Friction Drum - Use in Western European Classical Music

Use in Western European Classical Music

The composer Orlando Gibbons (1583–1625) wrote a keyboard fantasia in which he quotes the Dutch melody De Rommelpot. In modern times the friction drum has been used by several Western composers. Edgard Varèse used it in Hyperprism (1924) and Ionisation (1933). Alexander Goehr specifies a “lion’s roar” in his Romanza for cello and orchestra (1968). Carl Orff used a whirled friction drum in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1934-52) and Benjamin Britten, in his Children’s Crusade, (1969) calls for a string drum to be struck with drumsticks and bowed by means of the stretched string.

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