(Fr. chapeau chinois; Ger. Schellenbaum).
A percussion stick in the form of an ornamental standard, generally having at the top a conical pavilion or an ornament shaped like a Chinese hat, surmounted by the Muslim crescent – hence its several names. Bells and jingles and usually two horsetail plumes of different colours are suspended from the various ornaments. The plumes are occasionally red-tipped (emblematic of the battlefield). The instrument which is held vertically is shaken with an up and down or twisting movement.
The Turkish crescent may have originally derived from the tugh, the symbol of rank of the Ottoman military élite. It developed in Europe in the mid-18th century when jingles were added as decoration, perhaps in imitation of another Turkish instrument, the cewhan, a small crescent-shaped stick-rattle with bells which was not associated with military music. It became an important instrument in the Janissary band (see Janissary music) and was adopted by British Army military bands in the late 18th century. From the middle of the 19th century it was discarded by the British, but survives on the Continent in the Oerman lyre-shaped form, Schellenbaum.
The Turkish crescent was primarily an instrument of the military band. Berlioz (in his Grand traité d’instrumentation) wrote that the shaking of its ‘sonorous locks’ added brilliance to marching music. It is included (as pavillon chinois) in his Symphonie funèbre et triomphale. His ‘dream’ ensemble of 467 instrumentalists included four pavillons chinois among the 53 percussion instruments.
BeckEP (‘Janissary Music’; H. Powley)
B. Chenley: ‘Jingling Johnny: a Note on the pavillon chinois’, Berlioz Society Bulletin, no.36 (1961), 4–5
JAMES BLADES/R