The Cambridge Companion to Percussion

by Russell Hartenberger (Editor)

Percussion music is both the oldest and most recent of musical genres and exists in diverse forms throughout the world. This Companion explores percussion and rhythm from the perspectives of performers, composers, conductors, instrument builders, scholars, and cognitive scientists. Topics covered include percussion in symphony orchestras from the nineteenth century to today and the development of percussion instruments in chapters on the marimba revolution, the percussion industry, drum machines, and the effect of acoustics. Chapters also investigate drum set playing and the influences of world music on Western percussion, and outline the roles of percussionists as composers, conductors, soloists, chamber musicians, and theatrical performers. Developments in scientific research are explored in chapters on the perception of sound and the evolution of musical rhythm. This book will be a valuable resource for students, percussionists, and all those who want a deeper understanding of percussion music and rhythm.

Genres: Music

326 pages, Paperback

Published March 10, 2016

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book collects twenty-one original scholarly articles about percussion across a wide swath of fields, including orchestral music, theater, research, and composition. There’s something interesting to be found in all of them, but some were too drily academic for me, and Collin Currie’s pretentious and ego-dripping article on solo percussion completely put me off. What this book gets right is capturing how multifaceted the percussion world is, and though it’s beyond the scope of any one collection, this one features a broad assortment of topics that most percussionists (or the percussion-curious) would find useful to read about. What’s clear is that it’s still a dynamic and evolving field that will be here – and has been here – forever.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is yet another in the excellent Cambridge Companion series. I especially enjoyed this volume because I love percussion music and percussion instruments yet do not have a lot of in-depth knowledge about them. The various chapters cover a wide range of percussion topics involving classical, jazz, popular, and world music. I especially enjoyed the chapters on drum set playing in jazz and popular music, and the examinations of the percussion instrument industry and the development and evolving use of the drum machine. The final chapter on the evolutionary origins and purposes of human's rhythmic sense was fascinating and I hope to find more material on this topic.