Percussion Instrument |
Percussion Instruments,
name given to the orchestral family of musical instruments, which are sounded by striking
or shaking. There is a huge range of such instruments all over the world; they are the
oldest musical instruments in existence. The Western symphony orchestra in the late 20th
century includes a very wide range of percussion instruments, of which some have definite
pitches while others are of indefinite pitch.
Pitched
Percussion
Pitched
percussion instruments include the timpani (kettledrums), the most important percussion
instruments in the orchestra. Written parts for timpani first appeared in the Baroque
orchestra of the mid-17th century. In the Classical orchestra, two were used, tuned to
tonic and dominant (the first and fifth degrees of the scale); a third was often used in
the 19th century, and modern orchestras frequently use four, with many works requiring
several more (when it is common for two players to play several timpani each, as in
Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, 1913, or Holst's The Planets, 1916).
Another type of pitched drum in the orchestra is the roto-tom (a modern development of the
unpitched tom-tom, in which the drums can be tuned to a precise pitch by rotating the drum
head).
Other
pitched percussion instruments include the celesta (played with a keyboard like a piano),
the tubular bells (played with leather or plastic beaters), and the mallet instruments:
the glockenspiel and vibraphone (both made of metal bars), the crotales (of metal discs),
and the xylophone and marimba (both of wooden bars). From the late 19th century these
instruments were used occasionally and for special effects, but during the 20th century
have become a standard part of the composer's orchestral palette. The glockenspiel may be
used to support a melody or for bell-like effects. It appeared relatively early in
comparison with other percussion instruments, and has taken various forms, including a
version for a marching band in which the metal plates are arranged vertically, and a
version played by a keyboard (used by Mozart in The Magic Flute, 1791, and more
recently by Messiaen in the Turangalîla Symphony, 1948). The standard orchestral
version, with steel plates mounted horizontally in a case and struck with mallets,
appeared in the 19th century. The celesta (a variant of the keyboard glockenspiel, but
with a much softer, less penetrating tone) was invented in the late 19th century—its
earliest well-known appearance was in the “Dance of the Sugar-Plum Fairy” from
Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker (1892). The xylophone first became known in the
early 19th century, and its first significant orchestral appearance was in Saint-Saëns' Danse
Macabre (1874). Saint-Saëns also made use of tubular bells, as did Tchaikovsky in,
for instance, his 1812 Overture (1880). To the list of tuned metal percussion must
be added steel drums (usually played in ensemble in steel bands), formed from oil barrels
in which the head has been beaten into a concave shape with several distinct areas, each
tuned to a separate pitch; and gongs, lipped circular sheets of metal with raised central
domes which are played with heavy, felt-covered beaters.
Unpitched
Percussion
Instruments
without pitch used in the orchestra include a range of drums, the most prominent of which
are the snare drum (or side drum), tenor drum (military in origin like the side drum, but
without snares), and the bass drum. In the 20th century this group has been augmented by
the bongos and the conga (both from Latin American music, and played with the hands), the
tom-toms (of Native American origin, and played in the orchestra with sticks), and the
friction drum (a drum with a wooden stick or length of string attached to the head, which
when rubbed with a cloth or the hand produces a roaring sound). Related to this family is
the tambourine, effectively a drum played with the hands to which metal jingles have been
added. The basis of the modern drum kit, or drum set, used throughout the world of jazz
and rock music, is a snare drum, a small bass drum with a head damped to produce a
“dead”, unreverberating sound, a range of intermediate tom-toms, and a variety
of suspended cymbals, such as the ride, the splash, the sizzle, and the hi-hat.
Other
unpitched metal percussion includes the triangle (played with a metal beater); the clash
cymbals (two hand-held cymbals struck together); the tam-tam (similar to a large gong but
without a central dome and producing no definite pitch); the brake drum (a suspended steel
circle from a vehicle brake, producing a clear, penetrating tone when struck); the cow
bell (whether used individually or in groups their rather dead tone means they are usually
treated as unpitched instruments); sleigh bells or jingles (small bells mounted on a stick
and shaken rhythmically with the hand); and the anvil (occasionally a real anvil is used,
but more often a smaller, specially produced substitute).
Unpitched
wooden percussion includes the castanets (in the orchestra usually mounted on a box rather
than played in the hand, as in traditional Spanish music); the maracas and the cabasa
(both of Latin American origin and originally made from gourds, the maracas are mounted on
sticks and contain loose material such as gravel which rattles when shaken, while the
cabasa has rattling material sewn on to a string framework tied around its outside); the
claves (a pair of thick sticks of resonant solid wood, producing a pure-toned sound when
struck together), the wood block (a rectangular block of wood notched to add resonance,
and played with a stick), and temple blocks (usually at least three or more, of Chinese
origin, they are similar in construction to the wood block but spherical or clam-like in
shape and mounted on stands). A variety of playing techniques can produce a wide range of
effects.
History
The
appearance of percussion instruments in the Western orchestra is probably an indirect
result of African and Asian influence (as can be seen from the non-European origin of so
many of them). It is probable that the timpani derives from drums brought to Europe from
the Middle East during the Crusades in the 12th and 13th centuries, and since the 17th
century they have had a constant place in Western orchestral music, including operas,
concertos, and symphonies.
More
drums appeared in the 18th century, when Turkish military music (the music of the
Janissaries) enjoyed considerable popularity in army bands. Gluck, in his opera Iphigénie
en Tauride (1779), Mozart, in the Singspiel The Abduction from the Seraglio
(1782), Haydn in his Military Symphony (no. 100, 1794), and Beethoven in his
Symphony no. 9 (1824), all wrote “Turkish” music, using the bass drum (known at
the time as the Turkish drum), triangles, and cymbals. It was this combination that became
the basis for all later expansions of orchestral percussion, although their appearance was
by no means common in orchestral music through most of the 19th century, being reserved
for moments of exotic “colour” rather than as a regular part of the composer's
orchestral range. For this reason many percussion instruments made their Western
orchestral debuts in operas, since a story set in a distant corner of the world would
provide a pretext for the composer to introduce an unusual instrument. Later on in the
19th century the emerging form of the tone poem also began to fulfil this function. For
instance, a vogue for Spanish music, which can be seen in a work like Chabrier's tone poem
Espa?a
(1883), led to the introduction of the tambourine and the castanets.
The
20th century has seen a huge increase in the number and variety of percussion instruments
in use in Western orchestras. This is due to many factors, including the ease of foreign
travel allowing unusual instruments from all parts of the world to be introduced, and the
increasing interest of composers throughout the century in using the orchestra as a tool
for producing subtle variations of timbre, rather than simply as a medium through which to
express an abstract idea. The last few decades have also seen a great improvement in the
standardization and quality of construction of once unusual instruments, with companies
such as Zildjian, Premier, and Ludwig producing a huge range of instruments, sticks, and
beaters for all levels of use.