MIchael Rosen Terms Used in Percussion: The Articles
Michael Rosen's Terms Used in Percussion: The Articles stands as an invaluable resource for understanding percussion's role across the musical spectrum. Spanning 560 pages across 95 chapters, this comprehensive volume examines percussion in contexts ranging from solo performances to grand symphonies, and from intimate chamber pieces to full-scale operas. The collection is enriched by more than 50 pages of historical photographs drawn from Rosen's personal archives, offering readers a rare glimpse into percussion's visual history.
Terms Used in Percussion began as a continuing column of articles in 1974 that appeared Percussive Notes magazine, the official publication of the Percussive Arts Society. In 1975, I received a Powers Travel Grant from Oberlin Conservatory to visit cities in Europe to interview percussionists in France, Germany and Holland. My goal was to discover what instruments a percussionist in France might use when confronted with a name such as tarole or Tambourin Provençal. I met with a percussionist in a studio, mentioned the name of an instrument that appeared in a score and asked which instrument they would choose from the instruments in the room. I then took a photo or wrote down in my notes what instrument was chosen.
The Articles, developed into a repository of performance practice, a resource for compositions rather than just a lexicon of terms, the nascence of which began in 1983 when I put the terms I had collected on my Osbourne Computer into a program called dBaseII. This book has terms specific, in most cases, to compositions. Many articles include information about a composer, the history of the composition, anecdotes, performance practices and a smattering of contextual history. Readers can look up a specific percussionist or orchestra to see what they recommend comparing and cross- referencing for specific instrument choices and playing techniques to discover which performance practices are specific to a specific orchestra. I encourage readers to browse the book for information about specific works in addition to searching for definitions of terms.
The Articles could also serve as a guide to a specific composition’s instrumentation and an aid in dividing parts. To make best use of this book in a search for a term, I suggest going first to the Table of Contents which has the compositions and composers listed. In this case, don’t search for the individual words but rather for the composition in which the phrase is found. Some translations and terms are specific to a composition, so it is better to search for the piece rather than the terms.
Most chapters are brief essays on composers, compositions and/or playing techniques. This book greatly expands the information originally published in Percussive Notes. I encourage readers to browse the contents. some chapters are essays about a single composition or a composer. For definitions of specific terms without explanations see Michael Rosen’s Terms Used in Percussion: The DIctionary