I wonder why the great classical composers from history like Mozart, Beethoven, etc. didn’t make more use of drums or percussion in general?
I mean, they did write quite a lot of bombastic pieces and did all they could to make the parts that needed it to hit hard. So why did’nt they use more than one or two bangs on a kettle drum, giving the one who played them the most boring job in the orchestra?
Also I know that a drum-kit is a rather modern invention, but couldn’t they have used different guys playing different kinds of percussion?
Also maybe I’m completely mistaken and this turns out to be a list of classical music with some blasting in it..
Edit: I’m sencerely apologising to every classical percussionist, reading the answers I clearly underestimated your role
In: 4587
To ask this is, in a way, to not understand the different sensibilities of different times. Why *would* they use more percussion? It would have sounded worse to them. It’s like asking “Why don’t pop stars do more yodeling? Do they just not know how to do it?”
As far as using various percussion instruments, the range of percussion instruments is actually quite large once you get up to the romantic era. There were also indeed ways to play more than one instrument at a time, for example marching bands would attach a pair of cymbals to the bass drum, as you still sometimes see.
Not really the answer, but one problem with percussion is that it’s overwhelming. If you have percussion prominently, everything else takes the back seat. There’s very little subtlety to a drum pattern. The high-class music of 18th century Europe would have offended the refined sensibilities of its audience if it employed drums. The occasional exception of the timpani was for really exciting moments, in part because timpani are pitched and were a royal pain to tune back then, so you could really only use them when you were in the right key. Brass was similar, actually. Brass was bright and overpowering and could only play some of the notes before valves were invented, so you don’t hear much brass back then either.
As percussion use grew in classical music in the 19th century, its use was generally kept fairly minimal so that it wouldn’t get in the way of the “real” music. But by then people were getting used to the sound, and also classical music was no longer a purely high-class pursuit with the rise of the middle class, so percussion came to be fairly standard in orchestras. With the 20th century, percussion has been used as an equal partner in the ensemble to the winds, brass, and strings. Percussion effects are no longer tacky or exceptional, and with our ability to make better instruments, they’re more playable too. Tuning timpani is no longer a royal pain, for example, so you can use timpani all over.
What you still don’t really see in classical music is drum sets. They do get used occasionally, but not generally. Why? Genre. You don’t want your classical music to sound like pop music, right? Because of all that precedent, classical listeners don’t want the drums mucking up their genre. So, if you want, put a drum set in your orchestral piece, but don’t be surprised if it’s only considered “pops”!
Percussionist here. Timpani evolved quite a bit but have been largely standard. Other percussion were, at best, a novelty if not unknown. We see a little bit here and there. You saw hints of it in the [Baroque period](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-pSRs6DLOk) as well in the Classical period by [Mozart](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrFbiw77_90) and [Beethoven](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRCe86HVSJw) (around 22:00 in this clip).
At the time, we mostly saw percussion in the context of Turkish janissary music. A bass drum, tambourine and triangle were standard. Specifically the triangle and tambourine developed more in western music as a relative of the sistrum, or more elaborate versions often called the “jingling johnny”.
It wasn’t until the Romantic period in the mid to late 1800’s that composers like Berlioz really started to push the development of these instruments.
As an aside, classical percussion often gets a rap for seeming “boring” but the technical accuracy, musical flexibility, and consistency required are extremely challenging even if it isn’t immediately obvious to the listener. Auditions for positions in professional orchestras are highly competitive.
Finally, the Baroque piece by Jean-Baptiste Lully I linked to above is one that I absolutely adore and never tire of listening to.
I’m probably too late to this but none of the top comments are actually explaining *why* classical music lacked drums. It’s simple – complex percussion sounds muddy as all hell in a big echoey room, and those are the only types of rooms you would find a large crowd of people who wanted to listen to music in hundreds of years ago. Percussion in classical music has to be used sparingly. A big cymbal crash, a very clean sounding triangle, or perhaps a quick crescendo of timpani is about all you can get away with without stepping all over the other instruments. String and horn instruments, on the other hand, sound great in that environment – their potentially harsh, ‘peaky’ high end is smoothed out by the long, natural reverb tail of the room and they blend together beautifully.
The top comment (/u/MDeneka) mentions that percussion was more associated with military and folk music. These forms of music would usually be played in smaller, tighter sounding rooms (much less echo than a concert hall) or outdoors (generally no echo). In fact, drums sound great outside. This is why they’ve been so heavily used in tribal settings, and why EDM sounds great outside but would sound washy in a big, stone cathedral.
[David Byrne does a great job explaining this in his TED Talk.](https://www.ted.com/talks/david_byrne_how_architecture_helped_music_evolve?language=en)
And then you’ve got Tchaikovsky, who went, “Drums? No, what this piece needs is CANNONS!”
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