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Wooden clapper: generally played as a slapstick (whip), two hinged boards snapped together, though it is sometimes translated as wood block. Mahler’s term.
Labels a single-line percussion staff; in Mahler’s Fifth the edition prints it with a full stop, “Holzklapper.”, and keeps the full name rather than an abbreviation. It is unpitched and untransposed, and each written note is one crack.
It gives a dry, sharp crack that cuts through a full orchestra without pitch or ring; Mahler uses it in the Scherzo of his Fifth Symphony. Because translations disagree (slapstick, whip, wood block), say exactly which instrument you mean in the instrument list. A single slapstick needs a moment to reset between strokes, so for fast repeated notes choose wood block instead.
Mahler, Symphony No. 5, third movement (Scherzo): the percussion staff labelled “Holzklapper.”
Holzklapper 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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