SINGING AND THE TROMBONE: TRANSCRIPTIONS OF SELECTED VOCAL WORKS BY MONTEVERDI, SCHUBERT, SCHUMANN, AND BRITTEN

Abstract

The trombone has been able to blend with voices well since its invention due to its timbre, articulations, full chromaticism, and potential for perfect intonation. Composers used the instrument to double and fortify vocal writing during the end of the fifteenth-century and continued doing so into the nineteenth-century. During the first half of the twentieth-century teachers like Emory Remington began to teach the instrument with a singing approach. This directly counteracted the aggressive and non-legato playing commonly used at the time. To facilitate this singing approach, vocalise etude books like the Melodious Etudes transcriptions of Giulio Marco Bordogni entered the trombone’s standard course of study. Because of the decades of the proven effectiveness of studying vocal music, other teachers like Arnold Jacobs and Charles Vernon continued the tradition of singing and brass playing in the second half of the twentieth-century. While the most commonly studied vocalise etude books are essential to trombonists’ development, they do not cover styles beyond bel canto aria singing. Additional transcriptions of vocal music, from a variety of genres, eras, and sources, have been published for the trombone since the 1970s. There remain, however, categories of vocal styles, eras, and arrangements for varied performing forces which are still lacking for the instrument. Further useful and diverse vocal music can be added to the trombone’s repertoire through targeting these lacking categories in new transcriptions. This document offers three transcriptions that cover underrepresented categories and vary in musical period, style, and performing forces.