large speaking-trumpet used on board Italian vessels, which is of the same length and tapering shape. Little doubt on this point can remain in the mind of any one who compares the figures of the two objects in old pictures and engravings, or the objects themselves as they stand side by side in the Munich museum. The name was perhaps confirmed by the character of the tone, and by the circumstance that both instruments have the same harmonic scale.
Specimens are not uncommon: several will be found in the museums of Bologna, Munich, Salzburg, Nuremberg, etc., and there are two good ones in the collection of the Conservatoire in Paris, one of which has sympathetic strings attached to the belly internally. The South Kensington Museum possesses a handsome but rather undersized French specimen (oddly described in the Catalogue as 'probably Dutch') also having sympathetic strings inside. A specimen was some years since exposed for sale in the window of Cramer's music shop in Regent Street, but the writer cannot learn what has become of it.
The Trummscheidt, in the middle ages, was sometimes fitted with two, three, and even four strings, one or more of which were Bourdons or drones. In this form it undoubtedly became the parent of the German 'Geige,' whence the viol and violin are derived. [See Violin.]
[ E.J.P. ]
TROMBONCINO, Bartholomeus, a fertile composer of Frottole—the popular songs of that day—belonged to Verona, and was probably born in the latter half of the 15th century, since his works are contained in publications dating from 1504 to 1510. The lists given in Eitner's 'Bibliographie,' pp. 879–882, contain 107 of these compositions to secular, and 2 to sacred words, all for 4 voices, as well as 9 Lamentations and one Benedictus for 3 voices.
[ G. ]
TROMBONE (Eng., Fr., Ital.; Germ. Posaune). The name, originally Italian, given to the graver forms of the Tromba or Trumpet, exactly corresponding with that of Violone as the bass of the Viola. Its other name, Sacbut or Sackbut, though English in sound, seems really to come from a Spanish or Moorish root Sacabuche, which is the name of a pump. In the Spanish dictionary of Velasquez de la Cadena this word has three meanings assigned to it; two as above, and the third a term of reproach for a contemptible person. The Italians also name this instrument the Tromba Spezzata or Broken Trumpet, under which title it is figured in Bonanni. The Trumpet in its many forms is one of the oldest of existing instruments; certainly the least changed, as will be shown under that heading. But the special individuality of the two instruments, and the peculiar character of the Trombone in particular, is derived from the method by which a complete chromatic scale has been evolved from the open notes of a simple tube; namely, by means of what is termed the slide. There is much reason to believe that this contrivance is also very ancient, having far greater antiquity than crooks, stoppers, or valves. In the preface to Neumann's Tutor for the Trombone its invention is claimed for Tyrtæus, 685 b.c. Others award the merit of its discovery to Osiris. In paintings and sculptures it is difficult to identify the distinguishing slide. But the writer has from several sources a circumstantial account of the finding of one or even two such instruments at Pompeii in the year 1738. Neumann states that the mouthpieces were of gold, and the other parts of bronze. 'The king of Naples,' he continues, 'gave this instrument to king George III. of England,' who was present at the digging. Mr. William Chappell, in a note made by him more than fifty years ago, confirms this statement, and adds that the instrument so found is in the collection at Windsor. The present librarian, however, denies all knowledge of it. Nor is it in the British Museum. Dr. C. T. Newton has, however, furnished the writer with an unexpected reference, which is singularly to the point. It occurs in a work on Greek Accents, by a writer named Arcadius, who, according to Dr. Scott, may be attributed to about a.d. 200, when the familiar use of spoken Greek was dying out, and prosodiacal rules, like the accents, became necessary. It is as a prosodiacal simile that the reference occurs: 'Just as those who on flutes (αὐλοῖς) feeling for the holes, to stop and open them when they may wish, have contrived subsidiary projections and bombyxes (ὑφορκίοις lege ὑφολκίοις), moving them up and down (ἄνω καὶ κάτω), as well as backwards and forwards.' It is difficult to refuse a belief that the framer of this figure, which is meant to explain the use of accents as aids to modulation, had not seen some sort of Trombone in use.
Mersenne gives a passage, which he attributes to Apuleius, to the effect that 'dexterâ, extendente vel retrahente tubæ canales, musicales soni ab eâ edebantur.'
It is certain that in a.d. 1520 there was a well-known Posaunenmacher named Hans Menschel, who made slide Trombones as good as, or perhaps better, than those of the present time. More than 200 years later, Dr. Burney says of the Sackbut that neither instruments nor players of it could be found for the Handel commemoration! There is an excellent representation of an angel playing a slide Trombone in a cieling-picture given in the appendix to Lacroix (Arts de la Renaissance), and in one replica of Paolo Veronese's great Marriage of Cana in Galilee (not that in the Salon Carré in the Louvre) a negro is performing on the same instrument. Michael Prætorius, in the 'Theatrum seu Sciagraphia instrumentorum,' dated 1620, gives excellent figures of the Octav-Posaun, the Quart-Posaun, the Rechtgemeine Posaun, and the Alt-posaun.
It is not therefore surprising to find the instrument freely used in Bach's cantatas; though it is probably less known that the familiar air of the Messiah, 'The Trumpet shall sound,' was formerly played on a small Alto Trombone, and that its German title was Sie tönt die Posaune.
