Primitive music is more rhythm than it is melody, Some of this primitive music is tremendously expressive. Melody could add very little to the foreboding pulsations of the African war drums.
In fact, melody would detract more than it would add. There is something in the constantly recurring rhythmical beat of the drums which pulsates in the blood. There is something in the incessant and ominous boom of the drums which pounds in the brain.
Melody would relieve the tension, would break the spell. But the dread rhythm of the war drums, beating in the ears, booming in the brain, speaks a terrible message which could be spoken in no other way.
If it be a dirge, how little is melody missed when the drums begin their lament! With a rhythm peculiarly expressive of grief and sorrow, the drums beat out a mournful elegy which asks nothing of either words or melody.
By contrast, what can be gayer than the castanets and tambourines of Spain or the bongas and maracas of Cuba? The quickened rhythm, the joyous accents of these instruments sing a song of gaiety and happiness which melody could scarcely supplement.
What can the melody of the bugle add to the stirring rattle of the military drum, sounding assembly or commanding a charge? The weird, the mysterious, the terrible all can be portrayed with tremendous drama and reality by bare rhythm without melody.
These ancient kettledrums were hemispherical and had skin heads stretched across the top by hoops which were held in place and tightened by adjusting screws around the rim.
Kettledrums graduated from the army and the military band into the orchestra during the time of Lully and were used commonly by him and other French composers of the seventeenth century.
As early as 1713 kettledrums had become popular in Germany, for Johann Mattheson, of Hamburg, composer and musical authority, writing of the musical instruments of his day, says that kettledrums were often used in both church and opera.
These he says were used in pairs and were tuned a fourth apart, a practice which existed for many years. Handel knew about kettledrums, using them in his “Water Music.” Bach also used them, as did Haydn and Mozart and all the other great masters who came later.
These early kettledrums, or tympani, as they are now called, were hand tuned and were pitched in C and G, the tonic and dominant of the key in which the music was written.
The large kettle was tuned to the G below the C, while the small kettle was tuned to the C, making them a fourth apart. The reason for this inversion was the limitations of the instruments.
If the tonic had been given to the large kettle and the dominant to the small kettle, the dominant would generally have been higher than the small kettle’s compass. Therefore, the tonic was given to the small kettle, and the dominant an octave below was given to the large kettle.
Kettledrums were treated mostly as military instruments, for they were hardly ever allowed to play except with the trumpets, in marches, overtures and other such music. This is only another example of following custom.
Buy Drums 
Leave a comment