Hot answers tagged history
15
Technically, there are no reasons, but practically, there are quite a few. Obviously, we've reached the point where we can construct instruments that are fully chromatic, so there is no need to change crooks and play only the overtone series.
The practical reasons are many, and mostly stem from the fact that if all instruments were pitched in C, any time ...
14
Here are links to YouTube videos, all three of which were posted by the same person, using the same synthesizer, all three playing Bach's Air on the G String. But each link uses a different tuning system:
Equal Temperament: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6XkgNT20Eg
Just Intonation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdL8aPQUOk0
Pythagorean Tuning: ...
11
I have to say no.
As you said, Beethoven's 9th symphony was the first choral symphony but it was not the first piece to combine chorus and orchestra.
There were already pieces from the Baroque that combined them, as the same definition of cantata says:
Cantata: A sung piece, or choral work with or without vocal soloists, usually with orchestral ...
11
Your logic fits and, as some of the commentators have stated, I've pondered about this in the past.
Usually your dominant hand naturally can handle doing a lot more work, like you've stated. In playing instruments, the dominant hand also should be used for doing the "big jobs":
in drumming, the dominant hand would be hitting the hi-hats. In a normal 4/4 ...
11
The TL;DR answer:
Some instrument families (saxophones, clarinets, double reeds) have variants which change the instrument range by something other than an octave. To make it easy to switch to them, the parts for these instruments are transposed so the same written note has the same fingering, but produces a different actual pitch.
Even when the range of ...
11
A couple quick internet searches (which took me here, for example) supports my guess that the term blues refers to melancholy of the music/lyrics (caused by blue devils). A blue note then is something characteristic to that music. One could also think that blue notes are blue because they often sound "sad", being flatter than usual.
The term chromatic ...
9
Well, no. You can't really prove the theory of music. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.
Pythagoras probably wasn't the first human to speculate on the relationships of pleasing sounds, but he may well have been the first to appreciate the value of integer ratios in string length (or he may just be the earliest case we have records about).[*]
As to ...
8
It actually goes back to the Medieval period when music that was not church music nor followed the church's rules was the devil's music. Madrigals were considered the devil's music because they were mostly about sex. Ending a piece on a minor chord was also forbidden which gave us the Piccardi third (raising the third of the final chord of a piece in a minor ...
7
I suppose the answer is that any manufacturer of a keyboard instrument, be it a piano, organ, accordion, etc., is free to build whatever instrumental mechanism to produce as many pitches as they want to create, and is free to design a keyboard to play those pitches. They put it on the market, and the successful models sell well, and establish a precedent, ...
7
The guitar originated from the lute. What's called a 'kithara,' (a type of lyra) which when pronounced sounds a bit like 'guitar' is why people and historians get mixed up between the two being related.
The lute and the vihuela had their features combined in the 16th Century. The features that were combined were:
The body of the vihuela
The size the lute
...
7
As Indrek pointed out, this gives at least partial answers to your questions.
In short, the answer to who first put foot pedals on a piano is not known exactly, but the practice seems to originate in England. A piano of Americus Backers from 1772 might be the first one to use foot pedals instead of knee levers.
Then you have a different question in the ...
6
Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber (1644-1704): La Battalia Sinfonia (1673)
From program notes:
La Battalia was written very much in the style of the day, but even these centuries later sounds rather modern, especially because of Biber’s use of percussive effects in the string writing. The work, which is in short movements, was written in 1673 in the fading ...
6
Beethoven's own "Choral Fantasy" came before the Ninth Symphony. It's a weird (and wonderful) piece composed for a particular occasion (actually composed to fill out a concert that was already far too long).
The piano starts it as a solo and plays an improvisatory cadenza that's three or four minutes long. Then the orchestra quietly starts in, builds up ...
6
Interestingly enough, the English Horn is commonly known by the French term 'cor anglais', but in fact originated in Germany! To make matters worse, the French Horn is a descendant of the English hunting horn.
The term 'horn' has had varying meanings throughout history and genre. At the most basic level, it simply refers to the cylindrical shape of an ...
5
The best ear training courses available are by David Lucas and can be found at www.perfectpitch.com, these are audio lectures but do require some interactivity from you and your instrument to get the most from them (as you'd expect from any music training of this sort).
An excellent book which has a kindle edition is Hearing and Writing Music: Professional ...
5
First of all, Gipsy Kings music isn't classical :)
Gipsy Kings play Flamenco guitar, major of their works is Rumba type.
