Concone Op. 11 for Trombone: What It Actually Is and Why People Play It
Luigi Concone published his Gradazione di Arte Cantabile around 1860, a set of vocal etudes designed to train legato phrasing and breath control in singers. The Op. 11 collection contains two books of melodic exercises that are staples in voice pedagogy. Brass players, trombonists included, borrowed them decades ago because the lines are written for the human voice and that means they demand smooth, connected notes with controlled dynamic shaping. Playing Concone on trombone isn't about fast fingers or big range. It is about making the instrument disappear and producing something that sounds like singing. The trombone arrangements you will find online or in print usually transpose the original vocal parts down to sit comfortably in tenor trombone range. Many editions place the material in F or C transposition depending on the publisher. Some arrangers keep the key signature intact and just lower everything, while others rework the clef and octave placement to avoid excessive ledger lines below the staff. You will encounter different editions from Rubank, Schirmer, and various self-published PDFs on sites like MuseData or IMSLP. The musical content is the same regardless of which edition you pull up.
Unlocking The Concone Op 11 Trombone A Deep Dive Into A Tonal Masterpiece
The core challenge with these etudes on trombone is slide position stability combined with airstream consistency. Voice students learn these using solfege and breath support. Trombone players have to manage three things at once: accurate slide positions, a steady embouchure setup for each pitch, and an air speed that doesn't fluctuate between note changes. The first time I tried Etude No. 1 from Op. 11 Book 1 at performance tempo, my third position slides were dragging half a step flat on the downbeats because I was pressing the slide instead of floating it. I solved that by practicing the entire etude in half tempo with a metronome at quarter note equals 60 and focusing exclusively on getting each slide change during the sustained portion of the preceding note rather than on the attack. That changed everything about the clean note rate. Here is a counter-intuitive thing most beginners miss. Slowing down Concone does not always help with legato. In fact, at very slow tempos the natural tendency is to let air leak between notes because there is more time to breathe in. The etude starts to sound fragmented. The workaround is to practice at a medium tempo where the beats feel connected but you still have time to position your slide. Around quarter note equals 80 to 90 for most of the Op. 11 etudes works as a sweet spot. If you try to do them at 50 beats per minute, the phrasing falls apart more than if you play them at 110. Another thing people overlook is the articulation marking. Many editions say "legato" but Concone's original vocal intent implies a certain tongue placement without actual tonguing on every note. For trombone, this translates to using a very light "du" or "lu" syllable rather than a hard "ta." A heavy "ta" articulation on every eighth note kills the line immediately. I learned that the hard way when a professor asked me to play Etude No. 3 and I sounded like I was playing a folk song with a slide whistle. Switching to double-tonguing syllables internally, even in the slow passages, kept the tone round and allowed the upper partials to speak without breaking the continuity.
Range-wise, Op. 11 Book 1 sits mostly between low B-flat and high F above the staff for tenor trombone. Book 2 goes a bit higher, occasionally touching F-sharp or G. If you are playing in the brass band tradition, the etudes are often arranged an octave lower than written to accommodate the bass trombone or baritone range. Either way, the upper register passages are where players tend to push air too hard and pinch the embouchure. The solution is to imagine you are singing the notes, not forcing them. Let the low notes drop into position with relaxed air and let the high notes arrive with faster air, not more pressure. It is a subtle difference but it determines whether the tone opens up or cracks. One practical edge case worth mentioning involves transpose keys in band settings. If you are playing alongside a piano or in a chamber context where the original C or F key is required, bringing a transposing trombone edition becomes annoying. I have seen players carry both a transposed part and the original vocal score to cross-reference fingerings and slide positions. This takes about five extra minutes of prep before rehearsal but prevents the common problem of realizing halfway through an etude that your edition has moved a passage into an awkward harmonic range that was never meant for trombone. Checking the original Concone score on IMSLP is free and takes less than two minutes per etude.
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How to Structure Your Practice Routine Around Concone Op. 11
Start each session with long tones in the middle register for five minutes, then move into the etude at half tempo. Spend twenty minutes working through one etude at a time rather than rushing through the whole book. The goal is to produce a consistent sound from the first note to the last, with no dips in volume at position changes. Record yourself on your phone after each attempt and listen back immediately. You will catch breathing sounds, air leaks, and intonation dips that you cannot hear while playing. After you have the etude clean at half tempo, bring the metronome up in increments of four beats per minute. Do not jump more than four beats at a time. If the legato breaks, drop back down two beats and hold there until it recovers. Most players can bring Etude No. 1 to performance tempo in about three to four weeks of daily practice if they stick to this method. Skipping the incremental tempo increases usually results in a messy performance within two weeks and a regression in tone quality that takes another two weeks to fix. Dynamic control is the next layer. Each etude in Op. 11 has implied crescendo and diminuendo shapes built into the vocal line. On trombone, these must be created with air speed, not by opening the slide or changing embouchure tension. A common mistake is pulling the slide out slightly on a crescendo to get a louder sound. That ruins the pitch and the tone color. Instead, increase air speed gradually while keeping the embouchure aperture stable. Practice each etude at mezzo piano first, then at forte, then combine them. If you cannot play a soft passage cleanly, you cannot play it well at all. The soft passages reveal more technical flaws than the loud ones.
For advanced players, there are limitations to Concone Op. 11 that are worth stating plainly. The etudes do not address rapid slide technique, valve combinations on bass trombone, or extended techniques like multiphonics. They are purely tonal and phrasing studies. If your weakness is fast coordination in the upper register, Concone will not fix it. You would be better served by Arbans études or Schlossberg daily drills for that specific gap. Concone is a tonal mastery resource, not a comprehensive technical manual. It excels at building a singing tone and breath control over phrases of moderate length. It will not make you faster or stronger in the extremes of the instrument. When you are ready to move beyond Op. 11, the natural progression is to the full Concone two-book set, then perhaps Bellès vocalises or Hahn vocal etudes for brass. These continue the same philosophy with slightly more demanding phrasing and occasional range extensions. But Op. 11 remains the foundation. It is where most serious trombone students first encounter the idea that the instrument can sound like a human voice if they stop treating it like a machine and start treating it like a wind column with intentional shape.
