Essays on the Origins of Western Music

by

David Whitwell

Essay Nr. 67: Early Views of Percussion

There is an extant text from the 17th Dynasty of ancient Egypt which preserves a remarkable story about a drummer participating in a competition. Judging by the description of this contest in around 1,600 BC, it may have been something like the Olympic music competitions of ancient Greece, more athletic than musical in nature. The reader will in any case agree that no career in music today offers so delightful recompense.

A certain Emhab had been practicing his drum secretly, keeping his fingers strong and supple to extract a variety of sounds from his instrument. Then one day he was invited to an audition to try his skills against those of another contestant. Emhab beat his rival by performing no fewer than seven thousand “lengths.” The nature of such a “length” is not explained, but this must be a technical term, perhaps describing a “figure” or rhythmical phrase. Having gained the position as army drummer, Emhab spent a whole year drumming every single day, following his king on his campaigns and bravely executing every command until, finally, he was rewarded with a female slave, purchased for him by the king himself.[1]

Our greatest source of information about the use of percussion instruments in the ancient world is the Old Testament, a book assembled in about 700 BC from a number of earlier sources. Even given this patch-work background of the book, one is surprised by one passage, which includes percussion, in Psalm 81. This description seems much more appropriate to a truly pagan festival than a Jewish religious celebration. It is a ceremony uniquely out of place in the Old Testament.

Raise a song, sound the timbrel,

the sweet lyre with the harp.

Blow the trumpet at the new moon,

at the full moon, on our feast day.

In Psalm 150 is perhaps the most familiar reference to musical instruments to be found in ancient literature.

Praise him with the [shofar] sound;

Praise him with lute and harp!

Praise him with strings and pipe!

Praise him with sounding cymbals;

Praise him with loud clashing cymbals!

One might be surprised by this recommendation for loud clashing cymbals in the religious service, but the Old Testament also gives us the actual names of some of these cymbal players.[2] In another place we are told that “those who offer praises to the Lord with instruments” numbered 4,000![3] Another passage[4] speaks of cymbals, harps, lyres, trumpets, and singing altogether in the service. Perhaps such large forces are also intended by several references to “Make a joyful noise.”[5] But what are we to make of the following?

And David and all the house of Israel were making merry before the Lord with all their might, with songs and lyres and harps and tambourines and castanets and cymbals.[6]

Not so surprising are descriptions of the employment of percussion in religious processions, for example “to the sound of the horn, trumpets, and cymbals, and made loud music on harps and lyres.”[7] Psalm 68 even gives us the order of the procession: singers in front, then “maidens playing timbrels,” and finally the instrumentalists. The maidens playing timbrels in procession is again very reminiscent of the ancient pagan Greek festivals. Percussion instruments also appear in a description of a bridal procession,

The bridegroom came forth, and his friends and brethren, to meet them with drums, and instruments of music....

In another interesting reference to percussion in the Old Testament we are told that it is the sons of Asaph, Heman and Jeduthun, “who should prophesy with lyres, with harps, and with cymbals.”[8] It may seem odd to read of cymbals associated with prophesy, but then Miriam, the sister of Aaron is identified as “the prophetess,” as well as a percussionist.[9]

Percussion instruments also appear with music to accompany public punishment. Even though this reference is symbolic, it would not serve as a symbol if the practice were unknown. The use of civic musicians to accompany punishment in the Middle Ages, for example, is well documented.

And every stroke of the staff of punishment which the Lord lays upon them will be to the sound of timbrels and lyres....[10]

Psalm 149 also has an unmistakable reference to the couches which guests reclined on during banquets of the ancient world. Again, percussion instruments are present.

Sing to the Lord a new song....

Let them praise his name with dancing,

making melody to him with timbrel and lyre!....

Let them sing for joy on their couches....[11]

One interesting reference to banquet music describes a scene similar to a Greek symposium.[12]

The mirth of the timbrels is stilled, the noise of the jubilant has ceased, the mirth of the lyre is stilled.

No more do they drink wine with singing....[13]

Aside from banquets, there are several percussion references as a part of general merry-making with entertainment music. Typical is the command,

Again you shall adorn yourself with timbrels and shall go forth in the dance of the merrymakers.[14]

We have a tragic epigram by a Greek poet of the 2nd century which refers to the suicide of a percussion player, who is also named, with interesting detail of the several musical instruments he played during his career.

Clytosthenes, his feet that raced in fury now enfeebled by age, dedicates to thee, Rhea of the lion-car, his tambourines beaten by the hand, his shrill hollow-rimmed cymbals, his double-flute that calls through its horn, on which he once made shrieking music, twisting his neck about, and the two-edged knife with which he opened his veins.[15]

A 6th century poem by Agathias Scholasticus speaks of a cymbal-playing statue, with a strange emotion we cannot interpret.

The sculptor set up a statue of a Bacchant, yet ignorant of how to beat the swift cymbals with her hands and ashamed. For so does she bend forward, and looks as if she were crying, “Go ye out, and I will strike them with none standing by.”[16]

There are also three specialized treatises on music which date from the 6th century, by Boethius (475 - 524 AD), Cassiodorus (480 - 573 AD) and Isidore of Seville (560 - 636 AD). The existence of their works in manuscript copies made possible the education of musicians for centuries, not to mention helping to preserve the liberal arts through the Dark Ages.

Cassiodorus makes a passing reference to a percussion instrument, the acetabula,[17] which “yields such pleasure that, of all the senses, men think their hearing is the highest gift conferred on them.” We wish he had told us more.

