1889—London, England

Author George Bernard Shaw, in his music criticism column, discusses trombone performance practice in the orchestra: “Bye the bye, I do not agree with Musigena that Mr Manns keeps his brass too quiet at the Crystal Palace. I admire two things at Sydenham: the brass and Mr Manns himself. The strings are often snappish and mechanical, the wood wind stolid; but the brass is generally noble. I have never heard the statue music in Don Giovanni more finely played than at Mr Mann’s centenary recital of that masterpiece; and this is as much as to say that Mr Manns feels for the trombone like Mozart and myself. But I certainly believe that the time is approaching when it will be admitted that the doubling, trebling, and quadrupling of the strings which has taken place in the modern orchestra requires a proportional multiplication of wind instruments to balance them….And though I never want Mr Manns’s trombones to play four times as loud—the trombone being a tender plant that must not be forced—I sometimes want twelve trombones instead of three” (Shaw, Corno di Bassetto 79).*