Glockenspiel in the context of "Mallet percussion"

A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Excluding zoomusicological instruments and the human voice, the percussion family is believed to include the oldest musical instruments. In spite of being a very common term to designate instruments, and to relate them to their players, the percussionists, percussion is not a systematic classificatory category of instruments, as described by the scientific field of organology. It is shown below that percussion instruments may belong to the organological classes of idiophone, membranophone, aerophone and chordophone.

The percussion section of an orchestra most commonly contains instruments such as the timpani, snare drum, bass drum, tambourine, belonging to the membranophones, and cymbals and triangle, which are idiophones. However, the section can also contain aerophones, such as whistles and sirens, or a blown conch shell. Percussive techniques can even be applied to the human body itself, as in body percussion. On the other hand, keyboard instruments, such as the celesta, are not normally part of the percussion section, but keyboard percussion instruments such as the glockenspiel and xylophone (which do not have piano keyboards) are included.

The celesta (/sɪˈlɛstə/) or celeste (/sɪˈlɛst/), also called a bell-piano, is a struck idiophone operated by a keyboard. It looks similar to an upright piano (four- or five-octave), albeit with smaller keys and a much smaller cabinet, or a large wooden music box (three-octave). The keys connect to hammers that strike a graduated set of metal (usually steel) plates or bars suspended over wooden resonators. Four- or five-octave models usually have a damper pedal that sustains or damps the sound. The three-octave instruments do not have a pedal because of their small "table-top" design. One of the best-known works that uses the celesta is Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" from The Nutcracker.

The sound of the celesta is similar to that of the glockenspiel, but with a much softer and more subtle timbre. This quality gave the instrument its name, celeste, meaning "heavenly" in French. The celesta is often used to enhance a melody line played by another instrument or section. Its musical parts are often the duplicate of a theme played on flute, harp or piano; sometimes even a real solo part. It is also used in chamber music, but there are very few concertos written for it. The delicate, bell-like sound is not loud enough to be used in full ensemble sections.

A transposing instrument is a musical instrument for which music notation is not written at concert pitch (concert pitch is the pitch on a non-transposing instrument such as the piano). For example, playing a written middle C on a transposing instrument produces a pitch other than middle C; that sounding pitch identifies the interval of transposition when describing the instrument. Playing a written C on clarinet or soprano saxophone produces a concert B♭ (i.e. B♭ at concert pitch), so these are referred to as B♭ instruments. Providing transposed music for these instruments is a convention of musical notation. The instruments do not transpose the music; rather, their music is written at a transposed pitch. Where chords are indicated for improvisation they are also written in the appropriate transposed form.

For some instruments, a written C sounds as a C but is in a different octave; these instruments are said to transpose "at the octave". Pitches on the double bass sound an octave lower than written, while those on the piccolo and celesta sound an octave higher, and those on the glockenspiel sound two octaves higher.

A pitched percussion instrument (also known as a melodic or tuned percussion instrument) is a percussion instrument used to produce musical notes of one or more pitches, as opposed to an unpitched percussion instrument which is used to produce sounds of indefinite pitch.

Pitching of percussion instruments is achieved through a variety of means.

The keyboard glockenspiel (French: jeu de timbre) or organ glockenspiel is an instrument consisting of a glockenspiel operated by a piano keyboard. It was first used by George Frideric Handel in the oratorio Saul (1739). It was also used in the 1739 revivals of his Il Trionfo del Tempo and Acis and Galatea, and the next year in L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato. Half a century later, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart employed a strumento d'acciaio in The Magic Flute (1791) to represent Papageno's magic bells. It is now considered proven that Mozart meant a keyboard glockenspiel.

From the 19th century onwards, the keyboard glockenspiel fell into the background due to the introduction of the celesta in 1886, which, due to its larger range and more modern construction, could also play more difficult glockenspiel parts.[9] In contrast to the very soft sound of the celesta (produced by the felt hammers of the playing mechanism), the historical keyboard glockenspiel had a very clear, metallic sound. Its sound plates were struck with steel or hard plastic clappers. It had no sound-enhancing soundboard and usually had a range of 2 to 2.5 octaves. There are also a smaller number of historical instruments with a range of 3 1/3 octaves (C5–E8).