Drum (architecture)

“ As I heard the deep bass of the old Drummer, rolling in a low, solemn undertone, a sudden shifting of the scene came to me. I was in a great auditorium filled with light, and packed with humanity rising tier on tier and stretching far back till lost in the maze of distances. A grand orchestra, banked before me, with swaying arms and earnest faces, played a wonderful harmony which rolled about me like the sea and whelmed me with its volume till I was almost swept away by the tide, then suddenly down under its sweep I found the low deep roll of the bass drum. ”

“ The cone shape of the inner drum gives it resistance to the dome thrusts, and these thrusts are further fortified by a solid filling of masonry between the smaller cone above and the vault reaching more than halfway from the springing to the crown. The outer drum is a solid wall up to a level but little higher than the apex of the timber roof of the nave, where it forms a stylobate for the encircling Corinthian order. ”

“ Slowly the head of the line advances to the shadow of the wood, touches it and is swallowed. The leaders, the bare flag-staff, the drummer disappear; but still from the shade is heard the muffled rhythm of the drum. Still the column comes out of the mist, still it climbs the hill and passes with its endless articulated burden. At last the rearmost couple disengages itself from the mist, ascends, and is swallowed by the shadow. There remain only the moonlight and the dusty hedgerow. ”

“ Some drums are shallow, some deep, and each is made by the individual player, who tunes it by heating the drum until the metal is soft, and then pounding it until he acquires the exact tone he desires. ”

“ And instantly the roll of the drum deafened the ears of the people, utterly drowning the imperious tones of the selectman, and growing louder and swifter from moment to moment, as the long unused wrists of the drummer recalled their former cunning. ”

“ A drummer close to him is beating very skilfully, from time to time, on his long wooden kettle-drum, and answers quite doughtily the roll of one of our drummers. Another is blowing a wooden trumpet, in which the mouth-piece, or the hole at the upper end, is like that of a flute. ”

“ In the drummer boys’ quarters, drums were used for writing stands and card playing tables, while often a checkerboard would be sketched on the head of the drum and for men buttons would be used, and with plenty of rations we managed to be quite comfortable except when on picket. ”

“ There is no tickling of big drums; when the drum is banged you know it; nor is there measure in the sigh of the oboe, for the music-hall paints not in wash-greens and grays; scarlet, black, white, and electric-blue are its gamut. ”

“ The skill of the drummers and the pieces they perform are not contemptible, when two or even three performers sit down to one drum and play some piece of native drum-music in the Banks' Islands, or when three drums of different size and tone, as I have heard at Saa, are played together with surprising precision and variety. ”

“ 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 p. 97the 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 drum, roughly speaking, is the oldest musical instrument. It is of great interest to us inasmuch as it still holds a place of honor in the modern orchestra. It is the king of the group of percussion instruments whose object it is, not to produce a tone, but an accent.
No tribe of savages has been discovered but what is possessed of a drum of some sort. The most usual form of construction of the primitive drum has been that of a section of tree trunk, hollowed out, and covered with skin at each end. Certain trees, such as the bread-fruit tree or the bamboo, render this peculiarly feasible. ”

“ The drummers beat their instruments slowly and in strict time, accompanied by the clash of the cymbals, the weird, prolonged blasts of the trumpets, and the more agreeable notes of the flutes. But now and then the time is accelerated, the beats of the drum follow one another more and more closely, and the claps of the clashing basins pass into one continuous resonance. The musicians seem to stimulate one another, and there is a great crescendo; there is more than enough noise to deafen one, so it is useless to attempt to speak to one’s neighbour. ”

“ The maker of a drum must climb up the tree from the wood of which he is about to make it, and there, until the drum is finished, he must remain sitting among the [213] branches, or, if these are inconvenient for the purpose, he may erect a scaffold around the trunk of the tree, with a platform on the top of it, and work upon that. Whilst working, he must always keep the upper or tympanic end of his drum facing the wind, the idea of this being that the wind gets into the drum, and makes it musical. ”

“ Every time the drum begins to rattle he flourishes his tail, and when each little ceremony is over he moves on to a fresh place with a jaunty air, as if he were aware that all this drumming and fuss were especially intended for his entertainment. ”

“ There followed an interval of intense silence, and then, from some distance, as it seemed, came the tapping of drums, imitating, most curiously, the sound and accent of the words; "tūm," for instance, being rendered by a large drum of deep, cavernous tone. ”

“ The skin drums throbbed and boomed, a man with a curious tambourinelike instrument, like a thin drum filled with pebbles, added to the din, and the natives pranced around and around, chanting a weird song, stepping high, twisting and turning and moving in intricate figures. ”

“ The drummer beats his drum whimsically—fast and slow alternately, with no rule—just as it pleases his fancy, and the dancer always keeps time with him in all his frenzies and eccentricities, so that his movements are sometimes so slow as to be barely noticeable, and at others so rapid that his arms and legs can no longer be distinguished. ”

“ We will stand firmly opposed to any invasion of our inherent rights to the pursuit of happiness, health and prosperity.
* * * The rôle of the drum is anything but hum-drum. The ear-drum recognizes the sound of a drum whether the instrument is side, snare, brass or kettle. In travel I have seen and heard drums big and little, round, cylindrical, high and low, loud and soft, wild and weird; played by head, hand and foot—played fast and slow in life and death, peace and war—played by savage and by civilized man in the desert or orchestra hall. ”

“ He is a most adept drummer, and his roll is a long one. One that I observed last spring selected a dead limb at the top of an oak tree and there he drummed merrily every morning. He is an adaptable fellow and has been known to drum on tin roofs and lightning rods, thus braving the dangers of civilization for the sake of better music. ”

