1941

Nicholas Bessaraboff, writing about European musical instruments for the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, says, “The trombone, if played in good taste, is a serious, powerful, and solemn instrument. It can express some of the deepest emotions, dramatize a situation, or discourse epically like a bard. The fact that it is put nowadays to certain ignoble uses does not affect in the least its true stature. The trombone is fine as a solo instrument, but it is more temperamentally fitted for group work with members of its own family or with instruments in tonal affinity with its spirit. Although asked sometimes to display the agility of a youth, the trombone prefers a more dignified mode of expression. The trombone is like a man who has reached an age of discretions and concentrated power. Its utterances have weight, and it cannot engage in five-o’clock-tea talk. The trombone is primarily a masculine instrument and should not be made to sound like a frivolous dandy. The trombone of this discourse is, indeed, the slide trombone, the simplest yet almost ideal ‘brass’ instrument” (Bessaraboff 184).