Crécelle

What it means

The crécelle is the ratchet: a self-sounding instrument in which a springy wooden tongue leaps over a cogwheel, producing a rapid succession of hard clicking noises. In the usual form of construction, a frame with a tongue is swung around a fixed cogwheel; other forms are turned with a crank. The instrument has no definite pitch — it produces a dense, penetrating noise whose volume and speed can be controlled through the movement.

In the notation

The ratchet is notated in a percussion line on a single line, usually with the desired duration indicated as a sustained note or tremolo. Short entries appear as single notes. Since beginning and end can be controlled precisely, composers often state explicitly how long the rattling is to last.

Musical use

The ratchet comes from the sphere of signal and custom instruments and served, among other things, as a noise signal. It entered art music in the late nineteenth and in the twentieth century as a colour of orchestral percussion, where it is used for coarse, noisy, or grotesquely coloured passages. Its sound cuts through even in a dense texture and is therefore dosed sparingly; even a short entry suffices to stamp a passage. Because it has no pitch, it serves rhythmic or tonal-colour, not harmonic, shaping.

Performance practice

Hold the handle firmly and swing from the wrist, not from the whole arm; in this way the speed can be kept even. You control the volume through the swing speed — for quiet passages a small, calm movement suffices. Begin and end exactly in time and damp the tongue at the end with the free hand so that no afterclatter arises. Before the performance, check that the tongue runs freely and the wood does not jam. With crank models, watch for even turning, because uneven cranking is audible as rhythmic unrest.

Remember that the ratchet is hard to control at quiet dynamics: even a small movement produces several clicks, and a really quiet rattling requires practice. For very quiet passages, try small models or a changed hand position. Watch the ending: a frame that swings on produces unwanted noises, which is why the tongue is caught. Check storage, because wood cracks in dry conditions. In the orchestra, settle the position, since the sound is very directional.