xylophone

Musical percussion instrument of African and Indonesian origin. It consists of a series of hardwood bars of varying lengths, each with its own distinct pitch, arranged in a similar way to a piano. Beneath each bar is a metal tube resonator that helps to enrich and sustain the sound. It is usually played with hard beaters to produce a hard, bright, penetrating sound, or soft beaters for a mellower sound. It first appeared as an orchestral instrument in Charles Camille Saint-Saëns's Danse macabre in 1874, illustrating dancing skeletons, and can also be heard in ‘Fossils’ from The Carnival of Animals (1887).