The Vibraphone

The era from the 1920s to the 1960s can be described as the vibraphone's early period. The instrument's development was mainly sparked by vaudeville and jazz musicians whose performances let to its popularization in the United States of America.

Numerous influences like Indonesian gamelan, African and Central American marimba or pianistic ragtime led to a myriad of uses and early styles of the vibraphone. At the same time, classical composers in Europe began composing and notating music for the vibraphone when there existed no standard school nor method of its study yet. The focus in my research will lie on the analytical study of the vibraphone styles of performers like Lionel Hampton and Red Norvo and composers like Percy Grainger, Dorius Milhaud, Olivier Messiaen and Alban Berg.