Welcome to the final installment in our series on the evolution of the orchestra. So far, we have covered the strings, woodwinds, and brass, diving into the origins of the main instruments in each section. Now, we arrive at the most diverse group of them all: the percussion section.
Since time immemorial, humans across cultures have played percussion instruments to accompany music and dance or for ritual, religious, or military purposes. But percussion’s rise in prominence within the context of the Western symphony orchestra only really began in the 20th century as composers started exploring more diverse orchestral colors and textures. Instruments and playing techniques from the spheres of jazz, Latin American dance music, vaudeville, and silent film accompaniments opened up a wealth of options to Western composers. Percussion sections soon became much larger and more diverse, encompassing instruments from around the world.
Percussion instruments can be divided into two categories: those that produce a definite pitch and those that do not.
Unpitched percussion, also called auxiliary percussion, encompasses a wide variety of instruments, including snare drums, bass drums, cymbals, gongs, shakers, and all manner of “found objects” (that is, everyday items that have been repurposed into percussion instruments).
Examples of pitched or tuned percussion instruments include vibraphones, xylophones, marimbas, glockenspiels, tubular bells, handbells, and crotales.
Timpani make up their own subcategory of pitched instruments. Timpanists generally specialize in their instrument, whereas other percussionists usually learn techniques that can be applied to a variety of instruments, including found objects.
To understand how the percussion section developed, let us first examine the history of the timpani, the first percussion instruments to enter the realm of the orchestra and the most commonly used across the orchestral repertoire.
Timpani
Timpani, also called European kettledrums, are drums tuned to specific pitches. They are usually found in sets of two or three. Because they produce definite pitches, timpani can participate in the harmony of a composition, typically outlining the tonic and dominant pitches of a given key. They can also be re-tuned within the course of a piece by tightening or slackening the drumhead with screws or other mechanisms.
The predecessors of modern timpani have origins stretching back multiple millennia, but they first made their way to Europe during the Crusades. Called nakers, these small kettledrums of Arabian or Saracen origin were adopted in medieval Europe for martial music, usually playing alongside trumpets. In the 15th century, large kettledrums played by the Ottoman Turks and Mongols while on horseback or camelback inspired the use of cavalry kettledrums in Europe. Large kettledrums soon spread throughout Europe. They were seen as a sign of power, possessed exclusively by high-ranking nobility such as kings and emperors. By the 16th century, they could be found in elite military regiments and the principal courts of Europe.
During the 17th century, kettledrums evolved from instruments that were used for parades and outdoor ceremonies to orchestral instruments. James Blades writes in Grove Music Online how this changed how the instruments were played: “Improvisation and conspicuous display gave way over time to more formalized playing, ultimately from written music, for banquets, grand balls and other events of state.” The true introduction of timpani into the orchestra came in the 1670s when Jean-Baptiste Lully first called for them in his opera Thésée (1675). Timpani were still used sparingly for special events and large-scale works such as operas, oratorios, and festive church services. By the end of the 17th century, however, they had become firmly integrated into the orchestra.
In the 18th century, timpani were widely used in both sacred and secular music. They were generally tuned to the keys of D and C to match the trumpets and usually tuned in fourths, with the lower note sounding the dominant and the higher note sounding the tonic. In the Classical era, composers started calling for more tunings and even re-tunings mid-piece. Timpani parts also became more involved. Haydn, an occasional timpanist himself, wrote innovative timpani parts in several symphonies and choral works, most notably in Symphony No. 103 (nicknamed the “Drum Roll” symphony) and the Mass in Time of War (also known as the “Paukenmesse” or “Drum Mass”).
In the Romantic era, timpani continued to rise in prominence and became more independent from the trumpets. Composers started calling for three drums or even multiple timpanists as well as tunings outside of the typical fourths and fifths. For instance, Beethoven scores the timpani to sound a tritone in the dungeon scene of his opera Fidelio (1814) to chilling effect.
Berlioz also enthusiastically embraced percussion, calling for at least two timpanists to play at least eight kettledrums in most of his orchestral works. In his Requiem (1837), he even goes so far as to call for eight timpanists playing 16 kettledrums, not to mention two bass drums, 10 pairs of cymbals, and four tam-tams.
As was the case with other instruments in the orchestra, timpani underwent technological advancements during the 19th century. Drumheads began to be made of a thinner material, which created a more refined sound that would blend better with the orchestra. Softer mallet heads covered in a variety of materials such as felt, flannel, and sponge were developed to create different and more subtle sounds than wooden-headed sticks.
