Inside the Music

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Most Indian classical music has three main components: a solo melody line, a rhythmic accompaniment and a drone. Vocal music is predominant, although modern Western audiences are more aware of instrumental genres. Improvisation, a key feature of Indian music, is based on the elaborate rules of the ragas and talas, which are the principal formal concepts of classical Indian music. A raga is a framework for playing melodies: a performer ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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The fundamental characteristics of Arab classical music are described in splendid treatises including those by al-Kindi (c. ad 801–873) and al-Farabi (d. c. AD 950), in which we read of melodic and rhythmic modes, aesthetics and the physics of sound. The classical music of the Arab world is unified by a system of modes called maqam – analogous to the Indian system of ragas. Each maqam has its individual scales, ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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The term contenance angloise (‘English manner’), was first coined by the poet Martin Le Franc in his poem ‘Le Champion des Dames’ (c. 1440–42), in which he described new French music and implied that Du Fay and Binchois had ‘taken on the contenance angloise and followed Dunstaple’. Although the poet did not define the term, the text immediately before this passage speaks of the ‘elegant concord’ in the new music. ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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If you look for country music’s Big Bang, there is nothing more momentous than Bristol, 1927. Within four summer days, two stars appeared that would change the cosmology of country – remap the sky. And it all happened in a disused office building in a quiet mountain town perched on the state line between Virginia and Tennessee. Why Bristol? What brought Jimmie Rodgers and The Carter Family to Bristol? Atlanta would have ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music, consultant editor Bob Allen
689 Words Read More

Almost no Texan musicians have ever herded cattle, but most like to think of themselves as cowboys nonetheless. They imagine themselves pulling out an acoustic guitar after dinner and singing a song about the adventures and frustrations they have known. And not just any old song – it has to be one they wrote and it has to be more original and more memorable than the one sung by the ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music, consultant editor Bob Allen
780 Words Read More

Country music today retains little of the regional identity that characterized it in its early days. There are pockets of resistance to this homogeneity and to the hegemony of Nashville – a honky-tonk dance circuit and a fiercely independent singer-songwriter tradition in Texas, for example – but overall the scene is one of major stars playing huge venues. The middle ground of regional stardom has largely disappeared, but it was once ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music, consultant editor Bob Allen
636 Words Read More

Country music and gospel have always been close partners, since many gospel acts come from the American South, and Nashville, the home of country music, lies in the heart of the Bible Belt. Numerous influences abound within the Church, stretching from traditional shape-note singing that goes back several hundred years, to today’s contemporary and Christian music. Primitive and Southern Baptists, and Evangelical Methodists all have a long and fine heritage ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music, consultant editor Bob Allen
763 Words Read More

When Vassar Clements formed a band called Hillbilly Jazz in 1975, Bill Monroe’s former fiddler pulled the cover off the hidden connection between country music and jazz. The two genres had more in common than most people thought. After all, Jimmie Rodgers recorded with Louis Armstrong early in their careers; jazz legend Charlie Christian debuted on Bob Wills’ radio show; Les Paul (then known as Rhubarb Red) was a country ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music, consultant editor Bob Allen
662 Words Read More

The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band started out in 1966 as a student jug band in Los Angeles, and in an early incarnation it included a teenage Jackson Browne. Among the group’s founder members was singer and guitarist Jeff Hanna. Both Hanna and multi-instrumentalist Jimmie Fadden are still Dirt Band members 40 years on. The extremely ambitious Will The Circle Be Unbroken project was conceived by NGDB manager, William E. ‘Bill’ ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music, consultant editor Bob Allen
646 Words Read More

Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry is the oldest continuously broadcast live music programme in the world. Since it hit the airways in 1926, it has served as a springboard for dozens of key artists’ rise to national fame. Its presence in Nashville was central to the growth of the city’s music industry. Opry Origins The Opry started almost by accident one day in 1926 when George D. Hay – station director at Radio ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music, consultant editor Bob Allen
588 Words Read More

The singing cowboys did not have the monopoly on country music on the silver screen, although it was their breed that first caught Hollywood’s attention. By the time the 1940s rolled around, several of Nashville’s top stars found that they could expand their careers by bringing their talents to the vast new audiences. Singing Stars In the earlier decade Gene Autry – generally credited as the first singing cowboy – brought his ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music, consultant editor Bob Allen
790 Words Read More

The most influential country act of 2001 was a band that didn’t even exist. The Soggy Bottom Boys were the prime attraction on O Brother, Where Art Thou? the soundtrack album that topped the country and pop charts and sold more than four million copies. The group revived the late 1930s and early 1940s sound when old-time string-band music was morphing into bluegrass, but did so with a modern, whoop-it-up ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music, consultant editor Bob Allen
713 Words Read More

The legend of Sun Records seems to expand and shine brighter with every passing year, as successive generations discover the almost unbelievable array of musical gems that were created at that modest little studio at 706 Union Avenue, Memphis. Sun was the brainchild of one man and it is no exaggeration to say that without his contribution, not just country music but indeed all facets of popular music would have ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music, consultant editor Bob Allen
715 Words Read More

Just as sports have their pantheon of greats, the country-music industry established its own Hall Of Fame in 1961 to honour its most influential figures and deepen public understanding and appreciation of the music’s rich heritage and history. A Pantheon Of Country Stars As of 2005, 62 artists and industry leaders – starting with Jimmie Rodgers (1897–1933) and songwriter and music publisher Fred Rose, who both were posthumously inducted in 1961– have ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music, consultant editor Bob Allen
546 Words Read More

Written in the early 1360s, Machaut’s Mass cycle sets all the movements of the Ordinary, the dismissal (Ite missa est), and its response. Although not all the movements are based on chant (the Kyrie, Sanctus, Agnus Dei and the dismissal are based on their respective plainchant melodies, in isorhythm, whereas the Gloria and Credo are set to freely composed syllabic polyphony), the Mass uses four-part scoring and similar vocal ranges ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
239 Words Read More
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AUTHORITATIVE

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...

CURATED

Classical, Rock, Blues, Jazz, Country and more. Flame Tree has been making encyclopaedias and guides about music for over 20 years. Now Flame Tree Pro brings together a huge canon of carefully curated information on genres, styles, artists and instruments. It's a perfect tool for study, and entertaining too, a great companion to our music books.

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