ABSTRACT
The trombone appears to have been largely unknown in France during the early eighteenth century. Except for a brief article in Sébastien de Brossard’s Dictionnaire de musique (1703), no French author mentioned it; no French composer called for it, and no French instrument maker built it. Adam Carse writes, “There were traces of trombones in Italian and French church music,” 1 but gives no clue of when or where. It is known that trombones were used at the court of Louis XIV. 2 (See plate 15.)