Isidore, bishop of Seville, is the only writer known today representing Gothic Spain. His twenty-volume Etymologiarum, which is really the first encyclopedia, has the goal of presenting all the information a Christian needs to know. He divides music into voice, instrumental and percussion.[18] His comments of this third category, which he actually calls, rhythmica, include a rare verbal characterization of the sound of a percussion instrument. They consist of, he says, “sounds produced by the beat of the fingers....” These, he finds, “yield an agreeable clanging.”[19]

There are two references to percussion from the end of the Middle Ages which should be noted. The first is from a small body of work reflecting the lower side of society and a group of people we call, collectively, the Goliards.[20] While the poetry of the troubadours and Minnesingers were sung in the new indigenous languages of French and German, the Goliard repertoire is in Latin, the language of both cleric and student. One of these, a Carmina Burana song, “Quocumque More Motu Volvuntur Tempora,” begins,

Whichever way the seasons turn in their movement,

Accordingly I beat my trusty, well-tempered drums.

The second is by Johannes de Grocheo, in his treatise, De Musica of c. 1300. In one of the earliest discussions of form, he mentions the instrumental ductia, accompanied by percussion instruments, which “measure” it and the movement of the performer,

…and excite the soul of man to moving ornately according to that art they call dancing, and they measure its movement in ductiae and in choral dance.[21]

In another essay we have discussed the music of the Crusades and the influence of the new musical instruments introduced to the West during these battles. Almost all the modern percussion instruments made their way west because of the crusades and subsequently the literature of Western Europe often mentions the first sightings of these strange new percussion instruments. An example is a chronicle of 1457 describing the visit to the court of Charles VII by ambassadors from King Ludislaus of Hungary.

One had never before seen drums like big kettles, carried on horseback.[22]

During the Renaissance, music rapidly became more artistic and as it did the accounts of percussion instruments began to change in character. In Don Quijote, Cervantes presents a survey of the instruments necessary to pastoral music which is followed by a description of cymbals.

What soft flute sounds will come to our ears -- what Zamoran bagpipes -- what drums and tambourines -- what timbrels -- what lutes and violins! And just suppose, among all these other instruments, we hear the sound of cymbals [albogues]! Ah, then we’ll have virtually everything that produces pastoral music.

Sancho asks,

What are these cymbols? I’ve never heard of them, in all my life, and I’ve never seen them, either.

Don Quijote replies,

Cymbals are flat sheets of metal, and they’re used like brass candlestick holders, banging one against the other, on the hollow parts, to produce a sound which, though it may not be terribly pleasing or harmonious, is nevertheless not displeasing, and goes well with the rustic quality of the bagpipes and tambourines. The name albogues comes from Arabic, like all the words in Spanish that start with al....[23]

Finally, in one place Cervantes refers to a man as “a great joker, as most drummers are.”[24]

The most interesting writer in 17th century Italy on the nature of music was Athanasius Kircher (1601 - 1680), a German born scholar who spent most of his adult life in Rome. His greatest work was the Musurgia Universalis (Rome, 1650), a virtual encyclopedia of music, divided into ten books. Book Six, “Organic music,” the medieval term for instrumental music, discusses as well geometry and acoustics. Here Kircher deals with the physical characteristics of the family of instruments, but, unfortunately, includes little information on performance practice or of aesthetic considerations. He makes the inaccurate assumption that string instruments must be the most ancient,[25] partly because of their prominence in the Old Testament, but also because he assumes man always had available cords (potential musical strings) to tie things with.[26]

In discussing the skins used for percussion instruments, Kircher relates a charming contemporary example of folklore about sheep.

Just one little sheep feeds us, clothes us, and entertains us with four types of musical instruments, with intestines for strings, with shinbones and horns for pipes, and finally the skin turning into a drum, so that consequently the Hebrews have declared of it not inelegantly that the live animal has one voice; dead, seven.[27]

We find several references to percussion in the plays of the great Spanish playwright, Pedro Calderon (1600 – 1681). Military drums appear relatively frequently in the stage directions of Spanish plays and in Calderon’s The Mayor of Zalamea a soldier-drummer appears several times. At the beginning of the play, another soldier who does not appreciate this instrument is thankful the instrument is not playing.

...by keeping quiet for a while

Showed mercy and stopped splitting our poor heads.

For a prison scene at the end of the play (III, xvii) a stage direction requests that the sound of “rolling drums” off-stage accompany the dialog.

Moorish drums are called for in Calderon’s Love after Death (II, ii). After a stage direction indicates off-stage drums playing, we read,

Malec. No Moorish tabors give that sound,

A sound that with such terror comes;

No! it’s the sound of Spanish drums

That thunders through the mountains round.

Tuzani. This is a sound foreboding woe.

Marin Mersenne (1588 - 1648) studied mathematics, physics, the classics and metaphysics at the Jesuit College of Le Mans and later at the college at La Fleche, where one of his classmates, and life-long friend, was Rene Descartes. Mersenne’s studies and experimentation in music resulted in his Harmonie universelle (1636), a work of encyclopedia proportion organized in five treatises. The fifth of these, Traite des instruments, included under percussion instruments which were to be considered musical, only those which produced a pitch -- pitch, but not “noise,” being describable by mathematics.

All the bodies which make noise and which produce a sensible sound when they are struck can be placed in the rank of percussion instruments.[28]

The most interesting discussion which Mersenne engages in on this subject is relative to popular myths associated with church bells. He relates a number of superstitions believed by the public regarding the disturbances in the air caused by the ringing of the great cathedral bells. Among these, some believed it could cause the death of the fetus in the womb. Mersenne adds,