The Turkish Band

by Gustav Fischer (IMMS July 1989 used by permission)
 
In studying the history of military music one often comes across the expression ‘Turkish music’.   What it actually means is the campaign music of the Janissaries.  Sultan Orkran (l326-l359) was the first to employ Janissaries as his personal guards.  The word is derived from two Turkish words: veni (new) ehir (army).  Strictly speaking, “Turkish music” is synonymous with the characteristic sound and rhythm produced by kettle drums, cymbals, tambourine, triangle and the Schellanbaum or “Jingling Johnny”.  The purpose of such clashing noises was not merely to turn their own warrior  wild but, primarily, to strike terror into the hearts of the enemy with the ear-splitting row.  This type of martial music was heard early on in Europe, during the Turkish wars of conquest in the West, which ended at the gates of Vienna in 1529 and1683.   It was also heard in more peaceful circumstances. 

In the History Museum in Vienna, there is an account, dating from about 1665, of the arrival in Vienna of the Turkish Ambassador which describes the Turkish band as:  “The Turkish military band of shawms, small kettle drums, then also four trumpeters (whose trumpets were in the form of trombones, but narrow and short), two of brightly ringing cymbals of silver (in the shape of two dishes, so they were struck one upon the other by which means a great ringing sound was made). The drummers whose drums were draped with red cloth, beat their drums at the front with a stick like a knobbed, crooked root and at the rear with a little stick or rod.”

The prominence of percussion in the Turkish military bands, as we ought to call this basic collection of instruments used in Janissary music, confirms the great significance of rhythm in the culture of the Levant.   To westerners, the Near East is the nearest self-contained culture.  The frequent contact, in peace and in war, brought about a very intensive cultural exchange – above all in music , from which Europe gained the most.  The traces of these contacts are extremely easy to follow because the musical tradition of the Near East is so completely different from that of the West.  This can be demonstrated by small examples, such as the description of a fresco from the middle of the 11th Century on a staircase in the Cathedral of St Sophie in Kiev, in which Byzantine jugglers and musicians are depicted.  On the frontispiece of the 9th Century Golden Psaltery in St Gallen there is a picture of King David playing a stringed instrument and musicians with finger cymbals. There are similar percussion instruments in illustrations from the 9th to 11th Centuries, in which may often be seen a smaller pair of cymbals fastened to the end of a sprung fork.  They were swung from one hand whilst the other was playing another instrument.  The two-handed pair of cymbals came some time later. All of this is evidence of Near Eastern culture, which may be pursued right up to the classical music of medieval Spain.

There can be no doubt that the instruments of the Ottoman were intended to demoralize their enemies, as is described in an entry in a Turkish diary for 18 July 1683 during the Siege of Vienna: “each time after prayers, at sun-down, at night and at dawn, the bands played so that the earth and heaven trembled from the great noise of the drums, oboes, pipes, hand drums and cymbals which were like the roar of cannons and muskets…”.  “On the afternoon of 25 July there took place before the city walls  a clashing of cymbals, little bells and shawms as if they were playing a dance, or were preparing for a grand festival…” .  This was combined with an attack by the besiegers, in response to which and to inspire morale, the defender of the city, Ernst Ruediger von Starhemberg a couple of days later “had the trumpets and kettle drums played right merrily” from the Corinthian Bastion.

There was already in the early Middle Ages a Western institution, the purpose of which was to urge on their own troops at the critical moment.  This was directly comparable with the Turkish band.  There was the bell carriage, also known as the flag carriage, (Italian: Carrocio, German: Glockenwagen or Fandenwagan), a Palladium which was also the army’s symbol of honor.   It consisted of a wagon on which a bell was hung from a frame, pulled by luxuriously harnessed oxen.  This was rung whenever danger threatened or when the whole army had to attend a religious service.  Here the banners were also stored.  They were regarded as the army’s most sacred property to the defense of which armed troops were summoned by the field calls of the trumpeters.  Of the Italian carriages, that of the Milanese was particularly splendid.  In 1138, the Archbishop of Milan, Aribert, described its design and furnishing as “a real showpiece”.

