Concerto for Skins

"Oompah! Oom-pah!" muttered the tympanist as he lashed about in a semicircle, flailing out a solo on his five kettledrums. Then he took a cue from Conductor Howard Mitchell, launched a new flight that moved him to rumble out a profound "Ye-e-a-ah!" For all its appearance of a tribal dance the occasion was a regular concert of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington. The piece, entitled Concerto for Five Kettledrums and Orchestra, was an answer to a tympanist's dream: being liberated from his exile at the rear of the orchestra and placed out front as soloist.

The concerto is the handiwork of Philadelphia-born Composer Robert Parris, 33. who got the idea from his old pal and fellow student (at the Juilliard School of Music), Fred Begun, 29, currently the regular tympanist for the National Symphony. "I suggested five drums jestingly," says Begun (four drums is the usual orchestral maximum). Composer Parris. who has turned out a sizable quantity of chamber music, took the jest in earnest, sat down to write a piece which would test the "untapped melodic resources" of the drums. The technical problems, he discovered, were sizable. Examples: how to pass rapidly from one drum, fortissimo, to another, without the resonance of the first canceling out the pitch of the second (part of the solution was to use a medium-padded drumstick); how to allow the tympanist enough time between solo passages for retuning (the hot concert-hall lights tend to raise drum pitch, while the audience's body moisture in the air lowers it).

As performed last week, the 15-minute concerto (built around a simple theme from the old hymn He Leadeth Me!) proved to be an engaging and often witty piece, full of surprising melodic invention. It had a finely calculated balance of sound throughout, was notable for a mellow duet of drums and cellos in the second movement, and a satirical statement of the theme by four drums and orchestra in the third movement. Because Composer Parris used comparatively little bass, the music in certain spots gave the impression of a billowing cloud of strings floating aimlessly over the deep thunder of the drums. The crowd was so fascinated by Tympanist Begun's tortured gyrations that they had some difficulty tuning their ears to the music, nevertheless saluted the performance with a thumping ovation. Said Begun: "This could send me to an osteopath."

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