Q&A session on sackbut and early repertoire

[LeTromboniste]

As suggested in the recent sackbut thread, I will host an online Q&A session on all things sackbut and early repertoire. Target audience is anyone of any level that has an interest or questions about the trombone before 1800 or so, whether you play or want to play sackbut and want to know more about what music it was used for, how it was played, how to go about learning it today, etc.; or you want to know what style of playing or ornaments you can use next time you play the Wagenseil on your modern trombone or some Gabrieli in brass ensemble.

It will be Saturday, March 6th at
19:30 Central European Time / 18:30 GMT / 1:30 PM Eastern / 12:30 PM Central / 10:30 AM Pacific

Sign-up sheet is here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing

If you have questions you know in advance you would like to ask, you are welcome to send them ahead of time by PM.

Hope to see some of you there!

[LeTromboniste]

After being asked I see I forgot an important information:
it's free!

[LeTromboniste]

There are a few spots left, for those who would be interested and haven't yet signed up!

[MStarke]

I won't be able to join, but it would be great if this could be recorded and shared afterwards!

If this isn't too easy, I would be interested in something like "the top 5 things to be more authentic playing early/baroque music as a modern trombonist and on a modern trombone".

Thanks for your Initiative!

[Wilktone]

Thank you, Maximilien. That was very interesting and informative. Please keep us posted about upcoming recording projects you're involved with.

Dave

[LeTromboniste]

Many thanks to those who attended! (And my apologies for the rushed ending...) Time went by so fast.

I meant to use the question above from Markus as a way to conclude as it touches on some of the things we discussed but we ran out of time, so I'll post a response here when I have a moment tomorrow, which will also summarize the main subjects of the session for those who couldn't be there.

[BGuttman]

Sorry I was late. I misread the time you put in the estimate and found I was an hour off.

What I heard was extremely interesting. Hope I can somehow hear the rest of the session.

[LeTromboniste]

I won't be able to join, but it would be great if this could be recorded and shared afterwards!

If this isn't too easy, I would be interested in something like "the top 5 things to be more authentic playing early/baroque music as a modern trombonist and on a modern trombone".

Thanks for your Initiative!

Sorry, for the delay, busy week!
I would start by reframing the question slightly. We tend to avoid terms like "authentic" and prefer "historically informed", as the field of early music is in constant change and we are continually refining our understanding of the practices of the past. At the same time we are often presenting the music in contexts and venues that it was never intended for, and trying to appeal to a modern audience. These things require compromise, so while we are striving for being as historical as is practical in that context, we know we will never be there 100%. What we do is let our playing be informed as much as possible by primary sources, surviving instruments, and the current best understanding of historical practice.

But so, what are the top 5 things modern trombonists on modern trombone can do to achieve the style that was current at the time?

1- Articulations
There is a remarkable consistency of approach with regards to articulation, from the first printed sources on playing wind instruments (including a book by Girolamo Dalla Casa, the leader of the wind instruments at San Marco in Gabrieli's time, so particularly relevant to us), to method books well into the 19th century, and that is that the primary type of tonguing, and default for 8th notes and faster, is a paired articulation. The most recurrent tonguing is a frontal articulation on one note followed by a backwards flip of the tongue "diridiride"/"tere tere"/"tiri tiri" (keeping in mind that in those musician's languages, the R was rolled with the tongue, unlike in modern English). A trombone method as late as 1830 identifies "double tonguing" as the default, and defines it as "tu du tu du". Another common paired tonguing is doodle tonguing ("lere lere le" in Dalla Casa in 1584, "did'll did'll" in Quantz in 1752). That pairing is initially fairly systematic, with the strong articulations happening on the beats, and by the 18th century you see it used more freely, sometimes reverted, and mixed with other patterns.

Meanwhile single tonguing "te te" or "de de" is limited to slower note values and fast notes approached by leaps (while stepwise fast notes are almost always paired) in the 16th and 17th century sources. In the 18th century, it becomes more acceptable but usually interspersed with other articulations, not used continually on its own. In short, it is practically never the main or default way to articulate.

Slurs are marked in and thus acceptable in 18th century sources, but wind players were urged never to use them in earlier times.

Lastly, what we now consider double tonguing (taka taka) is mentioned by Dalla Casa and recommended only in contexts where your playing should inspire terror! It was a common tonguing for trumpets fanfares, but it's important to remember that trumpets were not used in the same type of music as trombones at the time, and they had very little to do with each other.

