Teach Me Trombone

The trombone glissando, also known as a smear, emerges when a player blows a note and moves the slide without articulating the intervening pitches.        It is a technical device, but it's background is quite cultural and historical.  The glissando emerged with the culture of the time in the 19th and early 20th

century.  At first it was used in new forms of popular entertainment.  The actual notation in music for it came much later.  The glissando crossed the barrier between popular and classical music and it exemplified a general clash of high and low taste.  It originated in America and Europe and began appearin in orchestral music at the turn of the 20th century.  An early example can be found in Aleksander Glazunov's "The Sea" composed in 1889.  In 1899 Edwin Elgar composed "The dream of Gerontius" and it has glissando marks for unison Celli and trombone.  In 1902 Arnold Schoneberg wrote glissando into his composition "Pelleas and Melisando."  Quite often composers would give specific instructions on how to play the glissandos in their scores because it was

not regarded as a common technique. In 1900 John Phillip Sousa introduced ragtime music in Paris and composed novelty pieces featuring the trombone   glissando.  By the 1920's the trombone glissando was written into orchestral music and intended to add color to the orhestral timbre.  For example, Arnold Shoenberg's "Five Orchestral Pieces"(1909) and also Igor Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring"(1913) both incorporated the trombone glissando.  The trombone glissando began being used to create special affects or allusions.  It was even considered "dirty" and in some situations people started associating the glissando with African American/Black people.    In the second decade of the century, the glissando was popular in show bands and the "smear solo" emerged.  This was a light novelty solo accompanied by the band or just a piano.  These solos emphaised the glissando and became very popular.  For example, The Joker and The Acrobat were solos that sold in great volume.  Henry Fillmore, who played trombone and toured with burlesque and circus troupes published a series of such pieces through his family firm, Fillmore's Music House of Cincinnati, Ohio.  The advertsing that was used to promote the music was very racist indeed.  Each piece in the series characterized a fictional, comic, slpastick, black minstrel trombone-playing family.  Here is an example of the cover: Some of the titles included Teddy Trombone, Lassus Trombone, Sally Trombone, and Slim Trombone.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

John Phillip Sousa's band included ensemble smear pieces in its programs from the 1890s.  They were ragtime and would carry references to black minstrel entertainment in their titles, for example: Trombone Sneeze: A Humourous Cake Walk.  Sousa considered his music Native American, not jazz.  He detested jazz and in his own autobiography he stated, "Jazz permits people of no talent whatever to write stuff and call it music."    The association between glissandos and black minstrel music was apparent.  The media of the times perpetuated this association by commenting on Sousa's performances with words like, nigger frolics on brasses.  Glissando was not just an early ingredient in jazz, it actually made jazz recognizable, the term "tailgate jazz" emerged as a result.  The tailgate moniker emerged because of the positioning of New Orleans slide trombone players at the rear of the advertising wagons where they were free to move their slides.   The slide trombone was not used in New Orleans at the very start of the 20th century.  The valve trombone was very popular at this time especially among military players who made up the majority of musicians. The slide trombone survived because composers found it to have superior intonation and sound.  The slide trombone eventually made it back into the fold with the emergence of glissando as an improvised effect.        Photographs of very early New Orleans bands showed players with valve trombones.  Evidence suggests slide trombones emerged in New Orleans sometime in the first decade of the 20th century.   Glissando was a rejected art form by a new generation of jazz trombonists in the dance band era of the 1920s. It was considered low braugh and vulgar and perceived as a distortion of the portamento music ornament.  Music training schools such as the Paris Conservatoire focussed on standardizing playing styles and included concepts such as "taste."  Conservatoire instruction books of the 19th century placed a great deal of emphasis on ornamentation even though many of these ornaments are not useful on the slide trombone.  For example, most semitone trills can't be played naturally on a slide trombone.  There is one ornament however that is suitable for the slide trombone, the portamento.  That is because it's really a glissando.    A portamento is defined as the connection of two notes by passing aduibly through the intervening pitches.  Really the only difference is that glissando is seen as an effect and portamento was considered an "ornament."  Many method books of the time make use of the portamento and don't mention the glissando.  The glissando was considered to be of questionale taste and cautioned against.  Trombone glissando emerged in different parts of the world simultaneously.  It appears to be a cultural trend and possibly due to the widespread availability of brass instruments and the engagement of new types of practitioners as well as the decay of systematic apprenticeship in learing.  When new social structures emerged that system basically collapsed and most of the new players came from family backgrounds that had littor or no association with professional music.