Trombone music books: two important traditions

Some time in the 1790s, André Braun wrote the first book especially for teaching trombonists. He may have written it for classes at the Paris Conservatory, because he was a member of the faculty when it first opened in 1795. From that time for more than 150 years, French trombone music books dominated the teaching trombonists all over the world. After the Second World War, however, American and British authors wrote books with a radically different approach. Perhaps the new approach explains why modern trombonists play with a level of technical polish undreamed of before.

Within about ten years of its opening, trombone instruction disappeared from the Conservatory. If any lack of students who wanted to learn trombone contributed to that disappearance, it didn't last long. Victor Cornette issued his trombone method in 1830. The Conservatory established a provisional trombone class in 1833 with Felix Vobaron as the professor. It was apparently pleased with the number of students attracted to the class, but not with Vobaron himself. The Conservatory established a permanent trombone class in 1836 and named Antoine Dieppo the professor. He taught the trombone class until his retirement in 1871.

France did not have a lot of trombonists or trombone teachers until some time after Dieppo started teaching. All of these French authors may have been more or less self taught. Vobaron certainly was. In his introduction, he complained that he could find no one to teach him the seven positions on the slide.

The trombone music books by all of these early authors consist mostly of exercises. The text becomes progressively better organized, better written, and more helpful, but still introductory material rather than the bulk of the books. All three of these introuctions from the 1830s focused on learning the seven positions, with descriptions of how to hold the trombone and place the mouthpiece on your lips brief enough to be nearly useless. Only Dieppo touched on breathing at all.

Apparently, no one from any other country published a trombone music book until the 1870s. Could that be because translations of the books by Cornette, Vobaron, and Dieppo appeared promptly? In any case, no book by a non-French trombonists ever supplanted or even seriously challenged the international use of these three books.

André Lafosse became trombone professor at the Paris Conservatory in 1948. By that time, he had already written a trombone method successful enough to have been issued in a second edition in 1946. This second edition, at least, was published in four languages in parallel columns. Like the earlier trombone music books, Lafosse's consists mostly of exercises, etudes,  and other music. The text, although better organized and better written than the earlier ones, still constitutes an introduction to music for trombonists to study. Lafosse actually had less to say about breathing than Dieppo.

By the time Lafosse retired in 1960, he was valiantly resisting the winds of change. Many of his students wanted to adopt American-made trombones that had a wider bore than traditional French trombones, and he would not let them. Two years later, the American hornist Philp Farkas issued The Art of Brass Playing.

Farkas' approach to teaching differed more radically from Lafosse's than Lafosse's did from Braun's. Between 1962 and 1973 at least five books by American and British authors of almost revolutionary significance appeared. Besides Farkas, they are The Art of Trombone Playing by Edward Kleinhammer (1963), The Embouchure by Maurice Porter (1967), Trombone Technique by Denis Wick (1971), and The Encyclopedia of the Pivot System for All  Cupped Mouthpiece Brass Instruments by Donald S. Reinhardt (1973). They codify a style of teaching pioneered by such teachers as Emory Remington, trombone professor at the Eastman School of Music beginning in 1922, and long-time Chicago Symphony Orchestra tubist Arnold Jacobs.

All primarily prose works with little or no musical notation at all, these books display careful study of physiology and science. Porter, in fact, was a British dentist and  not a professional brass player at all. All of these authors explained the embouchure, breathing, posture, and even how to hold the trombone much more thoroughly than ever before. Being based on an accurate understanding of how the human body works, they challenged some of the earlier recommendations that turn out actually to be harmful.

These authors encouraged trombonists and other brass players to train like athletes, including incorporating warmups into their daily routine. Meanwhile, detailed descriptions of tonguing and slide technique (way beyond just the seven positions!) allowed the average trombonist to attain abilities beyond the greatest virtuosos of the nineteenth century. Lafosse's successors in Paris eagerly adopted these new principles, and it seems safe to say that trombone teachers everywhere else in the world have, too.