1511—Basel, Switzerland

Sebastian Virdung’s Musica getutscht, the first printed treatise on Western musical instruments, includes a woodcut of a trombone, labeled Busaun, that closely resembles the earliest surviving trombones (tenor trombones by Erasmus Schnitzer and Jorg Neuschel) (see above image; public domain) (Virdung 108). Virdung also mentions the trombone in a Biblical context, translating the Latin phrase tubis ductilibus to zehenden Busaunen (slide trombone): “And then [in] Psalm 97: ‘Sing sacred songs to the Lord in the harp and in the sound of the psalm. Praise Him in the slide trombone [in den zehenden Busaunen] and in the sound of the trumpet [made] of horn’” (Virdung 98).