“ Music is a universal language, and the despised, unmusical drum has a polyglot tongue. All other musical instruments have their speech of sentiment, love and emotion, but the voice of the drum knows the eloquent language of liberty and can get more volunteers for God, home and native land than all the orators. The roll of the drum, like that of the sea, fills the soul’s shore-line and its every bay and gulf. ”

“ Musicians inform us that the drum—exception is made in the case of the snare and the kettle drum—is an instrument in which the pitch is a matter of comparative indifference, its function being to mark the time and emphasize the rhythm. Page 143 There are other elements, it would seem, that must be taken into the account in estimating the value of the drum. Attention may be directed first to its tone-character, the quality of its note which touches the heart in its own peculiar way, moving it to enthusiasm or bringing it within the easy reach of awe, fear, and courage. ”

“ The side drum, so called because it is worn at the side, is struck in the centre by two small wooden sticks with elongated heads or knobs of hard wood, producing a hard rasping sound when the drum is played singly and in close proximity to the hearer; when, however, several drums are played simultaneously or with other instruments the effect is brilliant and exhilarating. ”

“ To the primitive tribe, the drum is a powerful, thrilling musical instrument. So are all forms of drumming to the child. He imitates the whistling, tooting, rattling, banging sounds in his environment, sometimes until he becomes noisily tiresome. ”

“ The drummers danced wildly together, crossing and changing places and beating all the while, keeping on till exhaustion claimed them and then slipping out of the drum straps for others to take their places. ”

“ Then he shakes himself, perceives that the opera is over, and rubs his eyes; and if it happens that the conductor reprimands him for his remissness at the attack, he shrugs his shoulders and replies, “Never mind, the tenor died all the same. A roll of the drum more or less, what does it signify?”
The Big Drum. Of this it is quite unnecessary to speak. It is the instrument of the age; and ministers, deputies, men of science, poets, hairdressers, and dentists have all learned to perform on it to perfection.... The multitude will always answer the summons of its “boom! ”

“ On moonlight nights the drums will be brought out, reed rattles, ferret bells, and anything else that will tinkle, will be tied around the ankles, the men and women will form lines opposite each other, and for hours the dancers will jump, twist, and wriggle to and fro in the most approved fashion to the tap, tap, or boom, boom of the rhythmic drum. ”

“ But when some savage first struck a hollow tree and found that it gave forth a sound peculiar to itself, when he found a hollow log and filled up the open ends, first with wood, and then—possibly getting the idea from his hide-covered shield—stretched skins across the two open ends, then he had completed the first musical instrument known to man, namely, the drum. ”

“ On the right of the old man marches a boy, hardly in his teens, whose drum keeps time to the beat of the other. His face is upturned to the old man, as though he were his grandfather, as if to question perhaps the route or the danger ahead, but still with a look of rapt inspiration. No shade of fear lurks in his calm eyes, while the ‘rub-a-dub’ of his little drum sounds as clear and distinct as the heavier roll of the aged drummer. ”

“ The drum, strange damask drum.
Oh, will it never sound?
I thought to beat the sorrow from my heart,
Wake music in a damask drum; an echo of love
From the voiceless fabric of pride!
[137]
GARDENER.
Longed for as the moon that hides
In the obstinate clouds of a rainy night
Is the sound of the watchman’s drum,
To roll the darkness from my heart.
CHORUS.
I beat the drum. The days pass and the hours.
It was yesterday, and it is to-day.
GARDENER.
But she for whom I wait
CHORUS.
Comes not even in dream. At dawn and dusk
GARDENER.
No drum sounds.
CHORUS.
She has not come. ”

“ During the dance this drum rhythm speeds up to a felt time, and at moments of great stress, as when an avenging ghost swims on with a spear, a third drum, played with sticks, comes in with rapid regular beats, louder and softer. Sometimes when the beats are not so followable, but anyway quicker in succession, I seem to make out that they must be involving themselves in some business of syncopation, or the catching up and outstripping of a slow beat by a quicker one. ”

“ Nowhere, perhaps, is the fineness of the workmanship more apparent than in the joining of the drums composing each column, generally twelve in number, and rising to a height of thirty-four feet. They fit so closely and exactly that they almost look as if they had grown together. In this respect there is a marked difference between the columns which have never been disturbed and those which have been restored by the collection of fallen drums. The smoothing of the flat surfaces of the drum was mainly done in the quarry, the part near the centre being left rough and slightly hollow. ”

“ In Luca della Robbia’s work a single snare-cord is shown instead of four to six catgut lines as in modern drums and this is also true of the Provençal instrument. So that both the characteristics that seemed strange to me in Luca’s tabor survive in Provence.
p. 110It may not be generally known that the French for the snare of a drum is timbre; this is the original meaning of the word, and its familiar use to mean the characteristic tone of a musical sound is later. According to Darmstetter the word ‘timbre’ is own brother to ‘tambour,’ both being derived from a low Latin form of tympanum. ”

“ Another organic difficulty existing in drum machines was the dangerous possibility of the car—or the counterweight, whose cables often wound on the drum—being drawn past the normal top limit and into the upper supporting works. ”

“ One double drum, I noticed, was made from reversed sections of human skulls, and my attention was also attracted by some peculiar headgear worn by the Lamas during their services and ceremonies. On these occasions they not only accompany their chanting and prayers with the beating of drums and clashing of cymbals, but they at the same time make a noise on cane flutes, tinkle hand-bells, and sound a large gong. ”

“ When at the end of the dance the light fails and the inner curtain falls, we are reminded by the roll of the side drum which does duty as entr’acte music that we have to do with a realist, with a composer who is no more inclined than was his precursor Dargomijsky to make concessions; he prefers to preserve illusions, and so long as the drum 335 continues its slow fusillade the audience’s mind is kept fixed upon the doll it has been contemplating. ”