Main Difference
The main difference between Xylophone and Glockenspiel is that the Xylophone is a musical instrument of the family of mallets and Glockenspiel is a percussion instrument composed of a set of tuned keys arranged in the fashion of the keyboard of a piano.
Xylophone
The xylophone (from the Greek words ξύλον—xylon, “wood” + φωνή—phōnē, “sound, voice”, meaning “wooden sound”) is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets. Each bar is an idiophone tuned to a pitch of a musical scale, whether pentatonic or heptatonic in the case of many African and Asian instruments, diatonic in many western children’s instruments, or chromatic for orchestral use.
The term xylophone may be used generally, to include all such instruments such as the marimba, balafon and even the semantron. However, in the orchestra, the term xylophone refers specifically to a chromatic instrument of somewhat higher pitch range and drier timbre than the marimba, and these two instruments should not be confused.
The term is also popularly used to refer to similar instruments of the lithophone and metallophone types. For example, the Pixiphone and many similar toys described by the makers as xylophones have bars of metal rather than of wood, and so are in organology regarded as glockenspiels rather than as xylophones. The metal bars found on a glockenspiel generally produce higher high-pitched tones than a xylophone’s wooden bars.
Glockenspiel
A glockenspiel (German pronunciation: [ˈɡlɔkənˌʃpiːl] or [ˈɡlɔkŋ̍ˌʃpiːl], Glocken: bells and Spiel: set) is a percussion instrument composed of a set of tuned keys arranged in the fashion of the keyboard of a piano. In this way, it is similar to the xylophone; however, the xylophone’s bars are made of wood, while the glockenspiel’s are metal plates or tubes, thus making it a metallophone. The glockenspiel, moreover, is usually smaller and higher in pitch.In German, a carillon is also called a Glockenspiel, while in French, the glockenspiel is often called a carillon. In music scores the glockenspiel is sometimes designated by the Italian term campanelli.
Xylophone (noun)
Any musical instrument (percussion idiophone) made of wooden slats graduated so as to make the sounds of the scale when struck with a small drumstick-like mallet; the standard Western concert xylophone or one of its derivatives.
“All I know how to play on my xylophone is “Mary Had a Little Lamb”. Would you like to hear it?”
Xylophone (verb)
To play a xylophone or to play something else as though it was a xylophone.
Xylophone (verb)
To move above a ridged surface so as to hit every ridge, in a manner similar to playing quickly and sequentially on a xylophone.
Glockenspiel (noun)
A musical instrument of the percussion idiophone family of instruments; like the xylophone, it has tuned bars arranged like the keys on a piano, and is also smaller in size and higher in pitch.