"Weird" Instruments in Classical Music

Started by Grazioso, May 28, 2011, 05:01:56 AM

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Grazioso

Classical music, like most genres, has its own standardized core of accepted and expected instruments, but sometimes something "odd" slips through the cracks: a resurrected instrument from a bygone age, an instrument associated mostly with other Western genres (folk, rock, jazz, etc.), an instrument used mostly by non-Western cultures, obscure oddities, etc. (See also Lethe's thread about electric guitar.)

Any examples? Here are a few:

Bayan: Gubaidulina "Seven Words"
Berimbau: Rosauro "Cadencia Para Berimbau"
Buccina: Respighi's Roman trilogies (though from what I gather, modern instruments are used in its place)
Flexatone: Daugherty Metropolis Symphony
Harmonica: Villa-Lobos concerto for harmonica, Milhaud "Suite Anglaise"
Harpsichord: works by numerous 20th and 21st-century composers (Poulenc, de Falla, Gorecki, Martinu, Carter, Schnittke, Kokkonen, etc.). In fact, it's so "normal" now, that I wonder if it should even be discussed in this context :)
Marimba: La Transfiguration de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ and Saint-François d'Assise
Octobass: supposedly Wagner, Berlioz, Mahler, Strauss, et al. Anyone know which scores?
Saxophone: same situation as the harpsichord: peripheral but not exactly obscure
Shakuhachi: Takemitsu "Autumn", "November Steps"
Sitar: Shankar sitar concerto

There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact. --Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The new erato

Didgeridoo in Peter Sculthorpe's Requiem

snyprrr


not edward

Quote from: snyprrr on May 28, 2011, 06:34:00 AM
Skin flute was used in...
Nam June Paik's Young Penis Symphony.

I have an answer for everything. ;)
"I don't at all mind actively disliking a piece of contemporary music, but in order to feel happy about it I must consciously understand why I dislike it. Otherwise it remains in my mind as unfinished business."
-- Aaron Copland, The Pleasures of Music

Florestan

Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

escher

trautonium: Hindemith "Concertino for Trautonium and Strings"

Archaic Torso of Apollo

Is the ondes martenot "weird" enough for you? Messiaen certainly liked it.

Otherwise, Varese and Hindemith both used police sirens in a couple of works. Varese in fact used a bunch of strange instruments, including something called a "lion's roar".

For his 2nd Symphony, Benjamin Frankel requires chains to be dropped on a wooden box.

And of course, Conlon Nancarrow built his whole career out of the player piano.
formerly VELIMIR (before that, Spitvalve)

"Who knows not strict counterpoint, lives and dies an ignoramus" - CPE Bach

Brian

Quote from: Velimir on May 29, 2011, 09:03:10 AMVarese in fact used a bunch of strange instruments, including something called a "lion's roar".

John Antill's Aussie ballet Corroboree includes a part, in the finale, for a bull-roarer, which makes a pretty mighty droning noise from the back of the orchestra, sounding rather a lot like an angry bull.

There is a Sousa march which calls for a Ford Model T to be started up onstage.

Archaic Torso of Apollo

I think George Antheil's Ballet Mecanique uses airplane propellers. Been a while since I heard it, though.

And then there's our old favorite, the wind machine - beloved of R. Strauss and Vaughan Williams  :)
formerly VELIMIR (before that, Spitvalve)

"Who knows not strict counterpoint, lives and dies an ignoramus" - CPE Bach

jochanaan

Bass oboe: Holst's The Planets, and several other English compositions.

Heckelphone: Strauss' Salome, Elektra and Alpine Symphony, Varèse's Amériques and Arcana, among others.

Vibraphone: Roy Harris' Symphony #3 and Shostakovich's Symphony #14, and probably others that I don't know about. :)

Rototoms: Leonard Bernstein's Mass (which, I believe, uses lots of other "weird" instruments).

And by all rights we should include the "Wagner tubas" in this discussion, since not many composers actually used them and they are only kept "alive" by frequent performances of works by Wagner, Bruckner, Strauss and by Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. :)
Imagination + discipline = creativity

Brian

Quote from: jochanaan on May 29, 2011, 02:41:51 PM
Bass oboe: Holst's The Planets, and several other English compositions.

Bass trumpet: Janacek's Sinfonietta

Quote from: jochanaan on May 29, 2011, 02:41:51 PM
Rototoms: Leonard Bernstein's Mass (which, I believe, uses lots of other "weird" instruments).

