16th-century trombone mouthpieces and their acoustical significance

Hannes Vereecke

Brasswind instrument mouthpieces are considered by musicians as one of the most important components of their instruments. Tiny changes to the acoustically effective geometry of a mouthpiece will have appreciable effects on playing behavior and radiated sound. 16th–century brasswind mouthpieces feature fundamental morphological differences, in comparison to contemporary ones. One of the most striking of those differences is the inverse-conical backbore. Scholarly references stay brief on this issues, which results in the fact that performers and makers are generally unaware of the relevance of it to “Historical Informed Performance”. This paper presents the results of a systematic geometrical and acoustical analysis of three surviving 16th-century Nuremberg trombone mouthpieces. One of those has been discovered in the course of this research. Their morphological properties will be discussed and the acoustical meaning of those visualised with computed and measured impedance curves. The outcome of this research clearly shows that the belly-shaped backbore has an important influence on the playing behaviour and intonation of the instrument, and thus should be taken into serious consideration for the performance of 16th-century brasswind music.

Domaines: Acoustique [physics.class-ph]

Hannes Vereecke. 16th-century trombone mouthpieces and their acoustical significance. Acoustics 2012, Apr 2012, Nantes, France. ⟨hal-00811002⟩