The most significant advancement, however, was the development of new tuning mechanisms to make tuning faster and more accurate. In 1881, Carl Pittrich developed the “Dresden” model, which featured a foot-operated pedal tuning mechanism. This innovation, soon adopted by virtually every European orchestra, meant timpani could be tuned even while playing. Composers began writing even more intricate timpani parts, elevating timpani from serving a mainly rhythmic and harmonic function to playing melodies, as in Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 7, demonstrated in the video below.
Now, let’s move on to some other percussion instruments commonly used in orchestral music. There are too many to include within the scope of this article, but here is a small sample of some of the “hardest hitters.”
Bass Drum
The bass drum is the largest unpitched percussion instrument in the orchestra. It consists of a cylindrical shell of wood encased by two heads made of hide (though plastic may be used in drumkits or drums used in marching bands). When played in the orchestra, bass drums are usually mounted on a swivel stand and played with weighty, felt-headed mallets.
Like timpani, the bass drum has Middle Eastern origins. The direct ancestor of the bass drum is the davul, a large cylindrical double-headed drum. Although drums of this kind had been known in Europe since at least 600 CE, they were still rare in Europe until the 18th century, when it became fashionable to imitate Turkish Janissary bands. Although mainly felt in military bands, their influence occasionally extended to orchestral music. In fact, the bass drum was known as the Turkish drum until the early 19th century.
There are isolated examples of the bass drum being used in orchestral music prior to the Classical period, but the instrument only truly took hold in the latter half of the 18th century. Gluck was the first Classical-era composer to call for the bass drum in his opera Le cadi dupé (1761). The popularity of the bass drum grew from this point on, becoming a particular favorite of Berlioz, Liszt, Wagner, and Verdi. For example, Verdi uses it to soul-stirring effect to invoke the terror of the “Day of Wrath” in his Messa di Requiem (1874).
Snare
Snare drums (also called side drums because they were originally worn at the player’s side in military bands) are another common percussion instrument. Like the bass drum, it is unpitched. A snare drum has a cylindrical body made of wood or metal covered on both ends with calfskin or plastic. The upper head, called the “batter,” is the playing side, while the lower head, called the “snare,” has at least eight “snares” stretched across it. These are strings of gut, wire, wire-covered silk, or nylon. James Blades explains how they work to produce the snare drum’s distinctive sound: “when the upper head is struck the resonance is communicated to the lower head which then vibrates against its snares. These vibrations are doubled by being communicated to the snares themselves, resulting in a crisp sound which seems to be an octave higher than that of an unsnared drum.”
The earliest direct ancestor of the snare drum is the medieval tabor, which was usually played alongside a small flute by one player (tabor and pipe). During the 15th century, the tabor started to enter European military bands. The smaller tabor eventually split from the larger side drum, the tabor becoming the domain of folk music and the side drum becoming an important military instrument.
The side drum, or snare, was occasionally used in 18th-century orchestral music, such as in Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks (1749). However, Rossini is credited with elevating the snare’s status in the orchestra with the famous introductory rolls of La gazza ladra (1817). The instrument was a particular favorite of Berlioz, Rimsky-Korsakov, Elgar, Shostakovich, and Britten. But perhaps the most famous example comes in Ravel’s Bolero, where the snare plays the same hypnotic figure across the entire 15-minute piece.
Xylophone
Xylophones consist of wooden bars that are struck by mallets. Each bar, suspended over a kind of resonator, is tuned to a specific pitch and arranged to create a musical scale. The modern orchestral xylophone generally spans three to four chromatic octaves and is laid out like a piano keyboard. The word “xylophone” comes from Ancient Greek, meaning “wood voice/sound.”
The exact origins of the xylophone are up for debate. Some scholars argue the instrument developed independently both in Africa and Asia, while others posit that it was brought to East Africa by migrants from Southeast Asia around 500 CE. In Europe, xylophones first appeared as folk instruments in Hungary, Austria, the Czech Republic, and other Eastern European countries, first mentioned in the continent in the early 1500s but not entering orchestral music until the second half of the 19th century. Camille Saint-Saëns used the instrument to great effect, most notably to depict the rattling of bones in Danse macabre (1872) and “Fossils” in Carnival of the Animals (1886).
For a demonstration of these and other percussion instruments we could not cover here, check out this informative video below.
