Early Music Advance Access originally published online on February 15, 2006
Early Music 2006 34(2):225-232; doi:10.1093/em/cah193
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The missing link: the trombone in Italy in the 17th and 18th centuries
David M. Guion is Assistant Music Librarian at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, the author of The trombone: its history and music, 1697–1811 and library editor of the Online trombone journal. His writings have appeared in the Online trombone journal, I.T.A. journal, Brass bulletin, American music, and Historic Brass Society journal. david{at}trombone.org
The extensive use of the trombone in Italy until c.1630 is well known. The standard literature about the trombone has nothing more to add about Italy until the 19th century. The facts that Italian operatic composers working in Paris in the 1770s and 1780s wrote trombone parts with confidence and that Austrian composers of Fux's generation wrote many solo passages for trombone in their sacred music are thus inadequately explained. Both repertories seem like new beginnings. As it turns out, the trombone continued to be used in Venice throughout the 17th century, and without interruption throughout the 17th and 18th centuries in Naples, Rome and Bologna. This continuity, and some important innovations along the way, put the 18th-century developments in Paris and Vienna in their proper context. The careers of Camillo Cortellini, Antonio Mariotti and Giovanni Battista Zoboli are of particular interest.
Key Words: Antonio Mariotti • Camillo Cortellini • Concerto Palatino • Giovanni Battista Zoboli • San Petronio • trombone