The trombone is an instrument that has remained largely unchanged for over five centuries. In the 1400's, instrument makers created the trombone as a bigger, lower-pitched version of the slide trumpet, and indeed trombone is Italian for “big trumpet.” Up until the 1700's, the trombone was known in English as the sackbut. During the Renaissance period, musicians played the trombone in a whole variety of outdoor and indoor bands and ensembles. Renaissance composers also used the trombone to reinforce low voice parts in church music, and Baroque composers did the same later on. Starting in the late 1700's, the trombone found a place in opera orchestras, usually to evoke feelings of awe in scenes involving the supernatural. Mozart used the trombone for this purpose in his operas The Magic Flute and Don Giovanni, and also in his Requiem. Beethoven was the first to include trombones in symphonic music, introducing them to great effect in the last movement of his Fifth Symphony. And the trombones have been regular members of the orchestra ever since.
A Minute with Miles - a production of South Carolina ETV Radio made possible by the JM Smith Corporation.
