1713–94, French The daughter of a Bordeaux organist, Marie Fel studied singing with Mme Van Loo, and gave her operatic debut in October 1734. Mentioned in Rousseau’s Confessions, Fel was one of the most famous singers of the Académie Royale de Musique, and was a regular soloist at the Concert Spirituel and the Concerts chez la ...
as the most famous castrato, largely due to Gérard Corbiau’s controversial and mostly fictional film Farinelli, il castrato (1994). Introduction | Late Baroque | Opera Personalities | Marie Fel | Late Baroque | Opera The Voice | The Castrati | Early & Middle Baroque | Opera The Voice | The Training of the Castrati | Late Baroque | Opera ...
1683–1764, French A respected theorist and composer of keyboard music, Rameau did not compose his first opera until he was 50 years old. Consistently adventurous in his operas, he equally inspired passionate admiration and hostility from Parisian audiences and was a comparably powerful figure between the 1730s and 1750s. The Wanderlust Years Rameau was born at Dijon in ...
On the face of it, barrels and music would seem unlikely bedfellows. Their alliance, however, goes back at least to the ninth century, when the first detailed description of a barrel organ appeared in an Arab treatise. Mechanics of the Barrel Organ The mechanical principle underlying all such instruments, from the automated organ and piano to ...
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 celesta is a type of keyboard glockenspiel, with a range of four octaves upwards from middle C, and a damping pedal like a piano. Inside the body of the instrument is a series of chromatically tuned metal bars, which are struck with felt hammers when the performer plays the keyboard. Creation of the Celesta The celesta was ...
Originally (and still occasionally) known as the ‘violoncello’, or ‘little violone’, the cello is tuned in fifths like the violin and viola, running bottom to top, C, G, d, a, the same tuning as a viola, but an octave lower. There were early experiments with a smaller five-stringed instrument (with an additional E string ...
The history of musical instruments has always been very closely linked to the history of music itself. New musical styles often come about because new instruments become available, or improvements to existing ones are made. Improvements to the design of the piano in the 1770s, for instance, led to its adoption by composers such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart ...
Unusually among musical instruments, a specific date has been posited for the invention of the clarinet. Johann Christoph Denner of Nuremberg has been claimed as the man who, in 1700, devised and built the first of these instruments. Like all the best stories, however, the history of the clarinet is shrouded in mystery. The instrument attributed ...
Computer music can be defined as music that is generated by, or composed and produced by means of, a computer. The idea that computers might have a role to play in the production of music actually goes back a lot further than one might think. As early as 1843, Lady Ada Lovelace suggested in a published article that ...
Fiddles, generically, are bowed lutes. The term ‘fiddle’ denotes a stringed instrument with a neck, bearing strings that are sounded by the use of friction rather than plucking or striking. Playing the Fiddle In almost all fiddles the world over, friction is provided by a bow strung with rosined horsehair. The hair is tensioned by the springiness ...
The flute most familiar to us from its use in orchestral and solo music is more properly known as a ‘transverse’ or ‘side-blown’ flute. The flute family is distinct from the other woodwind instruments in that it does not use a reed to generate sound. Instead, a stream of air striking the edge of an opening in the side of ...
The term electric, or electromechanical, organ is used to describe instruments that produce sounds using a dynamo-like system of moving parts – as opposed to electronic organs that employ solid-state electronics. Laurens Hammond In the same way that ‘Hoover’ is used instead of ‘vacuum cleaner’, the very name ‘Hammond’ has become synonymous with electric organs. The Hammond organ was ...
In one form or another, the harpsichord ruled the domestic keyboard roost throughout Europe – and later in America – from the late-sixteenth to the early-nineteenth centuries. Apart from the organ, it was the grandest and most versatile of all keyboard instruments until the advent of the mature fortepiano in the mid- to late-eighteenth century. Rise and Fall of ...
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 – ...
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.
David Bowie
Fantastic new, unofficial biography covers
his life, music, art and movies, with a
sweep of incredible photographs.