Finetales wrote: ↑Tue Mar 26, 2024 8:14 pm
The most egregious example of low Bs in a Bb/F trombone part I can think of is the 4th tenor trombone part to Schoenberg's Gurre-Lieder...there are low Bs all OVER the place. I guess people just assumed that the F attachment could do everything an F bass can do.
This is rather inaccurate.
Gurrelieder includes
4 Tenorbaßposaunen. This does not necessarily mean tenor trombones. The lowermost part is simply for a
Tenorbaßposaune, which by 1913 was exclusively going to be performed on a B flat/F or B flat/E flat instrument. To reach low B on such a trombone is not a stretch by any means. German trombones are built with shorter bell and longer slide dimensions, making the low C easily reachable and the low B, with the tuning slide pulled or a replacement E flat slide. By 1913, there was most certainly B flat/F trombones in production by several makers that were exclusively designed for the performance of bass trombone parts, built with larger bore and bell dimensions and considered very much as bass trombones.
As a word of warning, one should be
very wary of the term
Tenorbaßposaune: it means different things at different times. At the very earliest stage in its development by Sattler during the 1830s, it indicates a straight B flat trombone built with the larger bore and bell dimensions of the F bass and capable of covering
either tenor or bass trombone parts. After Sattler devised the thumb-valve operated F attachment, it still indicates a B flat trombone with the larger bore and bell dimensions, but can be
either straight B flat or B flat/F and still capable of covering
either tenor or bass trombone parts. Later in the 19th century, makers such as Penzel, Kruspe, and Heckel build models that are designed with a yet larger bore and bell size and these are conceived exclusively for covering
bass trombone parts. (There are even larger bore models designed for the military and for export to Russia, where in both cases the habit is to play them very loudly.) Lastly, in the 20th century, the very confusing term
Tenorbaßposaune is replaced by something that more accurately describes the intended use of the instrument: either
Quartposaune, indicating a B flat/F tenor trombone, or
Baßposaune, indicating a B flat/F bass trombone. When examining the works of
any German composer, it is vitally important to have this information in your head and not to simply assume the use of a bass trombone in F because some book somewhere said so.
Almost everything the F bass was capable of could be and was covered by the B flat/F
Tenorbaßposaune from its very inception, as numerous articles in the
Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung attest. The newer instrument offered greater dexterity, a more secure and extensive upper range, and was taken up in large numbers during the 1840s. At a time when music critics had been lambasting orchestras where there was no bass trombone and the low notes were taken up an octave (particularly in the overture to
Der Freischütz by Weber), the B flat/F trombone was a very welcome addition and was enthusiastically embraced throughout the German-speaking lands. Even Vienna, which had switched to using valve trombones, discarded a 50-year tradition in favour of slide trombones in 1883.
The barest modicum of research would reveal just how popular the B flat/F trombone rapidly became and the odd low B was not at all seen as a handicap, particularly to those to whom anything below E had been denied previously.