That piece also utilizes a chorus line of kazoos!

not edward

There's the Jew's harp in Ives' Holidays Symphony (also in at least one of Kagel's Stuecke die Windrose).
Also the ocarinas and plastic slide whistles in Ligeti's violin concerto.
Ustvolskaya's Composition No 2 and 5th symphony have a plywood cube played with wooden mallets.
Metronomes play a part in quite a few pieces, for example Norgard's 6th symphony.
"I don't at all mind actively disliking a piece of contemporary music, but in order to feel happy about it I must consciously understand why I dislike it. Otherwise it remains in my mind as unfinished business."
-- Aaron Copland, The Pleasures of Music

eyeresist

Quote from: Velimir on May 29, 2011, 09:11:25 AM
And then there's our old favorite, the wind machine - beloved of R. Strauss and Vaughan Williams  :)

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

CRCulver

#13
Arvo Part's Symphony No. 2 features rubber duckies.

Rebecca Saunders uses music boxes.

Olivier Messiaen's "Du canyon aux etoiles" has a wind machine.

Per Nørgård's Symphony No. 5 has the percussionist blow through two dog whistles to create beats.

Archaic Torso of Apollo

Quote from: CRCulver on May 29, 2011, 09:57:48 PM
Olivier Messiaen's "Du canyon aux etoiles" has a wind machine.

That also features something called a "geophone," invented specifically by Messiaen to be used in that piece:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geophone_(percussion_instrument)
formerly VELIMIR (before that, Spitvalve)

"Who knows not strict counterpoint, lives and dies an ignoramus" - CPE Bach

J.Z. Herrenberg

Quote from: jochanaan on May 29, 2011, 02:41:51 PM
Vibraphone: Roy Harris' Symphony #3 and Shostakovich's Symphony #14, and probably others that I don't know about. :)


Havergal Brian was the first to use them in classical music, in his opera The Tigers, the orchestration of which he completed at the end of 1920s. But as the full score was lost for almost 50 years, the fact was only discovered during the 1970s...
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. -- Plato

Luke

Of course, it goes without saying, following on from the above, that Brian's Gothic, with its Bird Scare and Long Drum and Pedal clarinet and Basset Horns, should perhaps be mentioned...

Quote from: jochanaan on May 29, 2011, 02:41:51 PM
Bass oboe: Holst's The Planets, and several other English compositions.

Yes, Tippett uses it in the Triple Concerto, along with a whole gamelan panoply of tuned gongs. Speaking of which - Harrison and Cage, anyone...? With their wonderful collections of tuned brake drums etc, with Harrison's own gamelan pieces... But then Cage leads on to all sorts of things, so maybe that avenue best left unopened here.

Quote from: jochanaan on May 29, 2011, 02:41:51 PM
Vibraphone: Roy Harris' Symphony #3 and Shostakovich's Symphony #14, and probably others that I don't know about. :)

It's quite a common orchestral instrument now, really, I think.

Quote from: jochanaan on May 29, 2011, 02:41:51 PM
Rototoms: Leonard Bernstein's Mass (which, I believe, uses lots of other "weird" instruments).

Another instrument Tippett laid quite a focus on in later years, this.

Quote from: Brian on May 29, 2011, 02:49:23 PM
Bass trumpet: Janacek's Sinfonietta

Quote from: edward on May 29, 2011, 05:14:28 PM
Also the ocarinas and plastic slide whistles in Ligeti's violin concerto.

To link those two together, the use of the ocarina in Janacek's Riklada is the earliest I can think of. Scelsi uses a slide whistle in Anahit, and sistrums and various other weird things which I can't remember in Uaxuctum. Xenakis uses whistles and similar things in Oresteia; Kurtag uses fire alarms and klaxons in Grabstein fur Stephan; there's Gershwin with his tuned car horns in An American in Paris; and of course Varese's sirens go without saying.

Quote from: edward on May 29, 2011, 05:14:28 PM
Metronomes play a part in quite a few pieces, for example Norgard's 6th symphony.

And, again, I think the use of a pair of metronomes to open Ravel's L'heure espagnol is the earliest I am aware of.

George Benjamin's marvellous At First Light has a section in which he seems to have the orchestra competing to make the quietest, most delicate sounds possible. One of them is a newspaper being ripped in ever decreasing dynamic shadings. Another is a table tennis ball dropped in a drinking glass.

Among pieces which use party balloons, Maxwell Davies uses their rubbery squeak as a background to a commercial for condoms in his opera Resurrection.


CRCulver

Quote from: edward on May 29, 2011, 05:14:28 PMMetronomes play a part in quite a few pieces, for example Norgard's 6th symphony.

Norgard's Sixth does not employ a metronome. You may be thinking of Terrains vagues, which shares a Chandos disc with the Symphony No. 6.

Grazioso

So, what, if anything, is the consensus on resorting to these types of unusual (for classical music) instruments? Gimmicky and distracting, publicity stunts, useful additions to the sonic palette, a natural progression towards inclusiveness and experimentation, a way to question or undermine tradition...?
There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact. --Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

J.Z. Herrenberg

Extending the sonic palette, I should say.
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. -- Plato