1943

In The Music Lover’s Handbook, Lawrence Abbott says, “The one brass instrument which has no valves is the trombone, the ‘cello of the brass choir. It is a direct descendant of an ancient instrument which the Moors called a sackbut (Moorish for ‘pump’) and which was played in the same picturesque way as a trombone, by moving a sliding section of U-shaped tubing back and forth. The trombone is about an octave lower in pitch than the trumpet. Its tone is impressively powerful; it has the trumpet’s bold, ringing quality, but being deeper has also a sonorous nobility which no other instrument can quite equal” (Abbot 87).