Anyone who has seen the band of the Life Guards must have admired (as I
do) the splendid personage who plays the kettle-drums. These are not of
the ordinary drum-form, being hemispherical instead of cylindrical, and
having but a single membrane. They have a right to be called musical
instruments since their pitch is alterable: {96d} I have often admired
the drummer in an orchestra tuning his instrument at a change of key.
One sees him leaning over his children like an anxious mother until he
gets his large babies into the proper temper.
The earliest record of kettle-drums in this country is in the list of
Edward I.'s musicians, among whom was Janino le Nakerer. Henry VIII. is
said to have sent to Vienna for kettle-drums {97} that could be played on
horseback in the Hungarian manner. In England, Handel was the first to
use the kettle-drum in the concert-room, and he used to borrow from the
Tower the drums taken from the French at the battle of Malplaquet in
1709.
Cymbals and Chimes.
The cymbals are of a great antiquity, being depicted on ancient Assyrian
monuments, and "in the British Museum may be seen a pair of bronze
cymbals which once did duty for the sacred rites of Egyptian deities."
They are figured in English MSS. of the thirteenth century, and Mr Galpin
gives a figure of a cymbal-player (as shown in a fourteenth century MS.)
vigorously clashing his instrument. There was also an apparatus known as
a jingling johnny, figured by Galpin at p. 258. It was a pole bearing a
number of bells, hence the name which it doubtless deserved. The
crescents with which it is decorated are an inheritance from its forbears
of the Janizary bands.
Mr Galpin ends his book with a very interesting chapter on the _Consort_,
_i.e._ Concert, which, however, does not lend itself to that abbreviation
to which the rest of the book has been mercilessly subjected.