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Anvil.
German for anvil, printed on its own percussion line. Strokes are written as ordinary notes on a single line; where several anvils of different sizes are wanted, as in Wagner’s Das Rheingold, the parts may show approximate pitches or separate lines for each.
A hard, ringing clang of struck steel that no other percussion instrument quite matches. Wagner’s eighteen anvils hammering in the Nibelungs’ forge in Das Rheingold, and Verdi’s Anvil Chorus in Il trovatore, fixed its meaning: smithing, labour, metal. Genuine anvils are heavy and scarce, so orchestras often substitute a steel bar or a brake drum; describe the size and brightness you want and expect it to vary from hall to hall.
Amboss is one of 1755 terms in the Gradus musical dictionary: the words, abbreviations and instrument names that appear in printed scores, plus the vocabulary composers use to talk about them.
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