Scores Trombone
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"Trombone" comes from the Italian word tromba (trumpet) plus the suffix -one (big). It literally means "big trumpet".
During the Renaissance, the trombone was called "sacqueboute", from the Old French "sacquer" and "bouter" meaning "to pull" and "to push".
The German "Posaune", which long predates the invention of the slide, could refer to a natural trumpet from the early fifteenth century.
Eventually, cities and noble courts sponsored trombone ensembles. By far the most famous and influential served the Duke of Burgundy. The trombone's main role was to play the countertenor in a dance orchestra. The sackbut was widely used throughout Europe, first appearing in the fifteenth century and then declining in most places in the mid to late seventeenth century. It was used at outdoor events, in concert and in liturgical settings. As well as trumpeters, trombonists in German city-states were sometimes even employed as civil servants. As officials, these trombonists were often relegated to guarding the city towers, but they also announced the arrival of important personalities. Their role resembled that of a military bugler and was used as a sign of wealth and strength in sixteenth-century German cities.
When the sackbut came back into common use in England in the eighteenth century, Italian music was so influential that the instrument became known as the "trombone", although in some countries the same name was used throughout its history, namely the Italian trombone and the German Posaune. The seventeenth-century trombone was built to slightly smaller dimensions than modern trombones, and had a more conical and less flared bell.
In the late Baroque period, Johann Sebastian Bach and George Friderich Handel used trombones on a number of occasions. Bach used it in some of his cantatas, even writing for four trombones (with the very rare soprano trombone playing the cantus firmus, which would normally be played on the cornet à bouquin).Handel used it in the Death March of Saul, Samson and Israel in Egypt, all examples of a new style of oratorio popular in the early eighteenth century. Notations of separate scores are rare. Handel, for example, had to import trombones from a royal court in Hanover (Germany) to England to perform one of his greatest compositions. As a result, trombone scores were rarely given solo roles that could not be replaced by other instruments.
The construction of the trombone changed relatively little between the Baroque and Classical periods, the slightly flared bell being the most obvious feature.
The first use of the trombone as an independent instrument in a symphony was in the Symphony in Eb (1807) by the Swedish composer Joachim Nicolas Eggert. However, Ludwig van Beethoven, who used it in the last movement of his Symphony No. 5 in C minor (1808), is the composer who most often used it in the symphony orchestra. Beethoven also used trombones in his Symphony No. 6 in F major ("Pastoral") and in his Symphony No. 9 ("Choral").
