1710–78 English composer Arne was the son of an upholsterer in Covent Garden. As a Roman Catholic in a largely Protestant country, he had no access to the usual opportunities for advancement as a musician through a church appointment. In the 1730s, he became involved with putting on English-language opera performances in London, earning a reputation as a ...
1710–78, English Arne was born in Covent Garden, so it is not surprising that he spent most of his life providing music for the theatre. In 1732 he formed an English opera company with Lampe and Carey, and their first production Amelia (1732) featured his sister Susanna (later Mrs Cibber, for whom Handel composed ‘He was despised’). ...
The clarinet is a wooden instrument of cylindrical bore, with a single vibrating reed in a mouthpiece. Clarinets began to appear in music by J. C. Bach and Arne in the 1760s, although they differed in several ways from the modern instrument. The famous Mannheim orchestra championed it. Mozart wrote parts for it in his Divertimento K113, perhaps ...
Aged 12, Norwegian Arly Karlsen bought his first guitar, and played with numerous bands in his native country during the 1970s, before forming The Western Swingers with Arne Løland and Liv Jurunn Heia. Their 1983 debut album, Sin Egen Stil, sold over 20,000 copies in Norway, and they made four more albums by 1996. ...
solo voice dominated the work of Strozzi, although some of her books contain songs with orchestral accompaniment. Introduction | Early & Middle Baroque | Opera Personalities | Thomas Augustine Arne | Late Baroque | Opera ...
fine Gainsborough portrait of him with his instrument. Recommended Recording: Overtures and Sinfonias, Il Fondamento (dir) Paul Dombrecht (Passacaille) Introduction | Classical Era | Classical Personalities | Thomas Augustine Arne | Classical Era | Classical ...
theorist and writer Burney was undoubtedly the most important English writer on music of his time. The theorist was born in Shrewsbury and brought up in Chester. There he met Arne, to whom he was apprenticed. Later he took posts as organist and worked in the London theatres. In the 1770s he made two long journeys through France, Italy ...
and church anthems. Although the composition of music for the theatre was not a dominant part of his career, Boyce was a skilful composer who was more consistent than Arne and closer to the legacy of Purcell than Handel. His earliest dramatic works were initially conceived as concert works, although The Secular Masque (1746) was performed at Drury Lane ...
native composers did not successfully compete directly with Handel’s Italian operas, and instead devoted most of their efforts to providing masques and incidental theatre music, although Thomas Augustine Arne (1710–78) produced English opera during the 1730s. Meanwhile, the poet John Gay (1685–1732) invented the genre of ‘ballad opera’ with his popular The Beggar’s Opera (1728), which made prominent ...
Like the snare drum and tenor drum, the bass drum originated in the Middle East. It is a large instrument with a cylindrical body and two heads, and is the drum used to keep the rhythm in marching bands. The modern orchestral bass drum (100 cm/70 in diameter and 50 cm/20 in long) is double headed and rod tensioned. ...
The affectionately nicknamed ‘squeeze box’ is the smallest of all conventional keyboard instuments, and the lowliest cousin of the organ (except the shirt-pocket harmonica). Strictly speaking, however, it has neither keys nor a keyboard. Nor has it a uniform shape. Playing Technique Whereas the standard English concertina is hexagonal, German and American models are square. The basic ...
The cornet is very similar to the trumpet in looks and playing technique. It is thought to have been invented by the instrument maker Jean-Louis Antoine in the 1820s. Antoine, who worked for the Parisian firm Halary, was one of a number of makers experimenting with the new valve technology that was revolutionizing brass instruments at the time. His ...
Drums are widely used in traditional music in the Far East, along with a diverse range of cymbals, gongs, metallophones and untuned wooden idiophones. In much traditional music of this region, the drum is played by the director of the ensemble, who uses specific signals for the other performers. Chinese Drums Most Chinese drums (gu) are ...
Drumming in West Africa is a rural indigenous art form, and it accompanies dance and singing. Master drummers are members of the griot class of professional musical entertainers. These men lead the drumming and promote the tradition by teaching students. The two main types of West African drum are goblet drums and hourglass drums made from a hollowed-out single log ...
Keyboard percussion instruments include the western xylophone, marimba, vibraphone and glockenspiel, the log xylophones and marimbas of Africa and Central America, and the barred instruments played in the Indonesian gamelan. The orchestral xylophone, marimba and glockenspiel have thin wooden or metal rectangular bars laid out like a chromatic piano keyboard. The back row of bars – ...
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