Decided to post these 19th century orchestra seating plans as a blog entry instead of in the Trombone Timeline, mainly for reasons of space. They are 15 seating plans from the year 1844, all of German/Austrian orchestras, as published in Ferdinand Gassner’s Partiturkenntnis (images public domain). I think they’re pretty intriguing. Trombones are included in almost all the orchestras, labeled variously as tromboni, posaunen, and their abbreviations. Click on each image for a larger version. It would appear that, for the most part, we’ve been in the back of the band for a long time!