Xylophone

A xylophone is a set of bars tuned by being cut to different lengths, made, as the name implies, from wood or a substitute. The xylophone player strikes the bars with a mallet or mallets. The term refers both to a Western instrument and to a general instrument type, for this principle of instrument construction is known around the globe; in various musical traditions of Africa and southeast Asia, groups of xylophones have central structural significance. The Western xylophone dates to the sixteenth century, but it was the Romantic era of classical music that standardized its construction and began to exploit its effects. A striking early use of the instrument comes in the Danse macabre (Macabre Dance) of Camille Saint-Saëns, where it evokes the rattling bones of a skeleton. The instrument was part of the large orchestra that flourished at the nineteenth century's end, and thanks to its ability to produce melodic percussion and its affinity with non-Western xylophones such as the marimba, found its way into the popular music of the twentieth century. It is most often used in the jazz and rock genres.

Percussion Instruments