Tabors and Nakers.
In my essay on war music [94b] I wrote of the band of a French regiment at the beginning of the war: “When the buglers were out of breath, the drums thundered on with magnificent fire, until once more the simple and spirited fanfare came in with its brave out-of-doors flavour—a romantic dash of the hunting-song, and yet with something of the seriousness of battle. . . . As I watched these men, so soon to fight for their country, I was reminded of that white-faced boy pictured by Stevenson, striding over his dead comrades, the roll of his drum
leading the living to victory or death.” I have ventured to quote the above passage in illustration of Mr Galpin’s striking remark that the drum has probably entered more largely than any other instrument into the destinies of the human race.
The historian of musical instruments in the far north has an easy task, since it appears that the Eskimoes confine themselves to the drum, which they sound on all possible occasions, from prosperous huntings to the death of a comrade.
The instruments of the class here dealt with are divided into three types:—
(i.) The timbrel or tambourine, which is characterised by having only one membrane stretched on a shallow wooden frame.
(ii.) The drum with two membranes, one at each end of a barrel-shaped frame.
(iii.) The naker or kettle-drum, with a single membrane stretched over the opening of a hemispherical frame. The tambourine is an extremely ancient instrument since it was known in Assyria and Egypt as well as in Greece and Rome, and it is especially interesting to learn that the Roman tambourine had the metal discs which make so exciting a jingle in the modern instrument. The mediæval tambourine also had what, in the case of the drum, is called the snare, which is a cord tightly stretched across the membrane, and gives a certain sting to instruments of this class, but now only exists in the drum proper.
Drum.
An ancient Egyptian drum was discovered at Thebes. It was a true drum having a membrane at each end of the hollow cylinder which made the frame, and, what is more remarkable, it had the braces or system of cords by which we still tighten the drum-membranes.
The drum “suspended at the side of the player and beaten on one head only” became, with the accompaniment of the fife, the earliest type of military music. [96a] Mr Galpin concludes [96b] by quoting what Virdung (1511) had to say of drums: “I verily believe that the devil must have had the devising and making of them, for there is no pleasure nor anything good about them. If the noise of the drum-stick be music, then the coopers who make barrels must be musicians.”
Kettle-drums. [96c]
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.