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The government-enforced isolation of Native Americans in the United States has fostered cultural independence, in contrast to the marked musical acculturation between the Hispanic-speaking and Amerindian societies in South America. But in modern times, North American groups have tended to set aside tribal differences and seek a pan-tribal cultural unity. The ‘Ghost Dance’, a religious cult led by Jack Wilson, was an early pan-tribal movement. Wilson proclaimed the ‘Ghost Dance’ ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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The two great architectural styles of the medieval age were the Romanesque and the Gothic. The Romanesque, with its round-arch forms borrowed from classical buildings, is a massive style, characterized by solid pillars supporting the great stone roof vaults that were a new feature of construction. It is often crowded with imaginative sculpture. During the twelfth century, architects began to incorporate novel elements into their church designs, which soon developed into ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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In the second half of the twelfth century, the new cathedral of Notre Dame was the focus of an extraordinary effort by Leonin and others to create a whole new musical liturgy. Thanks to their efforts and to the presence of the increasingly independent University of Paris, whose curriculum was aimed towards ecclesiastical careers, the city became a leading musical centre. From Paris emanated the most important developments in musical ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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Among the earliest humanist projects was the recovery and study of classical architecture. Many buildings from the Roman period still stood (some stand today); others were in ruins from which the originals could just be discerned. Study of these remains with reference to recently recovered classical architectural treatises led to a new school of architecture. The leader of this school was Filippo Brunelleschi. A native Florentine, Bruneschelli travelled to Rome ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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Once hailed by the Pope as ‘Defender of the Faith’ against Martin Luther, Henry VIII made an about-face when he declared himself primate of the Church of England in order to grant himself a divorce from his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. The political, religious and social results of Henry’s action are well-known; the impact on music was also far-reaching. In the century leading up to 1536, England had established ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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One of the best-known Renaissance music manuscripts, the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, was compiled by the musician Francis Tregian (1574–1619) during his imprisonment in London for recusancy from 1609 until his death. The manuscript contains an unusually wide-ranging collection of nearly 300 keyboard pieces by English composers (many of them also known for their Catholic sympathies), including Tallis, Byrd and Bull. Continental musicians such as Sweelinck are also represented and there ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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Broadly speaking, empiricism, from the Greek empeiria (‘experience’), is a philosophical tradition that accepts as fact only what can be verified by observation, or experience, through the use of the five senses. Galileo Galilei’s support of Copernican theory was a result of his observation of the planet Venus through a telescope. His insistence that what he saw was more authoritative than the traditional teachings of the church brought down on ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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Many of the famous German Baroque organs are what is known as Werkprinzip (‘department principle’) organs, built up of several separate ‘departments’ (i.e. a manual or pedal keyboard and its chest), all linked into the single console at which the organist plays. This method of construction means that organs can be tailored to specific requirements and added to over the years. Often it is obvious from the instrument’s appearance that ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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The Italian city of Cremona has been celebrated since the sixteenth century for the manufacture of stringed instruments. The first famous family of makers there was the Amati. Andrea Amati (c. 1505–80) founded a dynasty that included his sons Antonio (c. 1538–95) and Girolamo (1561–1630). But it is the latter’s son Nicolo (1596–1684) who is usually regarded as the most outstanding of the Amatis. His instruments tend to be rather ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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Musicians have always enjoyed a significant role as providers of social entertainment. In the early eighteenth century, this aspect of music-making gained greater importance, as the middle classes in European towns and cities cultivated the art of courtly dancing in such forms as the minuet, the bourée and the gavotte. Most of the era’s major composers, including J. S. Bach, Handel and Telemann, featured the rhythms and styles of popular ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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From the earliest years of the Baroque era musicians, scientists and assorted intellectuals, mainly from Italy, wrote treatises and manifestos discussing the theories, aesthetics and musical practice of a new style of music. By the early eighteenth century almost every country in Europe was producing writers who aimed to define musical styles and concepts. They attempted to rationalize and, to an extent, codify emotional responses to music. Although the results ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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As the violin family acquired the musical respectability previously enjoyed by the viols, so the upper-middle classes began to take an interest in becoming amateur players. Accordingly, a market grew up for tutors, or instruction books. The earliest known volume devoted to the violin was The Gentleman’s Diversion (1693) by John Lenton (d. 1718) and this served as a model for most early eighteenth-century English violin methods. Intended for beginners, they ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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The dominant style in art at the start of the classical era was the Rococo (from rocaille, ‘shellwork’). Created in early eighteenth-century France, its leading figures in the graphic arts were Antoine Watteau and François Boucher. The closest musical analogue is not Mozart (as once was traditionally argued) but François Couperin (1668–1733) – the late Baroque generation, in fact, for the Rococo is essentially a breaking-down of the Baroque. Rococo ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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When, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, French critics came into contact with Italian opera, many felt that the musical freedom of the Italians offered something that French opera, so closely tied to theatrical declamatory traditions, made impossible. The Abbé Raguenet, enamoured of Italian singing and the supporting instrumental skills, mocked French opera, which was staunchly defended as more ‘rational’ by Le Cerf de la Viéville. The operatic debut of ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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The term Empfindsamkeit (meaning ‘sensitivity’) is associated with a particular aesthetic outlook prevalent in north Germany in the mid-eighteenth century. It refers to an intimate, melancholic expression, the ideals of which are found in the music and writings of C. P. E. Bach. His style is often rhetorical, with sudden pauses and changes of key, and expressive leaning appoggiaturas and chromatic notes. One of his fantasias is said to represent ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
127 Words Read More
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An extensive music information resource, bringing together the talents and expertise of a wide range of editors and musicologists, including Stanley Sadie, Charles Wilson, Paul Du Noyer, Tony Byworth, Bob Allen, Howard Mandel, Cliff Douse, William Schafer, John Wilson...

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