Percussion is probably music's oldest family, yet scientists don't treat it as one
A percussion instrument sounds when it is struck, scraped, shaken or rubbed, by a beater, by hand, or against a twin. It is thought to include humanity's oldest instruments, and it keeps time in nearly every style, yet the scientists who classify instruments do not treat percussion as a proper category at all.
The paradox is that percussion is a job description rather than a type. In organology, the scientific study of instruments, percussion is not a systematic class, and its members are scattered across idiophones, membranophones, aerophones and even chordophones. In an orchestra the drums, timpani and tambourine are membranophones, while cymbals and triangle are idiophones. Whistles, sirens and a blown conch can also turn up in the section, and players can use their own bodies as instruments. Keyboard instruments such as the celesta usually sit elsewhere, but the glockenspiel and xylophone, which lack piano keys, count as percussion.
The word traces back to the Latin percussio and percussus, a striking or beating, and the same root appears in medicine and in the percussion cap of firearms. In music it likely first named drums, rattles, metal plates and blocks that players hit. Classification can rest on construction, cultural origin, musical function or simple familiarity. Pitched instruments are written on ordinary treble and bass staves, while unpitched ones use a special percussion clef, often replaced in practice by a bass clef.
Its role in the orchestra grew slowly. From Haydn and Mozart onward, symphonic writing favoured strings, woodwinds and brass, typically with at least one pair of timpani adding accents rather than playing throughout. Triangle and cymbals appeared sparingly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and percussion became far more prominent in twentieth-century concert music.
Elsewhere it has always been central. Military bands march to the bass drum while the snare adds crisp authority. Swing in jazz is hard to imagine without hi-hat and ride cymbal, and jazz groups call piano, bass, drums and sometimes guitar the rhythm section. Rock, hip-hop, funk and soul almost always rest on a beat. Percussion also carries melody and harmony, which is why whole ensembles made only of percussion can perform complete music.
Source: Percussion instrument
