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Kettledrums go way back in classical music, which has multiple roots in the music of the church and of the royal court. Royal court music included outdoor music, like Handel's "Music for the Royal Fireworks," 1749, and apart from the military connection, drums helped keep everyone playing together.
By the late 1790s, timpani were featured in concerts, and though there were rarely more than two, Carl Christian Fischer composed a Symphony with Eight Timpani. A couple of timpanists toured, playing large batteries of kettledrums, but the more usual practice was a pair of drums with sharp sticks and tuning in fifths. No one ever asked a timpanist to use the tuning pedal to change notes in mid-piece.
The first known timpani solos in a concert piece can be found in the second and fourth movements of Haydn's Symphony No. 100, "Military," 1794. The solos last for one measure. By 1824, in his Ninth Symphony, Beethoven had a timpanist playing two drums at a time to make a chord. And we all know the scherzo from that work which is built on very loud timpani notes.
Six years later, though the first performance had to wait for 1837, Berlioz called for 10 timpani in his Requiem, and he had three timpanists play chords in "Benvenuto Cellini" in 1838.
The "Enigma" Variations of 1899 contain a bit where the timpani are used quietly to make the sound of an ocean liner's muffled engines - second-to-last variation - and though it wasn't Elgar's idea, timpanists traditionally make the sound by dropping coins on the drumhead.
Roy Harris, in his Symphony No. 7, has the timpani bend notes upward with the tuning pedal, but by the time he did this Bela Bartok had already composed more than one work in which the tuning pedal is used to play individual notes, all required to be precisely on pitch. This is especially apparent in Music for Strings, Percussion & Celesta, 1936.
Dmitri Shostakovich calls for an endless timpani riff in the finale of his Symphony No. 5, the basis of the "forced finale" that dissidents hailed.
I'll excerpt all of these works and more on this week's public radio program.
Howard's Day Off airs 5am-7am HST Saturdays on KHPR Honolulu, KKUA Wailuku and KANO Hilo as well as streaming live on http://www.hawaiipublicradio.org. Join the Howard's Day Off Listener Appreciation Society on Facebook, founded by Max Cacas of Washington, D.C.
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