Crotales

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Crotales (above)

Crotales ([ kʀo'tal ]), also ancient cymbals , are impact idiophones made of small tuned bronze or brass disks ( cymbals ) . They are about ten centimeters in diameter with a flat surface and a bulge downwards. They can be played with sticks or mallets . But you can also hit two crotales against each other like with the tingsha or use a bow . The sound is similar to that of a bell , but it is brighter and lasts longer. The name of the instrument comes from the Greek rattle Krotalon .

prehistory

Prehistoric crotales from the Late Bronze Age are on display at the National Museum of Ireland . The body of these pendant-shaped instruments is egg-shaped and hollow on the inside. They were found in a different form on Corsica and together with bronze horns or trumpets in the form of bull horns in the Dowris hoard .

Modern times

Today crotales are arranged chromatically over up to two, but mostly one octave . Crotales, together with the glockenspiel and the celesta, are among the highest percussive orchestral instruments. They are transposing instruments and, in order to avoid many auxiliary lines, are usually notated over two octaves lower than the actual sounding note.

In classical Western music, Crotales were first included in the repertoire in 1839 as cymbales antiques in the Scherzo La Pure Mab of the dramatic symphony "Roméo et Juliette" by Hector Berlioz. Berlioz had the cymbal pairs used here in b '' and f '' 'made based on the example of ancient kymbala and called them cymbales antiques . This is the name given to two pairs of cymbals in e '' and b '' in the last bars of the Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune by Claude Debussy (1894). They are also used in Daphnis and Chloë by Maurice Ravel (1912); Le sacre du printemps by Igor Stravinsky (1913) contains two crotales in as '' and b ''. The composer had two crotales in cis '' 'and h' '' with a diameter of about five centimeters cast in Paris in 1918; his dance cantata Les Noces (1923) ends with a thoughtful series of chords in pianos, tubular bells in b 'and the two crotales.

The chamber music From Me Flows What You Call Time by Tōru Takemitsu provides a leading voice for Crotales. Joseph Schwantner's … and the mountains rising nowhere stipulates that the instrument be bowed with a double bass bow, which creates an eerie effect similar to the glass harmonica . Peter Maxwell Davies often uses them as a soloist, e.g. B. in his stage works The Lighthouse and Miss Donnithorne's Maggot .

Steve Reich , who, like Schwantner, composes in a rather percussion-oriented manner, uses Tehillim Crotales in his sextet or in the setting of the psalms , for example .

Neil Peart , the drummer for the Canadian rock band Rush , also uses Crotales as part of his basic drums. A good example of this is the first measure of the title YYZ .

literature

  • Carl Dahlhaus, Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht (Ed.): Crotales. In: Brockhaus Riemann Musiklexikon. Volume 1, 3rd edition. Schott, Mainz 1989, ISBN 3-7957-8301-1 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Patrick F. Wallace, Raghnall O'Floinn (Ed.): Treasures of the National Museum of Ireland: Irish Antiquities. Gill & Macmillan, Dublin 2002, ISBN 0-7171-2829-6 .

Web links

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