The Hammer
The Hammer

Summary/Abstract: The fourth movement of Mahler’s Sixth Symphony refers twice to a percussion instrument he calls the hammer. Neither orchestration textbooks nor writings on instrumentation mention such an instrument, but Mahler gives his own description at rehearsal number 129 (bar 336) where the first hammer-blow occurs: “short, mighty but dull in resonance, of a non-metallic character, like the stroke of an axe.”2 Two other instruments in the percussion section are also played, the timpani and the bass drum, but at ff, while the dynamic marking for the hammer is fff.

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