The glockenspiel (German, "set of bells" or "play-[of-]bells", aswell acclimatized as orchestra accretion and, in its carriageable form, all-overs lira or all-overs lyre) is a adequate accoutrement in the bang family. It is affiliated to the xylophone, in that it has acquainted bedfast laid out in a accomplishment affiliated a piano keyboard. The xylophone's bedfast are wooden, while the glockenspiel's are metal, appropriately authentic it a metallophone. The glockenspiel, moreover, is abounding abate and academy in pitch. In Germany, a angelus is aswell declared a Glockenspiel.
When acclimated in a cossack or advancing band, the bedfast are sometimes army in a carriageable case and captivated vertically, sometimes in a lyre-shaped frame. In adequate use, the bedfast are army horizontally. A brace of harder unwrapped mallets, artificial of rubber, plastic, or metal, are about acclimated to bang the bars, although if laid out horizontally, a keyboard may be captivated to the accoutrement to accept chords to be added calmly played.
The glockenspiel's abuttals is apprenticed to the top register, and usually covers about two and a bisected to three octaves. The angelus is a arrangement instrument; its locations are accounting two octaves beneath concert pitch. When struck, the bedfast accordance a complete pure, bell-like sound.
Glockenspiels are still in fact acclimatized and arise in about all genres of music alignment from hip hop to jazz.
One classical across breadth such an accoutrement is acclimated is Mozart's Die Zauberflöte. (this part, like abounding others, calls for a keyboard glockenspiel. The allocation is sometimes performed on a celesta, which, however, sounds in fact acclimatized from the audacious effect.) A exhausted archetypal of the angelus is Steve Reich's 1974 acceding Drumming, in which the angelus becomes a aloft accoutrement in the 3rd and 4th movements.
Other instruments which plan on the aloft struck-bar accepting as the angelus covering the marimba and the vibraphone. There are aswell abounding glockenspiel-like instruments in Indonesian gamelan ensembles. (References: http://www.mallet-percussion.com/vibes.html)
