes simply a passage into the alto clef.²²

A late alto trombone curiosity appears in the 1847 published first trombone part of Berlioz's Roméo et Juliet. Composed in 1839 (Ex. 2.1), the first part was intended for tenor trombone.  However, in the edition that was published eight years later, the bracketed bars in the example above were written an octave higher in the part²⁴ which would surely have necessitated the use of the alto trombone, given that Berlioz considered a c#", a semitone lower to be essentially only a theoretical note on the tenor.²⁵

Regarding the 1849 Te Deum, Denis McCaldin writes that:

it is from the autograph score that Berlioz originally planned the uppermost trombone part for the alto instrument [but] changed his mind and was obliged to alter... the bars of the 'Judex, Crederis' in order to accommodate the lower range of the tenor trombone.²⁶

By changing the designation of the first trombone part from alto to tenor and rewriting passages lower (Ex. 2.2), it is apparent that by 1849 Berlioz was 'acquiescing to the inevitable',²⁷ since with the previous abandonment of the bass trombone 'le trombone alto n'avait plus guère de raisons d'exister'.²⁸  By 1863 Gevaert could write that in orchestral trombone sections, 'trois ténors [sont] les seuls... [qu']on connaisse en France'.²⁹  Anthony Baines suggests that:

In settling on one single species players had merely bowed to a new professional logic. The instruments were no longer a set of three owned by a municipality. Players provided their own, as they have done since, and the tenor, on which any part, whether a single part or one of three, could be dealt with somehow was the obvious choice, particularly when serpent or ophicleide became subjoined as a bass voice below the trio.³⁰

Given his preference for the tenor trombone, it seems that it was not so much for reasons of tone colour that Berlioz designated an alto trombone for the first part, but because he thought the register was beyond a tenor trombonist's capability.³¹

2:1:1 Nomenclature and the primacy of the tenor trombone

It appears that beginning with the 1835 version of Le Cinq Mai, Berlioz designated the tenor trombone for the first part and 'wrote his three trombone parts on tenor and bass staves and presumed that all the players would use tenor trombones'.³²

Although Berlioz advocated a section of three tenors, he felt that to use the tenor trombone when an alto (or bass) had been intended by a composer was:

admettre en général une pareille latitude dans l'interprétation des volontés du compositeur [et] ouvrir la porte à toute les infidélités, à tous les abus.³³

Kastner maintained that this practice led to nomenclature problems:

En général, les compositeurs français ne se servent que du Trombone-Tenor qu'ils écrivent, à trois parties, mais qu'ils continuent souvent d'indiquer par les dénominations de: Alto, Ténor et Basse, ce qui, a l'étranger donne lieu à de singuliers embarras³⁴

However, while he preferred the bigger and more powerful tenor trombone with its 'sonorité fort et pleine', Koury maintains that 'it would be a mistake to conclude that Berlioz liked a lot of noise'.³⁵

According to Berlioz it was up to the conductor to ensure that with its powerful voice, the trombone's majesty did not degenerate into raucousness:

Le préjugé vulgaire appelle bruyants les grands orchestres: s'ils sont bien composés, bien exercés et bien dirigés; et s'ils exécutent de la vraie musique, c'est puissants qu'il faut dire: et, certes, rien n'est plus dissemblable que le sens de ces deux expressions... Trois trombones mal placés, paraitront bruyants, insupportables, et l'instant d'après dans la même salle douze Trombones étonneront le public par leur noble et puissante harmonie.³⁶

The composer shares equal responsibility with the conductor, continued Berlioz. Echoing the words of Albrechtsberger³⁹

Le son du Trombone est tellement caracterisé, qu'il ne doit jamais être entendu que pour produire un effet spécial... [Il] possède en effet au suprême degré la noblesse et grandeur; il a tous les accents graves ou forts de la haute poésie musicale, depuis l'accent religieuse, imposant et calme, jusqu'aux clameurs forcenées de l'orgie. Il depend du compositeur de la faire tour à chanter comme un choeur de prêtres, menacer, gémir, sourdement, murmure un glas funèbre, étonner un hymne de gloire, éclater en horrible cris, ou sonner sa redoutable fanfare pour le réveil des morts ou la mort des vivants... Mais le contraindre... à hurler dans credo des phrases brutales moins dignes du temple saint que de la taverne... [ou] à meler sa voix olympienne à la mesquine melodie d'un vaudeville... c'est dégrader une individualité magnifique; c'est faire d'un héros un esclave et un buffon; c'est décolorer l'orchestre...; c'est volontairement faire acte de vandalisme, ou prouver une absence de sentiment de l'expression qui approche de la stupidité.⁴⁰

The tenor trombone solo from the 'Oraison Funèbre' of Berlioz's Grande Symphonie Funèbre et Triomphale of 1840 (Ex. 2.3) is the first major solo for an orchestral trombonist to appear in the standard repertoire. Of grand proportion, only the trombone solo in Mahler's Third Symphony can rival it in magnitude and stature. The trombone was no doubt selected by Berlioz for its funeral associations and solemn tone. A strenuous solo, it requires great expressive ability and a broad, sustained, cantabile sound.  Moreover, as the soloist is called upon a number of times to play b', a note we recall Berlioz considered to be in the alto register, an alternate solo part for alto valve-trombone was provided by the composer.

Berlioz wrote in the manuscript: 'A defaut d'un Trombone ténor assez habile pour bien rendre la partie recitante de ce morceau, on peut l'exécuter sur un Trombone alto à pistons en Fa'.⁴¹

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