A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Tucket

by William Barclay Squire

TUCKET, TUCK. Tucket is the name of a trumpet^[1] sound, of frequent occurrence in the works of the Elizabethan dramatists. Shakespere (Henry V, Act iv, Sc. 2) has, 'Then let the trumpets sound The tucket-sonance, and the note to mount'; and in 'The Devil's Law Case' (1623) is a stage direction, 'Two tuckets by several trumpets.' The word is clearly derived from the Italian Toccata, which Florio ('A Worlde of Wordes,' 1598) translates 'a touch, a touching.'

Like most early musical signals, the tucket came to England from Italy, and though it is always mentioned by English writers as a trumpet sound, the derivation of the word shows that in all probability it was originally applied to a drum signal. [See vol. iii. p. 642, etc.] Francis Markham ('Five Decades of Epistles of Warre,' 1622) says that a 'Tucquet' was a signal for marching used by cavalry troops. The word still survives in the French 'Doquet' or 'Toquet,' which Larousse explains as 'nom que l'on donne à la quatrième partie de Trompette d'une fanfare de cavallerie.' There are no musical examples extant of the notes which were played.

Closely allied with the word Tucket is the Scotch term 'Tuck' or 'Touk,' usually applied to the beating of a drum, but by early writers used as the equivalent of a stroke or blow. Thus Gawin Douglas's 'Virgil' has (line 249) 'Hercules it smytis with ane mychty touk.' The word is also occasionally used as a verb, both active and neuter. In Spalding's 'History of the Troubles in Scotland' (vol. ii. p. 166) is the following: 'Aberdeen caused tuck drums through the town,' and in Battle Harlaw, Evergreen (i. 85) the word is used thus: 'The dandring drums alloud did touk.' 'Tuck of Drum' is of frequent occurrence in Scotch writers of the present century (see Scott's 'Rokeby,' canto iii. stanza 17); Carlyle's Life of Schiller; Stevenson's 'Inland Voyage,' etc.; also Jamieson's Dictionary of the Scottish Language, s.v. 'Tuck' and 'Touk'). [Tusch.]

[ W. B. S. ]

1. Johnson says 'a musical Instrument', but this is inaccurate.