Getting started with the collection:
The Night Watch’s Drummer
The Night Watch’s Drummer
10 min. reading time - Rembrandt’s drum explained
23-07-2021 - Giovanni Paolo Di Stefano
Military drummers gave signals during the battle on sea and soil, provided a marching pace to the troops, and played for their entertainment in the military camp. In addition to their military use, drums also had an important role in a number of civilian contexts and events such as processions, parades, festive occasions, public announcements, executions, etc. In the past centuries, the beating of drums was part of the soundscape of most towns and villages.
The drummer's role in the composition
Among the people pictured in the Night Watch, the drummer is certainly one of the first to catch the viewer’s eye. He stands apart, on the right corner of the canvas, one step behind captain Frans Banninck Cocq and lieutenant Willem van Ruytenburch. The shell of the drum shines against the dark attire of the men standing on the back. The drummer plays an important role in the composition and adds movement to the picture: he turns captain Cocq’s gesture into sound and gives the signal to the militia so they can start marching.
Jacob Jorisz
The identity of the Night Watch’s drummer has been revealed by archival documents. It seems that his name was Jacob Jorisz, a citizen of Amsterdam born in 1591 (therefore, he was 51 years old when Rembrandt portraited him).1
He was active as a drummer at least until 1646, when he earned forty guilders a year for his service, certainly not enough to afford a portrait by Rembrandt (the other eighteen militiamen in the painting paid about a hundred guilders to be included in the Night Watch). 2 This is because drummers often belong to the poorest layers of the working class (carpenters, cobblers, day workers, etc.), and usually depended upon other occupations for a living, besides playing the drum. 3 They were among the lowest-rank, non-professional musicians and usually, they did not have any musical education and most of them were even illiterate.
Despite the fact that the drummer did not pay to have his portrait and that he was not an official member of captain Banninck Cocq’s militia, Rembrandt reserved him a prominent place in the picture because of his dramaturgical function in the scene.
Side drums
Military drums, such as the one depicted in the Night Watch, are called side drums, because they are hanging on the player’s side. The body of the instrument consists of a wooden cylindrical shell, each end of which is covered with a membrane of calfskin, normally referred to as the head. Each head is fixed to a wooden hoop, held against the edge of the shell by a counter hoop. Ropes, which pass through holes drilled in the counter hoops, allow to adjust the tension of the heads by moving leather buffs.
The calfskin used for the heads is hygroscopic, and it therefore needs frequent adjustments to correct its tension in order to get a good tone. As the upper head (known as batter head) is struck, it starts to vibrate and sets the air inside the drum in motion. The vibration is then transmitted to the lower head, also known as snare-head because of the snare (a strand of gut) stretched against it. As soon as the lower head starts to vibrate, the snare rattles against it and produces a buzz, distinctive of this type of drums. The snare on the lower head is clearly visible in Rembrandt’s painting, which also depicts the elaborate knot to adjust its tension, a very interesting evidence of a little-known practise. 4
Wooden-drum making
The shell is made by bending a sheet of wood – generally oak or chestnut – around a cylindrical mould. In 17th-century drums of this size, the two edges of the wooden sheet usually overlapped for about 15-20 cm and were fixed with brass ornamental nails. These could form a decorative pattern, as it is clearly visible in the drum portrayed by Rembrandt.
The ornamental nails were also fixed around the vent hole, a small hole about 1 cm in diameter placed halfway from head-to-head. 5 The vent hole improves the inner resonance of the drum by allowing the compressed air in the shell to escape while the instrument is being played. To this end, the vent hole must always be kept on the side of the drum, so as not to be covered by the player’s body.
Drumsticks
The side drum is played with two sticks of dense hardwood. 6 These elements are also accurately depicted in The Night Watch. Rembrandt not only portrayed the correct grip of the drumsticks (a pentimento shows that he adjusted their inclination from a vertical to a slanted position to have a more realistic gesture), but he also illustrates them in detail. A closer look at the high resolution photo of The Night Watch reveals that he even painted the three thin lines engraved onto the upper end of the sticks to delimit their handle (only the left one is visible in the painting), a feature also found in some early drumsticks.
Significant iconographical representation
Because of all these details the Night Watch represents one of the most significant iconographical representations for the history of the drum in the 17th-century.
For further information on the Rijksmuseum’s collection of drums and the role of music in civilian and military parades, visit the exhibition Music Parade, on view until 14 December 2021 in the Special Collections.
Johan H. Giskes, “Iedereen werd opgetrommeld,” in Maandblad Amstelodamum, Vol. 67 (1980), pp. 54–61: 61.
Jorisz’s name is not listed on the cartouche with the names of the eighteen militiamen who paid for the painting. Sebastien A. C. Dudok van Heel, “Frans Banninck Cocq’s Troop in Rembrandt’s ‘Night Watch’: The Identification of the Guardsmen,” The Rijksmuseum Bulletin, 2009, Vol. 57, No. 1 (2009), pp. 42–87: 74. In 1758 Jan van Dyk wrongly stated that the name “Jan van Kampoort, Tamboer” was mentioned in the shield. Jan van Dijyk, Kunst en historiekundige beschryving en aanmerkingen over alle de schilderyen op het stadhuis te Amsterdam Amsterdam (1758), p. 59. Interestingly, Van Dijyk’s transcription of the list on the shield includes only 16 names, instead of 18. Apart from some minor differences in the transcription, the first 14 correspond to the ones on the shield. The last two names (Claes van Cruysbergen and Paulus Schoonhoven) are missing. It is likely that Van Dijyk misread the last two, poorly legible lines on the shield and interpreted them as “Jan van Kampoort, Tamboer” instead of “Claes van Cruysbergen / Paulus Schoonhoven”. See Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann, Rembrandt: Tthe Nightwatch, Princeton (1982), p. 32.
Giskes, “Iedereen werd opgetrommeld,” p. 58; see also Christopher Marsh, “The Pride of Noise: Drums and their Repercussions in Early Modern England,” Early Music, Vol. 39, No. 2 (May 2011), pp. 203–216: 210.
Jeremy Montagu, “The Tabor, its Origin and Use,” The Galpin Society Journal, Vol. 63 (May 2010), pp. 210–211. Another accurate depiction of a snare drum is in the Banquet at the Crossbowmen’s Guild in Celebration of the Treaty of Münster painted in 1648 by Bartholomeus van der Helst (Rijksmuseum, inv. SK-C-2). Here the drum’s snare even holds a piece of paper bearing the words of a poem in praise of peace.
See, for example, the side drum inv. NG-NM-3126-1 in the Rijksmuseum’s collection.
James Blades, “Percussion Instruments of the Middle Ages and Renaissance: Their History in Literature and Painting,” Early Music, Vol. 1, No. 1 (January 1973), pp. 11–18: 13.
About the author
Giovanni Paolo Di Stefano is the curator of musical instruments at the Rijksmuseum, made possible by Stichting Kramer Lems/Rijksmuseum Fonds.
Citation
To cite this article please use the following citation: Di Stefano, Giovanni Paolo. The Night Watch’s Drummer. Published 23/06/2021, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Stories: Operation Night Watcht, [URL], [last visited: MM/DD/YY].
