The Percussion Music of Donald Martino
Webb, Glenn · Digital Scholarship - UNLV (University of Nevada Reno) · 2020
Donald Martino (1931-2005) made important contributions to the percussion repertoire with his chamber music and solo percussion pieces spanning from the 1950s to his last compositions written just before his death in 2005. Many of his chamber music pieces include percussion, and are some of the most significant contributions to the contemporary chamber medium of the last half of the twentieth century. The compositions often include performance techniques that require additional instruction, or demonstration. Some of his chamber works such as Notturno and From the Other Side include several pages of notes, explanations, and instructions detailing notational devices such as the variety of symbols, articulation and tempo markings, and extended techniques found in Martino's works. Martino's music is very deliberately influenced by jazz, the music of Bela Bartók, and twelve-tone or serial music. These influences also reflect different phases of Martino's development as a composer. This document examines percussion works representing each of Martino's primary influences, and will discuss relevance to percussion pedagogy and performance.