Spanish guitar basically is two types:
Spanish classic guitar.
Famous players: Andres Segovia, John Williams, Julian Bream.
Flamenco guitar.
Famous players: Paco De Lucia, Vicente Amigo, Gerardo Nunez, Sabicas and of course many ...
5
Psychotropic means mind-altering. The most common use of the word is in psychotropic drugs -- that is drugs which alter mood, perception, consciousness and behaviour.
Psychotropic Music is a term used by some people to describe music which they believe alters mood, perception, consciousness and behaviour in a similar way to such drugs. It's likely that ...
5
Years before Lou Reed released Metal Machine Music during his solo career, he played in a bad called The Velvet Underground with violist John Cale. John Cale is a classically trained musician, who studied with Humphrey Searle (a student of Anton Webern of the second Viennese school). During his early life and classical training he created relationships ...
5
The sound variance of violins is surely greater than the difference in their optical appearance, so I assume different shapes are possible. Note, that the viola da gamba family, which also has a soprano member (not sounding sooo different) sports C-shaped holes, and baryton has nearly unregular ones so the effect of hole shape seems very minor.
I found a ...
5
The shape also has to do with structural integrity. A violin would be of no use if it were built in a shape that would not support the high tension of the strings, thus causing the violin body to collapse after being used for some length of time. Instruments in the violin family, among all musical instruments, are notoriously durable; there are individual ...
4
The earliest two references I can find of what are now known as deceptive cadences originate with Josquin des Prez's Missa Una musque de Buscaya (listed without a date on Wikipedia, which only fleetingly mentions it under a different spelling, suggesting that his authorship is doubtful) and Francesco Spinacino's arrangement of Fortuna dun gran tempo. I was ...
4
According to Wikipedia: "The first printed book to include music, the Mainz psalter (1457), had to have the notation added in by hand. (...) The first machine-printed music appeared around 1473, approximately 20 years after Gutenberg introduced the printing press."
Have a look at the Wikipedia page for more information.
4
About his development as a composer and the links with his 2 older brothers Johann-Christof and Johann-Jacob.
Yes JS was exposed very early to music, music practice and various instruments. He and his brothers were expected to master various instruments and to play ex tempore and generally become proficient in the family's trade, go to other members of the ...
4
Wikipedia, following the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, reports correctly that there was a choral symphony published by a now obscure composer, Peter von Winter, in 1814, ten years before Beethoven's 9th. It is called the Schlachtsymphonie or "battle symphony."
Beethoven also introduced a chorus at the very end of his Fantasy for Piano, ...
4
I find the Tavener and Whitacre to be very consonant-sounding and beautiful. On the other hand, the parallel fifths and fourths of Medieval organum sound unpleasant and jarring to me, although they probably sounded melodious and sweet to the original performers.
I see two ways of interpreting your question.
When did the use of dissonance change from ...
4
Beethoven, throughout his lifetime, created music that pushed the limits of tonality. In the classical period there were "rules" for how far you could push these limits, governed by contrapuntal techniques that evolved from the 16th century.
In Beethoven's later works you begin to hear more and more dissonance. Musically speaking, it is agreed by most ...
4
I'm also not a scholar on music history, but I think dissonance started to be taken into account with the continuous modulation Wagner used in his compositions.
He is often seen as the father of chromaticism.
After Wagner, we have Debussy. He created a brand new scale, the hexatonic scale (C D E F# G# A#)
where the fundamental C chord (C E G) became a ...
4
There is a recording listed in Allmusic.com that lists Rostropovich as the composer and performer of his Humoresque for Cello and Piano, Op 5:
feat. artist: Mstislav Rostropovich
Label: Brilliant
Rovi ID: MQ0000908851
Rovi Work ID: MC0002507948
AMG ID: F 1686750
AMG Work ID: C 380960
Work Title: Humoresque for cello & piano, Op. 5
...
4
There is an overarching reason for transposition of wind instruments, which can be corroborated by anyone who has played woodwind doubles in a pit orchestra.
Regardless of the reason transposing instruments came into practice in the first place, the practice is still standard in writing circles (besides the valid observation that there alr4eady exists a ...
4
Actually, "book" style players predate Mr Jaquards loom.
They progression really got started with music boxes & pins stuck in drums or disks.
Next came the "book style" where holes were punched in panels and the panels were hinged together in various ways, and later on the paper rolls that are well known now.
But the real question is related to ...
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