1890—Boston, MA

Louis Charles Elson says the following about trombone in his book, The Theory of Music: “The trombone is at present made in three pitches, alto, tenor, and bass…The alto-trombone is called the E-flat trombone, as, with closed slides, it gives the harmonic series of E-flat…The tenor-trombone is the instrument of this family most used; although this is a faulty arrangement. This is a B-flat trombone, that note being its fundamental…As already seen, the alto-trombone is notated in the alto-clef, the tenor in the tenor, and the bass-trombone in the bass-clef. The trombone has been in use for many centuries, but it was poorly used, even in the last century. The old composers used it in unison with the contra-basses, a barbarous mode of strengthening the bass. Mozart appears to have been the first to have appreciated the instrument, and his use of trombones in his ‘Requiem’ and in the graveyard scene in ‘Don Giovanni’ was the beginning of real trombone-writing” (Elson, Theory 67-68).