Dictionary of Music - Birding America

troubadour 441In addition, at various times trombones with valvesinstead of slides have been built, but their tone isinferior to that of the slide trombone.Nearly every composition for orchestra writtensince about 1800 includes parts for trombones, as domany earlier ones. It has been used less as a soloinstrument. A few of the notable works for solotrombone (or with prominent parts for solo trombone)are: Poulenc, Trio for trombone, trumpet, andhorn (1922); Martin, Ballade for Trombone andOrchestra (1940); Hindemith, Sonata for trombone(1942); Dubensky, Concerto for trombone andorchestra (1953); Milhaud, Concertino d’hiver fortrombone and string orchestra (1953); and Zwilich,Trombone Concerto (1994). The trombone has alsobeen important in jazz, with Jack Teagarden, J. J.Johnson, and other outstanding artists. Often abbreviatedtbn.Trommel (trôm′əl).Trompete (trôm pā′ te).TRUMPET.The German word for DRUM.The German word fortrompette (trôN pet′). The French word forTRUMPET.trope (trōp). A general name for a section, consistingof words or music or both, that was added toa Gregorian chant. The practice of adding to theoriginal chant in this way, called troping, was verycommon from the tenth to twelfth centuries. Numeroustechniques were used. One was to give themelisma (a passage of music sung to a single syllable)of a chant an entirely new text. Another was toadd a melisma to a chant. Still another was to add anew song (words and music) before, after, or in themiddle of a chant. Practically all the sections of theMass were treated in this way. One such trope wasthe SEQUENCE, originally an addition to the Alleluia,which eventually became an independent hymn. Themusic for the various tropes was collected in a bookcalled a troper. From the twelfth century on, withthe development of polyphony (music with severalvoice-parts), composers began to write polyphonicsettings of the tropes as well as of the original plainsongchants. In the sixteenth century, when theCouncil of Trent decided to reform the RomanCatholic liturgy, it abolished all tropes, judgingthem, along with most sequences and elaboratepolyphonic Mass settings, to be a corruption of theliturgy.troper (trō′pər).See under TROPE.tropicalismo (trop′′i kä liz′mō) A Brazilian popularmusic with political roots that dates from the1960s. Politically its impetus came from a militarycoup in 1964, and musically it grew out of BOSSANOVA. The principal popularizers of tropicalismowere Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, who for atime were exiled in London.troppo (trôp′ô) Italian: “too” or “too much.” Aword used in such musical terms as allegro (ma) nontroppo (“fast but not too fast”).troubadour (troo — ′ba dôr′′). A kind of poet-musicianwho lived in Provence (now part of southernFrance) in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Thetroubadours were the first important group of Europeanpoets to use the language of the people (langued’oc, today called occitan in France and Provençalelsewhere) instead of Latin, the learned language ofthe time. The troubadours’ music, of which about275 melodies survive, was monophonic (consistedof a single voice-part, the melody). The texts aremostly love poems (cansos), consisting of severalstanzas and a short ending stanza; however, in somethe music changed throughout while in others one ormore phrases were repeated. The melodies werewritten down without showing the rhythm (how longeach note is to be held in relation to the others), so itis not known exactly how the songs were performed.Also, although there are pictures of troubadourseither accompanying themselves on an instrument orperforming together with a fiddler or other instrumentalist,the music does not indicate what part theinstrument played; most likely it simply doubled(repeated) the singer’s part, perhaps being given ashort beginning or concluding section of its own.Even though the troubadours wrote in the languageof the common people, a number of themwere noblemen, and most had noble patrons and