Trombone History: 19th Century Orchestra Seating Plans

Decided to post these 19th century orchestra seating plans as a blog entry instead of in the Trombone Timeline, mainly for reasons of space. They are 15 seating plans from the year 1844, all of German orchestras, as published in Ferdinand Gassner’s Partiturkenntnis (images public domain). I think they’re pretty intriguing. Trombones are included in almost all the orchestras, labeled variously as tromboni, posaunen, and their abbreviations. Click on each image for a larger version. It would appear that, for the most part, we’ve been in the back of the band for a long time!