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The valve trombone is a brass instrument in the trombone family that has a set of valves to vary the pitch instead of (or in addition to) a slide. Although it has been built in sizes from alto to contrabass, it is the tenor valve trombone pitched in B♭ an octave lower than the trumpet which has seen the most widespread use. The most common models have three . They are found in jazz and popular music, as well as in Europe, where they are often built with rotary valves and were widely used in orchestras in the 19th century.
It enjoyed its greatest popularity in the 19th century, when the technology of valves was developing rapidly. They became popular in European orchestras particularly in Italy and Austria, where composers wrote with a section of three valve trombones in mind. Among the first French valve trombones was the , configured upright with three Stölzel valves, briefly replacing the quinticlave in bands until it was itself replaced by saxhorns.
Valve trombones were made in many configurations for marching bands, and in particular for . A type of invented by Adolphe Sax in the 1860s has six valves, instead of the usual three, one for each position on the trombone slide. Instead of adding tubing, these valves isolate different amounts of tubing from the total length. Their unusual shape was designed to make it easier for players in cavalry bands to hold and use while mounted. They were included in the curriculum at the Conservatoire de Paris in the last half of the 19th century, and used in French orchestras for a time despite the large amounts of tubing which made the instruments heavy and unwieldy to play. In Austria-Hungary in the 1860s, instrument makers V. F. Červený & Synové invented a family of () in sizes from E♭ alto to B♭ contrabass, also designed for use in mounted and marching bands.
The valve trombone was popular in American and in the mid to late 19th century. In New Orleans the slide trombone did not appear until the "tailgate" style of playing emerged around 1904.
Valved in E♭ were occasionally built but remain rare instruments; a few survive in museums.
A contrabass valve trombone known as the trombone basso Verdi was developed in the late 19th century and is used mainly in by Giuseppe Verdi and Giacomo Puccini. This instrument was the prototype for the modern cimbasso, which has seen a 21st century revival in video game music and .
By the beginning of the 20th century, mass production of reliable instruments with high quality slides led to a return to popularity of the slide trombone. Despite this, valve trombones still remain popular in parts of eastern Europe and Italy, in Banda music, military band and in South America and India, and in jazz, often as a doubling instrument for trumpet players.
In the 1920s a valve trombone reconfigured into a saxophone shape was developed in Germany, called the normaphone (). It was later taken up by American jazz musicians, including William "Hicky" Kelly in the 1960s and Scott Robinson in the 70s.
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