Percussion instruments keep the rhythm, make special sounds and add excitement and color. Unlike most of the other players in the orchestra, a percussionist will usually play many different instruments in one piece of music. The most common percussion instruments in the orchestra include the timpani, xylophone, cymbals, triangle, snare drum, bass drum, tambourine, maracas, gongs, chimes, celesta, and piano.
People disagree about whether the piano is a percussion or a string instrument. You play it by hitting its 88 black and white keys with your fingers, which suggests it belongs in the percussion family. However, the keys lift hammers inside the piano that strike strings indeed, the piano has more strings than any other string instrument , which produce its distinctive sound. Which family do you think it belongs to? Wherever it fits in, there's no disputing the fact that the piano has the largest range of any instrument in the orchestra.
It is a tuned instrument, and you can play many notes at once using both your hands. Within the orchestra the piano usually supports the harmony, but it has another role as a solo instrument an instrument that plays by itself , playing both melody and harmony. Timpani look like big polished bowls or upside-down teakettles, which is why they're also called kettledrums.
They are big copper pots with drumheads made of calfskin or plastic stretched over their tops. Timpani are tuned instruments, which means they can play different notes. The timpanist changes the pitch by stretching or loosening the drumheads, which are attached to a foot pedal. Timpani are a central part of the percussion family because they support rhythm, melody and harmony. Most orchestras have four timpani of different sizes and tuned to different pitches and they are usually played by one musician, who hits the drumheads with felt-tipped mallets or wooden sticks.
The xylophone originally came from Africa and Asia, but has a Greek name that means "wood sound. You can change the quality of the pitch by using different kinds of mallets hard or soft , and by hitting the wooden bars in different ways. Attached to the bottom of the wooden bars are metal tubes called resonators, where the sound vibrates. This gives the xylophone its bright bell-like sound. There are several other instruments similar to the xylophone, which are also part of the percussion family.
They include the marimba , a larger version of a xylophone with wood or plastic resonators attached to the bottom of the wooden keys, which give it a mellower, more rounded sound, and the vibraphone known as vibes , which has both metal bars and metal resonators, with small rotating disks inside.
The disks are attached to a rod, which is turned by an electric motor. Each timpano singular , timpani plural , has a pedal that controls which pitch the drum is on. Typically, timpanists will use real animal skin for the drum heads, like calf or goat. James adds: I have a case full of them here at the BSO, which can have up to 30 pairs of sticks inside. Photo Courtesy BSO. It can take up to one to two years to build a complete set of timpani and they probably cost more than your car.
A single timpano drum pedals and all can weigh as much as pounds. It was introduced in Europe in the beginning of the 6th Century and because it was a loud sounding instrument it was used a lot in military bands and in instrumental arrangements for outside environments. In the 19th century the timpani were integrated into the orchestras of Rio de Janeiro. The score clearly showed the use of the timpani in the orchestra of the time.
The kettledrum established itself in the orchestra during the 17th century representational music, church music, opera. As a result its mechanical development was dictated increasingly by the need for rapid and accurate retuning.
In the Baroque era and Classical period it was usual to use hard mallets, sticks with covered heads being used only for tremolo playing. In the works of Purcell, Bach, Handel and their contemporaries the two kettledrums retained the tuning given at the beginning for the duration of the entire work. In the 18th century the bowls had a diameter of between 41 and 62 cm for the smaller drum and 43 and 65 cm for the larger. The difference in size between the pair was relatively small, a ratio of about , which remains unchanged today.
Beethoven — was the first composer to expand the role of the timpani in the orchestra, which he did in two ways: on the one hand he used tuning intervals other than the fourths or fifths tonic and dominant which had hitherto been usual; examples of this are the minor sixth A—F in his 7th symphony and the octave Fs in his 8th and 9th symphonies. On the other hand he entrusted the timpani with rhythmic and thematic tasks in his violin concerto and his 5th piano concerto.
Kettledrum rolls are used mainly in the build-up to a climax, solo passages are rare and produce remarkable effects. The brilliant orchestrator Hector Berlioz — not only revolutionized the art of instrumentation; he was also a pioneer of new roles for percussion instruments. He was the first composer to include instructions in the score about the type of mallet to be used.
This gave him great influence over the overall sound, because there is an enormous difference between striking the drum with a stick the head of which is covered by sponge, felt or leather or with one that is made of wood. This precise style of notation was adopted by later composers. In his requiem Grande Messe des Morts, which requires an orchestra of enormous size, Berlioz scored no less than sixteen timpani for ten players six of whom played a pair, while the other four played one each ; in his Symphonie Fantastique four timpanists are required.
In the course of the 19th century the earlier tasks of the timpani emphasizing the rhythm, marking the tonic and dominant changed and it was given new ones in addition. Timpani - History Early timpani in Europe The first timpani were brought to southern and western Europe in the 13th century by Crusaders and Saracens, from where they spread quickly to the north.
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