Concussion idiophones consisting of two or more objects in the form of sticks, plaques or vessels of wood, bone, ivory, nutshells, marine shells, etc. (For details of the Hornbostel-Sachs classification see Idiophone.) They may be hinged together at one end, or two may be hinged to a central piece. Specimens from prehistoric times onwards differ little from those still used by certain tribal groups (fig.1). Among the few instruments of the Australian aborigines are clappers in the form of clapsticks and boomerangs. This suggests the early use of weapons and missiles as clappers and possibly (with the rattle) as the first substitute for such pre-instrumental music as stamping, hand-clapping and body slapping.
Prehistoric rock drawings of dancing figures and pottery of the 4th millennium in Egypt may depict clappers with curved blades held in one hand. Actual instruments, decorated with animal heads or bearded human heads, survive from Dynasty I (c3100–2890 bce). In Mesopotamia clappers are attested slightly later. Inlaid work of the Mesilim period (c2700–2600 bce) features clappers held in one hand or with one component of the instrument in each hand. A contemporary seal from Ur shows a dancer accompanied by the lyre, while attendants clash curved sticks. Concussion sticks are represented in Egyptian tomb scenes of the Old Kingdom (c2686–2181 bce), where they accompany dance groups; the sticks are held in each hand and clapped together, as was usually the case in Egypt. Clappers were also employed to speed agricultural work. In the Old Kingdom tomb of Nefer, for instance, grapes are trod to the rhythm provided by clappers; in the mastaba of Neferirtenef harvesters work to a similar accompaniment. Clappers appear in religious scenes: priests sometimes played them at a funeral; and they featured prominently in dances performed to the honour of the cow-goddess Hathor, who was associated with music and fertility. There are numerous examples of clappers in museums (see Sachs; Hickmann; Anderson; Ziegler). Egyptian examples are usually of bone (ivory) or wood and are either straight or curved. There are exquisitely carved specimens in the shape of the human hand and forearm (fig.2), and frequently the head of Hathor is featured. Other ancient Egyptian forms include hollow wooden clappers resembling Spanish castanets and small cymbals supported on a long forked handle, both from the Roman period.
Ancient Greek clappers or krotala (Lat. Crotala) were chiefly of wood and made in various forms. On a Greek vase dated c500 bce Eros is seen playing boot-shaped krotala which are joined at one end. Similar instruments, in most cases played by women, are seen on other Greek vases of the same period. The Greek kroupalon (or kroupezion; Lat. scabellum), a clapper-like instrument consisting of a loose wooden sole attached like a sandal to the player's foot, served as a timekeeper in ancient Greece. It is seen in an elaborate form on a marble statue of the Hellenistic period (3rd century bce) worn by a satyr who is also playing cymbals (for illustration see Scabellum).
In East Asia clappers have played, and continue to play, an important part in religious and secular life, e.g. those used by Chinese temple singers in the form of a fan comprising a number of flat bamboo strips joined at one end, and those consisting of two pieces of wood hinged at the base. In the Chinese classical and court orchestra clappers were used by the conductor as a time indicator. Other Chinese clappers include the paiban (commonly three pieces of wood hinged as castanets, see fig.3), metal clappers resembling double castanets and concussion sticks of many descriptions.
In Japan clappers are prominent instruments in court and theatre music. The shakubyōshi, two small wooden clappers, are used similarly to the Chinese types. Clappers resembling castanets are found in the yotsudake, four short pieces of bamboo. Hyōshigi, made of two rectangular blocks of wood, are used in kabuki and bunraku theatre to announce the start of the play, and thereafter to accompany and to emphasize confusion in the stage action. The hyōboshi and similar concussion sticks are used by fire watchers, itinerant jugglers, street entertainers and street vendors. Street vendors in particular use individual and easily recognizable rhythms.
Various forms of clappers, some with distinct features, are found in India. These include castanets of wood with bells, ciplā, and metal clappers, cimtā (see Kartāl).
In Europe there is firm evidence of the use of clappers from the 9th century ad. A V-shaped clapper with small discs or tong-cymbals secured to the open ends of the strips appears in the 9th-century Bible of Charles the Bald. Clappers without a jingling contrivance are illustrated in an Anglo-Saxon psalter dated 1015, and in 11th- and 13th-century Spanish manuscripts. The terms ‘tablettes’ and ‘cliquettes’ in medieval (and later) French sources generally refer to clappers.
Clappers were used as instruments of music in the Baroque era. Mersenne (Harmonie universelle, 1636–7) spoke approvingly of ‘the little bones and small wooden sticks … which one can manipulate in such a fast and agile way’. Clappers in the form of marrow bones and cleavers were integral instruments in the music of the butchers of England and Scotland, and pairs of Bones, along with clappers formed from household implements such as pairs of tablespoons (‘spoons’), are still common in the British Isles. (In Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Bottom remarks: ‘I have a reasonable good ear in music: let us have the tongs and the bones’.) Clappers of this description were associated with burlesque music, and the simple music of children and the poorer classes. In addition to their use as musical instruments, clappers were used as bird scarers, by nightwatchmen and by lepers who were obliged to sound them as a warning of their approach. (The biblical leper Lazarus has frequently been depicted shaking a pair of small clappers.)
A form of clapsticks is seen in the staves of the English Morris men, and a relic of the marrow bones and cleavers in the ‘nigger bones’ (knicky-knackers) used in the original American minstrel bands.
An interesting clapper-like instrument of Neapolitan origin is the triccaballacca (from tricca-vallacca), consisting in most cases of three percussive mallets inserted in a wooden frame. The centre mallet is fixed and the outer ones are free. The free mallets are struck against the central piece in a variety of rhythms in folk music.
In musical literature a clapper is used as an effect instrument or dynamically. In Elektra, Strauss wrote for Holzklapper to signify the crack of a whip (in which context the term ‘claquettes’ is also used); Mahler scored for Holzklapper in his Sixth Symphony (see also Whip). Concussion sticks in the form of Claves are frequently requested by composers.
BladesPI
F. Bianchina: De tribus generibus instrumentorum (Rome, 1742)
C. Sachs: Die Musikinstrumente des alten Ägyptens (Berlin, 1921)
H. Hickmann: Catalogue général des antiquités égyptiennes du Musée du Caire (Cairo, 1949)
S. Marcuse: A Survey of Musical Instruments (Newton Abbot, 1975)
R.D. Anderson: Catalogue of Egyptian Antiquities in the British Museum, iii (London, 1976)
Musical Instruments of the World, ed. Diagram Group (London and New York, 1976)
C. Ziegler: Musée de Louvre … Catalogue des instruments de musique égyptiens (Paris, 1979)
JAMES BLADES, ROBERT ANDERSON