J. Richard Raum

J. Richard Raum is a trombonist, teacher and researcher whose work combined orchestral performance with a particular interest in the history, repertoire and development of the trombone.

Based in Regina, Saskatchewan, Raum was associated with the Regina Symphony Orchestra and taught trombone at the University of Regina. His musical activities extended beyond the modern tenor trombone to other brass instruments, including bass trombone, euphonium and sackbut, reflecting the broad interest in brass history that would also characterize his work as a writer and researcher.

As a performer, Raum was closely involved with Canadian music and with the development of new repertoire for the trombone. His wife, composer and oboist Elizabeth Raum, wrote works connected with his playing, including Fantasy for Trombone and Piano, which he subsequently recorded. He also performed and premiered works by Canadian composers, bringing contemporary composition into a career that was simultaneously becoming increasingly concerned with the trombone’s historical past.

Raum’s research concentrated particularly on the eighteenth century, a period in which the trombone occupied a complex position between older traditions and changing musical practices. He investigated surviving sources, musicians, repertoire and the use of different members of the trombone family, approaching the subject from the perspective of both a scholar and a practising instrumentalist.

This research is strongly represented in his contributions to Brass Bulletin. Between 1990 and 1997, Raum published a concentrated series of studies devoted largely to the history of the trombone. A three-part investigation examined the alto trombone in eighteenth-century sacred chamber music preserved at the Austrian monasteries of Göttweig and Melk, while another two-part study considered the eighteenth-century trombone more broadly.

Individual musicians also formed an important part of his research. His three-part study of Thomas Gschladt reconstructed aspects of the career and musical environment of an eighteenth-century trombonist, while From the Diary of a Court Trombonist, 1727 offered another perspective on the professional life of players from the period. In The 18th Century Musician in a Changing Society, Raum placed the instrumentalist within the wider social transformations affecting musical life.

His historical interests extended into the nineteenth century with Schubertian Trombones, examining the instrument in relation to Schubert and the Viennese tradition. These writings collectively reveal an approach concerned not simply with the trombone as an instrument, but with the musicians who played it, the institutions in which they worked and the changing musical environments that shaped its repertoire.

Raum also remained attentive to the contemporary development of the instrument. His contributions to Brass Bulletin include an extensive interview with Christian Lindberg, then emerging as a major figure in the transformation of the trombone’s modern solo repertoire. The presence of both eighteenth-century research and contemporary performers in his writing reflects the breadth of his engagement with the instrument.

His work as a performer and researcher also intersected with the music of Elizabeth Raum. Historical material uncovered through his investigations contributed to projects in which older sources became the starting point for new compositions, creating a direct connection between archival research and contemporary musical creation.

J. Richard Raum’s contribution lies in this combination of practical musicianship, teaching and historical enquiry. His writings for Brass Bulletin form a particularly coherent body of research into the trombone of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, while his activities as a performer and teacher connected that historical perspective with contemporary Canadian musical life.