(Vocal group, 1988–present) The sound of Motown in the early 1990s was the harmonies of this R&B vocal group. Wanya ‘Squirt’ Morris, Michael ‘Bass’ McCary, Shawn ‘Slim’ Stockman and Nathan ‘Alex-Vanderpool’ Morris formed when students at a Philadelphia High School. Their first two albums Cooleyhighharmony (1991) and II (1994) spawned monster hit singles like ‘One Sweet Day’ and ...
The medieval plucked lyre had six strings which passed over a bridge resting on the front of a hollow resonant body. These strings were secured at the base of the instrument and were fixed to a yoke which was shaped like a crossbar between two arms projecting upwards from the sides of the body. In order to play the instrument, ...
The medieval harp was built on a roughly triangular frame, with the hollow soundbox held against the player’s body and the strings running from it to the top part of the triangle, positioned like the crossbar of a bicycle frame. The strings were made of various materials, including twisted sheep’s intestines, horsehair and metals such as brass ...
The medieval psaltery was a flat box with strings running across its top; it was plucked either by the fingers or by a quill held in each hand. The harp-psaltery, or rote, took the form of a right-angled triangle with the apex pointing into the musician’s lap. Although played like a harp, in construction it was more similar ...
The medieval pipe was played by blowing directly into a mouthpiece, like a recorder or penny whistle. Although it usually had only three holes to finger, by varying the force of blowing, players could achieve a working range of about one-and-a-half octaves. It was played with the right hand; the left hand held a thick, stubby beater ...
The medieval bagpipe consisted of an animal-skin bag and a series of wooden pipes. The player held the bag under the arm and inflated it by blowing down one of the pipes. A second pipe, the ‘chanter’, contained a series of holes on which to play a melody, while the remainder, the ‘drones’, maintained a continuous, unvarying ...
At the beginning of the Middle Ages, the trumpet was a straight piece of cylindrical metal tubing, running from a mouthpiece to the wide ending known as a ‘bell’. A medieval instrument rescued from the mud of the River Thames in London in the 1980s was made of sections of metal sheet (brass or copper) which were rolled up ...
The larger positive organ was not intended to be moved. The biggest difference between medieval and modern organs is that the positive organ’s pipes were all of the same diameter; the pitch was defined by the length. This caused variation in tone quality across the range, making it ‘flutier’ as the pipes became shorter. Gradually organ-builders introduced ‘reed’ pipes, ...
Because the name ‘hurdy-gurdy’ was abducted by the nineteenth-century barrel organ, this instrument is rarely taken as seriously as it deserves. Known as the ‘organistrum’ from the tenth to twelfth centuries, it was a stringed instrument played by a cranked resined wheel, not a bow. It required two operators, one of whom would crank and one play ...
The bell may have been the instrument most widely and frequently heard in the European Middle Ages. Handbells had survived into the medieval period from antiquity; in addition, large bells were hung in church towers. Their loud sound was believed to keep away demons, so they may have offset the fear of churchyards. Bells were made of bronze; the ...
The early medieval bow looked not unlike the weapon: a convex, dramatically curved wooden structure with horsehair where the archer’s bowstring would have been. There was no attempt at standardization, and construction seems to have varied as different styles were tried out. Even by the late Middle Ages, the bow had only settled down in design terms to ...
The most famous female musician and poet of ancient Greece was Sappho (b. c. 612 bc) from the island of Lesbos. Her music has not survived, but she is known to have accompanied her poetry on a variety of harp-like instruments. Sappho’s work includes love songs to other women and epithalamia (choral wedding songs). Elsewhere in ancient Greece women worked ...
There are specific words for female minstrels in many medieval languages, such as jougleresse (Provençal), ménestrelle (Old French) and gliewméden (Middle English). The Provençal word trobairitz was used for female troubadours. Over 20 of these women are known by name, including Azalais de Porcairages (b. 1140) from Montpellier, Bieiris de Romans (fl. early 13th century); Dame Castelloza (b. ...
In the medieval period the convent was one of the few places where women could gain a musical education and find a valued forum for their music-making. Liturgical music, organized by the cantrix of the convent, was performed several times a day and formed a central element of the nuns’ spiritual and artistic lives. Herrad of Landsberg (fl. 1167–95), ...
(Kle’-menz nôn Pa’-pa) c. 1510–55 Franco-Flemish composer His given name was Jacob Clemens, and it is not known how he came to be called Clemens non Papa (one translation of ‘non papa’ is ‘not the pope’ – a rather unlikely mistake). He composed some works in his native Dutch, the best-known of which are the souterliedekens. These three-voice, ...
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