Those paired articulations are admittedly much more difficult to render convincingly on a modern trombone and mouthpiece than on more historical equipment, but it is still possible with some work to at least go in that general direction.


2-Variety
As shown notably by the articulations they used, musicians of the past favoured variety over evenness. The idea of striving for notes that all have as much as possible the same shape, tone and attack, although it is sometimes appropriate and effective for the role of the trombone in modern orchestras, would have been completely unappealing to musicians of the time of Gabrieli, Bach or Mozart. Instead of "square notes", strive for a variety of shapes and attacks. Use a "messa di voce" (a slight swelling of the sound) on select long notes. Every note should have a shape and never be static unless it's making a rhetorical statement by being "flat". Rather than merely going for dynamic changes, try to achieve more variety in the color of your tone. If you use vibrato, use it sparingly, thinking of it as a way to warm up certain notes to bring them out, rather than having a constant wobble. Another area where unevenness is often welcome is rhythm. Four written straight 8ths doesn't mean four rhythmically equal notes.


3-Text-based phrasing
A lot of the music we have is vocal, and thus texted, or written in a style where it might as well have been texted. Learn to use the lyrics as a guide for phrasing, conveying of course the meaning of the words but also actually playing like you were singing, observing the word accents, following the punctuation and the gaps created by consonants, etc. If the music is not texted, make up a text for it to help you guide your phrasing.


4-"Micro" is as important as "macro"
As modern trombonists, we are taught to think long phrases. Always long phrases, keep the air moving, moving, moving. While that is important, and each phrase should have its overall shape and dynamic and have a clear direction, this can lead to a somewhat superficial style of phrasing where many phrases have the same shape (there aren't that many possible shapes), and we tend to forget about the smaller gestures. Try having a clear concept and direction not just for each phrase, but for each gesture and even sometimes each note within that phrase, again, the way a singer would be required by the text to do. Exaggerating this requires taking risks, but also in the long run makes you better at controlling your air to the point where you can have sudden changes of airspeed and dynamics between individual notes as you navigate your rhetorical gestures.


5-Ornamentation
Ornamentation was an integral part of most musical performances for a very long time. Not just in solo contexts, but also in ensemble playing. Composers generally didn't start writing specified ornaments in their music until the 17th century (with some exceptions). Some things, like cadences, were so ubiquitously ornamented that even then, they would normally leave it bare, as even the musicians least able to ornament knew how to ornament cadences. Luckily, there are tons of historical sources from different periods on how to do it, often consisting of tables or ornaments showing countless ways to fill in and decorate different melodic intervals and patterns, and sometimes also showing side-by-side unadorned and ornamented versions of a melody. Another important thing is the execution of trills according to context.

For the music that modern trombonists play the most often, I would say for late-Renaissance/early-Baroque like Gabrieli: the books of Diego Ortiz, Girolamo Dalla Casa and Francesco Rognoni are a good place to start, to acquire a vocabulary of ornaments. Also look at Liza Malamut's DMA dissertation.
For 18th century music: among other places to look are Quantz's Versuch tables 8 to 18 and chapters on ornaments and trills, C.P.E. Bach's listing of all the types of trills, the "Three ornamented arias" of Haendel, Geminiani's Treatise of Good Taste in the Art of Musick.


I'll add a number 6 that broadly encompasses the other points:

6-Read!
Not just what modern trombonists have written about whatever piece or repertoire you're working on, but much more importantly, what musicians of the past wrote about music of their time in general, the way they conceived it, what aesthetic they favoured, etc.

[harrisonreed]

Sounds like jazz. Swing the 8ths, improv over everything and add shakes, don't forget the lyrics to the piece, get some grit into those articulations.

[Posaunus]

Maximilien,
Thank you!

[LeTromboniste]

Sounds like jazz. Swing the 8ths, improv over everything and add shakes, don't forget the lyrics to the piece, get some grit into those articulations.

There are definitely some parallels. Obviously completely different stylistic codes and different specific skillset, but the wider skillset/mindset of jazz players is indeed not so far away

[MStarke]

Maximilien, I had not logged on in a while, but want to thank you for the great explanations and freely sharing your knowledge and recommendations! All your 5 (6) points make total sense to me. This might really help me getting a little more feel into this kind of music.