During the retreat of the Turkish Army into the Balkans at the end of the 17th Century, quite a number of instruments from the Janissary bands fell into the hands of the victorious troops.  At the Battle of Petrovaradin in 1697, the Starhemberg Regiment captured  a complete Turkish “banda” as they stood and requisitioned them straight into Imperial Service.  This kind of ‘campaign- music’ appealed to European rulers and generals, so gradually bands were established in the Turkish style from released Turkish musicians who amazed the population everywhere they went.

In this way the Turkish band had found its way by 1699 (1720 according to another source) into the military music of Poland through the Prince Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, Augustus the Strong.  In 1725 it had reached Russia, and Austria in 1741 through Maria-Theresa – as is well known, after the historic march past of the Trenck Pandur Regiment on their way to Silesia – and, at roughly the same time it was introduced into Prussia by their only artillery regiment.  We may safely assume that those ‘bandas’, which were not made up of captured Turkish musicians, did not imitate or seek to imitate real Janissary music.  The existing bands (shawms or oboes, bassoons, horns and later, trumpets) supplemented with the percussion of the Turkish music, were often simply called ‘Turkish bands’.   Around 1800 they were at the height of fashion.   Their strong rhythm provided by the bass drum, side drum, cymbals and triangle appealed to us.  This percussion ensemble was also specified in the original scores of the prescribed performances of Prussian Army marches.  Later the triangle, an instrument without a range of notes, was replaced by the Glockenspiel, or lyra, which provides its own unmistakable range of sound. By the middle of the 19th Century the Schellenbaum (Jingling Johnny) which was also known as ‘Mohamed’s Banner’ had lost its usefulness as a rattling instrument and it became in Germany and Russia alone the traditional insignia of the band.   But it is an indisputable fact, as the author himself can testify, that the rhythmic jingling of the little bells and chimes of a band’s Schellenbaum, whilst playing a parade march at full blast, provides a memorably stirring experience.

The Turkish band, supplemented with the hitherto unknown piccolo, extended into classical music, firstly in the so called ‘Turkish operas’, for example Gluck’s  ‘The Pilgrim from Mecca’ with one drum (1764),  ‘Iphlegenia on Tauris’ with cymbals; triangle and drum (1779), Mozart’s ‘The Flight from the Seraglio’ with the same instruments (1782) and Weber’s ‘Abu Hassan’ (1812).  In Mozart’s time the upright drum was played on both sides by one man using a wooden baton like ‘a knobbed crooked root’ on the right and a bundle of brushwood, the ’switch’, on the left. The latter was really a predecessor of the side drum which was unknown at that time in its present form.  A glance into the orchestra pit at the opera house during a performance of ‘The Flight from the Seraglio’ would confirm that the drum is still played in the same manner today, except that a normal wooden drum stick has replaced the baton end instead of the brushwood, there is a bundle of thin sticks. Cymbals also became thinner and of a smaller diameter.

‘Turkish music’ was not only a way of expressing the oriental flavor which had enjoyed such popularity after the Turkish wars, it was also a means of portraying the warlike and military.  For example in Haydn’s ‘Symphonie militaire of 1794 and Beethoven’s ‘Wellington’s Victory or the Battle of Vittoria’ of 1813 which has an additional side drum and rattle to illustrate the noise of battle.  At the first performances of this work on 8th and 12th December 1813, soon after the Battle of Leipzig, Beethoven himself stood on the rostrum.  The Turkish band of that orchestra was played by three young, and later quite celebrated, musicians; Johann Nepomuk Hummel, the piano virtuoso, Giacomo Meyerbeer, the composer of grand opera, and lgnaz Moacheles, who arranged the piano part of Beethoven’s ‘Fidelio’.

The popularity of the Turkish band was such, that in about 1800, even piano-fortes were equipped with a so-called ‘Janissary feature’ which sought to reproduce the Ottoman bells and cymbals, and, by beating a clapper on the sound board, the sound of the bass drum was imitated.

To end let us take a stroll in Vienna’s Prater. Even today, the ponies in the Hippodrome will only start to trot when the orchestrian’s Turkish band starts to play!

From a translation by Mr. Peter Bull from a booklet called ‘HISTORISCHE ARMEEMARSCHE’.

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