The instrument: its parts and their development -- Trombone technique -- The origins of the trombone -- Players and cultures in the later Renaissance -- Performances and repertoires in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries -- Decline, survival and rehabilitation: the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries -- Didacticism and the idea of virtuosity -- The trombone in the modern orchestra -- Valve trombones and other nineteenth-century introductions -- Popular music -- The Moravians and other popular religions -- Orchestral trombone playing in the age of sound recordings -- Jazz -- Modernism, postmodernism and retrospection -- Appendix 1: Surviving instruments from before 1800 -- Appendix 2: Centres of trombone repertoire in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries -- Appendix 3: Slide trombone methods: an indicative list -- Appendix 4: Valve trombone methods: an indicative list -- Appendix 5: Orchestral trombone sections, c. 1780-c. 1930 -- Appendix 6: C.G. Conn endorsements, c.1928.