Cowbell envy

Percussion is my secret dream gig. It probably stems from a fixation with Animal, the drummer on the Muppet Show. Now that was one hip puppet. My favorite pieces are ones where I get to hit things, like gongs, the stage, my viola….as recently as last night I performed a Piazzolla Tango where I got to loudly rap out complicated rhythms on the scroll (the curly thingy at the end) with my be-ringed left hand- while turning the page with my right. Anger management AND complex music, a girl’s gotta multitask.

This morning at the rehearsal for Mahler’s Symphony No.6, the percussion section was as usual surrounded by a bevy of cool things to hit. There’s a big hammer. And by big, I mean 38 pounds. The hammer is to be used to hit a wooden box that the stagehands have especially constructed to withstand the blows from a 38 lb. hammer. It’s reinforced. Mahler described the hammer blows in the final movement as "three hammer-blows of fate, the last of which fells [the hero] as a tree is felled." As Matt, who is one of our percussionists, aptly said, “It’s a friggin’ loud hammer blow.” There are big bells. And then there are cowbells.

The issue this morning was that of cowbells. Mahler uses the cowbell- Herdenglocken- “Herden”=herd’ “Glocken”-bells-in his symphonies quite often. He used them when he wanted the music to sound like, well, a bunch of cows moving around. The composer described this section as "the last greeting from earth to penetrate the remote solitude of the mountain peaks." Of course, we may not get quite so esoteric here in Houston at rodeo time. Hearing cowbells? Look for the cows. And watch where you step.

I received a cowbell tutorial from Matt. The best musical cowbells- Herdenglocken- are made by percussion companies in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Lands of the Mahler cows. They are more rounded, usually of one piece of metal, and have more ring to them than cowbells that are used in Latin music. Latin music cowbells are like box cheese graters without holes. Herdenglocken usually don’t have clappers in them, they’re struck with mallets; though obviously a real cowbell worn by an actual cow would have one. I tried to get Matt to admit that SOMEWHERE in a feed store in Texas there had to be a cowbell that would do quite a good imitation of a cowbell, but no luck. It was like some Platonic nightmare…an object that is wholly a definition of itself but yet cannot be a representation of itself…my old philosophy teacher would have had fits.

It didn’t seem as if the irony was lost on Maestro Graf, either, who was trying for the second time to get the cowbells to sound like cowbells. Matt tried to reassure the maestro that the situation was under control. “We’ll have different cowbells tomorrow, maestro. They are being flown in.”

The maestro didn’t miss a beat. “And will the cows be attached to them?”