performance of Baroque music and opera relied heavily on wealthy patrons, who often employed musicians in their private orchestras and opera houses. Among these patrons were the aristocratic Barberini family, who made their fortune in the Florentine cloth business. Moving to Rome, the Barberini became one of the city’s most powerful family dynasties. Maffeo Barberini (1568–1644), elected Pope ...
The term ‘horn’ is generally used to refer to the orchestral horn, also known as the French horn. Although it is used in jazz slang to indicate any wind instrument played by a soloist, the name here refers to the orchestral horn. History The early history of the horn is bound intimately to that of the trumpet. Both instruments ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1966–73) In 1967, Family became popular on London’s ‘underground’ circuit. Not the least of their distinctions was singer Roger Chapman’s nanny-goat vibrato (which you either liked or you did not) other stalwarts were Charlie Whitney (guitar) and Rob Townsend (drums). UK Top 30 singles ‘No Mule’s Fool’, ‘Strange Band’, ‘In My Own Time’ and ‘Burlesque’ were but ...
in sheltered housing; and today he remains largely overlooked in the public’s view of popular music history. Going Up Sly Stone started playing drums and guitar (aged 4) in the family gospel group, The Stewart Four, in 1948. Growing up he played and sang in the Bay Area, solo and with various groups, and built a large ...
other artists. This is fitting, for their musical influence is pervasive, too. Near the dawn of country music as a commercial entity, they were its first successful family group, expressing domestic and Christian values in the face of the seamy, bluesy music purveyed by Jimmie Rodgers. Yet, in the guise of a group dedicated to ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1915–56) The Carter Family was the first vocal group to become country music stars. Consisting of A.P. Carter, his wife Sara and their sister-in-law Maybelle, The Carter Family’s simple harmonies and unique guitar-based arrangements supplanted the bluegrass-oriented ‘hillbilly’ music of rural America. The family’s sound gave new life to British and Appalachian traditionals and made ...
in 1851. There were rival arrangements of keys (which implied different ways of fingering) available in the nineteenth century. There continue to be French and German models available. The Heckel family worked on developing the instrument, and their Heckel double bassoon (developed in 1876 and revised in 1879) won the approval of Wagner, who wrote for it in Parsifal. ...
rebec placed upright on the lap, this position was not used in western music until some years later – when the viols and the bass members of the violin family began to emerge at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Styles & Forms | Medieval Era | Classical Instruments | Viol & Violin | Renaissance | Classical ...
composers saw its potential (Ravel included sax parts in Boléro) but it was the jazz- and dance-band worlds which took it to new heights. Of the 14 members of the family the most commonly used – apart from the tenor are: • B-flat soprano: usually in its straight version, capable of a strident or other-worldly sound. • E-flat alto: a ...
of this was that when a new instrument was invented, it was often swiftly followed by different-sized versions of the same design. In the sixteenth century, the viol family was developed like this, consisting of treble, tenor and bass viol, as were the violin family, the recorder family, the lute family and the crumhorn ...
instruments, variously pitched, were all included in the instrumentation of orchestral music from the time of Berlioz. The modern clarinet is commonly pitched in B flat, and family members include the higher E-flat clarinet, the lower (and rarer) basset horn and, still lower, the bass and contrabass clarinets. Styles & Forms | Late Romantic | ...
Strauss actually wrote the part for a clarinet in D which, although still available, is largely obsolete. Basset Horn The basset horn is a member of the clarinet family, though not a clarinet itself. It is pitched in F and has a compass that extends down to a sounding F. Its dark, slightly veiled timbre is more ...
The playing mechanism of the clavichord was quite different from that of the harpsichord family. It was a simpler lever system, working like a seesaw. As the player’s fingers landed on the key, its other end rose and struck the string from below. In sound production, the clavichord was thus similar to the dulcimer and the piano. But ...
easier to control. The Renaissance Cornett In the Renaissance ensemble, the cornett was typically partnered with the sackbut (a sixteenth-century version of the slide trombone). There was an entire family of cornetts, from the bass cornett to the high-pitched cornettino. However, little music composed for the cornett is extant. Christoph Willibald von Gluck (1714–87) was among the last ...
where, of course, would country music be without the guitar ? Acoustic or electric, from its Spanish origins, and brought into the limelight by The Carter Family, many country musicians since then have made it their own. The recording pioneers such as Eck Robertson and John Carson made their names on the ubiquitous fiddle – an ...
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David Bowie
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