Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- 1 Lip-vibrated instruments of the ancient and non-western world
- 2 How brass instruments work
- 3 Design, technology and manufacture before 1800
- 4 Brass instruments in art music in the Middle Ages
- 5 The cornett
- 6 ‘Sackbut’: the early trombone
- 7 The trumpet before 1800
- 8 The horn in the Baroque and Classical periods
- 9 Design, technology and manufacture since 1800
- 10 Keyed brass
- 11 The low brass
- 12 Brass in the modern orchestra
- 13 Brass bands and other vernacular brass traditions
- 14 Playing, learning and teaching brass
- 15 The post-classical horn
- 16 Jazz, improvisation and brass
- 17 Brass solo and chamber music from 1800
- 18 Frontiers or byways? Brass instruments in avant-garde music
- Glossary
- Notes
- Select bibliography
- Index
6 - ‘Sackbut’: the early trombone
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 September 2011
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- 1 Lip-vibrated instruments of the ancient and non-western world
- 2 How brass instruments work
- 3 Design, technology and manufacture before 1800
- 4 Brass instruments in art music in the Middle Ages
- 5 The cornett
- 6 ‘Sackbut’: the early trombone
- 7 The trumpet before 1800
- 8 The horn in the Baroque and Classical periods
- 9 Design, technology and manufacture since 1800
- 10 Keyed brass
- 11 The low brass
- 12 Brass in the modern orchestra
- 13 Brass bands and other vernacular brass traditions
- 14 Playing, learning and teaching brass
- 15 The post-classical horn
- 16 Jazz, improvisation and brass
- 17 Brass solo and chamber music from 1800
- 18 Frontiers or byways? Brass instruments in avant-garde music
- Glossary
- Notes
- Select bibliography
- Index
Summary
On 20 November 1906, Francis Galpin, the Anglican cleric and pioneering organologist, delivered a paper to members of The Musical Association in London. His paper, ‘The Sackbut: Its Evolution and History’, was one of the great contributions to musicology. In it Galpin explained the story of the exotic-sounding ‘sackbut’. His narrative was clear, straightforward and based on the systematic evaluation of diverse primary-source evidence. Before that evening, it was believed by some, even perhaps by some members of his distinguished audience, that the sackbut was an instrument of deep antiquity, and that its citation in the Book of Daniel (‘That at what time you hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut…’) was no less than a literal testimony of musical practice at the time when the Old Testament was written. The unarguable truth that Galpin placed before them was that ‘sackbut’ was no more than a word by which one of the most familiar musical instruments – the trombone – was once known. Furthermore, he showed that it could be dated no earlier than the fifteenth century, and that a comparison of an early example (Galpin owned an instrument made in Nuremberg in the sixteenth century) with a modern trombone revealed, on the face of it, more similarities than differences.
In the twentieth century, research has improved our knowledge of the early trombone and the way in which its idiom and repertory changed over the years. We know more now than Galpin knew at that time. It is not just that we have more information about instruments, their players, their music and the cultural contexts into which music fitted and to which it conformed. We now also have evidence drawn from sophisticated musical experiments by performers on period instruments.
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- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to Brass Instruments , pp. 68 - 83Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1997