Description
Rute for Hire
The Rute has been developed as a specialised beater rather than an instrument itself. In orchestral music, rute first appeared in the music of Mozart, in his opera Die Entfhrung aus dem Serail, K. 384 (1782).The rute were played by the bass drum player, with a mallet striking the bass drum's head on downbeats and rute being struck on the shell of the drum on offbeats. A typical pattern in this style would generally go, in 4/4 time, boom-tap-tap-tap boom-tap-tap-tap, the taps representing strikes of the rute on the drum shell. Mozart's contemporaries and immediate successors used the rute in a similar fashion for military effect. Mahler's use of the rute broke completely with traditional military writing for the instrument, focusing more on its colouristic possibilities than on the rhythmic role. This application was continued by Edgard Varese in his wildly colouristic use of percussion.
