Crotales

Crotales or antique cymbals are tuned percussion instruments. They are metal discs, often made of brass, which are struck with hard mallets and produce a sound similar to that of a glockenspiel but with greater carrying power and purity. They were used by Claude Debussy in Prelude à l'après-midi d'un Faune and elsewhere.

Modern crotales are arranged chromatically and have a range of up to two octaves. They are typically available in two one-octave sets: C6–C7 and C7–C8. Crotales are treated as transposing instruments; music for crotales is written two octaves lower than the sounding pitch.

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