"It was on Saturday 28 July 1855, at the Paris Conservatoire, that the competition for the trombone class took place. That year, one morning was enough to audition all the candidates, for the reason explained by Paul Smith in the Revue et Gazette musicale: "The whole family of wind instruments [...] met up with a harp in one and the same morning. The war shortened the competition: many pupils were forced to leave the classroom to follow their regiments to the Crimea. Nonetheless, there were still enough students to make the competition an honourable one. The teacher, Antoine Dieppo, presented two prize-winning students that day: Jean-Baptiste-Frédéric Masset (born 1828) won first prize and François-Achille-Alfred Dauger (born 1825) won second prize. As well as performing the compulsory piece - the Trombone Solo by Charles Gounod (1818-1893), currently in print - the students were also given a sight-reading test. In 1855, it was an allegro for trombone with cello accompaniment by an anonymous composer, a piece already imposed in 1852.
Gounod's Solo de Trombone was never published and the score soon disappeared from circulation, being declared lost by all the composer's biographers until very recently. Two manuscripts have made it possible to reconstitute the present edition. The first - a part for solo trombone - was found in a second-hand shop at the end of the 19th century.
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