Percussion Literature/History:

9/4/2014 3:09:00 PM

Books to Have:
- Percussion Instruments and their History: Blade
- Music After 1945: Schwartz
- Modern Percussion Revolution: Lewis
Project:
- Non-tonal percussion piece (analyze)
- Develop your own system of analysis
- Pick piece by December!
- Analysis is something that happens with results NOT WHAT HAPPENED
- Composer influences, i.e. wrote for pots and pans because of poverty (Lou Harrison)
Important Facts:
- La Gazza Ladra, Rossini (First snare drum in orchestra)
- Comes from a military background. Jannissary Music.
- Bach Cantata for G Bell,
- Timpani come from nakers (Arabic Drum)
- Beethoven (octaves on timpani) Symphony No. 9 Mvt. II
- Symphony Fantastique (two sets of timpani) "lets try different mallets"
- Bartok, two sounds on snare drum (edge and middle)
- Triangle from Jannissary Music
- Bartok triangle with wood, sounds like a bell
1900-1920s:
Futurist: Someone who experiments with sound and NOT pitch
Schoenberg interested in colors and texture: Wanted to keep classicism without tonality
Did not break the mold. Not into textures, only pitch. Did not like percussion
Amadeo Roldn:
Ritmica No. 5: Considered to be the first piece of music for percussion ensemble.
Ritmica No. 6
Written in the 1930s published in the 1960sNovelty (not to be taken seriously)
Harold Davidson:
Auto Accident

1920-1930s:
- Texture, tension, release are a big part of musical development in this period.
- Percussion music written for fun and not to be taken seriously
- Composers wrote stuff that is not technically demanding (relatively simple)
Varese:
- Sound conglomeration (used chains and sirens a lot) with texture, tension, release
- Paris was the big experimental hub for percussion
- Booing and throwing things at Varese during Carnegie performance of Ionization
- Did not know how to balance instruments (wrote for maracas and snare drum simultaneously)
No real sense of dynamics of different instruments
1930s:
Prohibition
Great Depression
World War I
People want to have fun during hardship/war
This led to a development in music, experimental music meets drum set players
1940s:
World War II
Baby Boomers
Causes more jobs, more college education = more grants
(Colleges use grants to let composers to experiment)
Influence of the jazz drum set, big in humor (Russels Three Dance Moves)
Stravinsky:
Never heard jazz but tried to write it
First composer to use a triangle beater on a tam-tam
Histoire du Soldat:
Written in 1917/1918
Re-written in 1930s for more money (on the verge of bankruptcy)
First person to write for multiple percussion
George Anthiel:

A bar piano player, hobby was writing music

Wrote for traditional instruments (and airplane engines)
Marimba first invented Chicago 1928 Words Fair

Considered a novelty instrument

Grew out of the xylophone rag era

Cowell:
Invented Cluster chord sounds
Pull strings inside the piano
Cage:
Invented water gong
I ching (whatever happens happens)
Square root formula used in most compositions
Harrison:
Double Music:
Cage and Harrison with no communication (living across the country)
Decided instruments and number of measures
Each wrote parts to be put together
Happening:

TOM SIWE LECTURE:

- University of Illinois
First percussion program (Paul Price)
Illinois Explosion
Increase in enrollment through G.I. bill after WWII
o Makes specific areas of study to use in life
o Causes more professors to be hired
Composers hired at Illinois and were looking to write for
the new percussion ensemble idiom
Percussion Ensemble

o Symphony percussionists considered new music/instruments

(i.e. sirens) to be an embarrassment to the instrument
o Students forced to right percussion music from lack of
repertoire
o Iowa and some early percussion ensembles would be mostly
keyboards playing transcriptions or melodic lines with
embellishment
Illinois percussion ensemble known as Tom-tom
ensemble because they did not play keyboards
Course of Study
Jack Mckenzie first Bachelors in Percussion
o Caused an influx of hired percussion teacher and new
Bachelors programs around the country
Tom Siwe first Masters in Percussion
Mike Udow/Larry Snider first Doctorates in Percussion

Les Six:
Group of composers headed up by Erik Satie
Francis Poulenc, Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud,

Germaine Tailleferre, Georges Auric

Did jazz and popular music

Milhaud:
Wrote the first percussion concerto
History of the World
o One of the first writings for multi-percussion
Colgrass:
Invented Roto-Toms
o Variation for four drums and viola
Academic Percussion Music:
Amateur composers writing melodic music for percussion ensembles