AUTHORITATIVE | CURATED | First 500 words Free

• Personalities
• Early Years
• Jazz & Blues

(Instrumental group, 1912–18) Freddie Keppard’s Original Creole Orchestra toured extensively during the teens as an early harbinger of authentic New Orleans jazz, reaching big-time vaudeville’s prestigious Orpheum circuit. Powerful pioneer trumpeter Keppard (1889–1933) had with him Creole clarinetists George Baquet, ‘Big Eye’ Louis Nelson and Jimmie Noone, pioneer bassist Bill Johnson and multi-instrumentalist Dink Johnson as a ...

• Performance
• Classical
• Late Baroque

Modern writers refer to the mixed instrumental chamber ensembles of the Renaissance as broken consorts. Different kinds of instruments were brought together with choirs for special occasions, but there was no large ensemble encompassing different families of instruments and performing its own recognizable genres of music, until the Baroque period. The introduction by Monteverdi of string players into the ...

• Instruments
• Classical
• Classical Era

Just as the individual instruments were changing in the classical period, so the way in which they were grouped together was also changing accordingly. As virtuosity became possible on a wider range of instruments, so the domination of violins in the ensemble was reduced and the more balanced four-part string section (first violins, second violins, violas and ...

• Instruments
• Classical
• Early Romantic

Berlioz’s characteristic ‘instrument’ was the orchestra. While makers had sought to improve different woodwind instruments, Berlioz set himself the task of advancing the orchestra as his favourite instrument. He was always keen to know about the latest developments in instrument-making and performance technique, and made last-minute changes to his Traite général d’instrumentation (‘General Treatise on Instrumentation’) in response to ...

• Inside the Music
• Classical
• Late Romantic

By the early nineteenth century, the orchestra was fairly standardized: strings, divided into first and second violins (typically about 16 each in a full-size group), violas (12), cellos (12) and double basses (8); woodwind, consisting of two each of flutes, oboes, clarinets and bassoons; and brass, usually two or four horns, two trumpets, ...

• Personalities
• Early Years
• Jazz & Blues

(Instrumental group, 1917–25) The Original Dixieland Jass Band were five young white musicians from working-class uptown New Orleans – Nick LaRocca (cornet), Larry Shields (clarinet), Eddie Edwards (trombone), Tony Spargo (real name Sbarbaro, drums) and Henry Ragas (piano). All alumni of ‘Papa’ Jack Laine’s stable of bands, they went to Chicago and then to New York, where ...

• Techniques
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

Developing instrumental technologies and increased expressive demands ensured that the orchestra grew in both size and variety during the nineteenth century. Italian opera, perhaps unexpectedly, given its devotion to the beauty of the voice, showed considerable imagination with composers such as Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791–1864) and Saverio Mercadante (1795–1870) making use of saxhorns, bass clarinets and the viola ...

• Instruments
• Classical
• Modern Era

The percussionists of the twentieth century often found themselves faced by an array of different instruments whose only common theme is that they are all idiophones: they are played by being struck. Some of these are known as ‘tuned percussion’, because the beaten sound is actually tuned to a specific note. Some are known as ‘untuned percussion’, since the pitch is ...

• Instruments
• Classical
• Modern Era

The twentieth century saw the piano return to the orchestra: notable works including the orchestral piano are Kodály’s Háry János (1926), Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony and Orff’s Carmina Burana (1937). Modern composers realized that, as it creates sound with hammers that strike strings, the piano is technically a member of the percussion family. Indeed, in Grainger’s The Warriors (1916) ...

• Inside the Music
• Classical
• Modern Era

By the end of the nineteenth century, or early in the twentieth, every self-respecting city in Europe or North America expected to have an orchestra of its own, playing regularly in a purpose-built concert hall or civic hall. Some, like the Vienna Philharmonic, the Dresden State Symphony or the Leipzig Gewandhaus, continued long traditions (Dresden ...

• Influences
• Classical
• Modern Era

Gamelan is an orchestral tradition in Java and Bali, where every instrument – various gongs and drums – is a member of the percussion family. The tradition emphasizes respect for the instruments and cooperation between the players. In 1887, the Paris Conservatoire acquired a gamelan. In 1889, Debussy went to the Paris Exhibition, where he heard the ...

• Personalities
• Prog Rock
• Rock
• Seventies
• Seventies Pop

(Vocal/instrumental group, 1970–83, 1985–86, 2000–01, 2012) Devised by Roy Wood (various instruments, vocals) to provide an alternative outlet to The Move, ELO consisted of that group’s remaining members, Jeff Lynne (guitar, piano, vocals) and Bev Bevan (drums). ELO aimed to combine rock with classical instrumentation. Bill Hunt (French horn) and Steve Woolam ...

• Personalities
• Eighties
• Eighties Pop
• Electro
• New Wave
• Post-Punk
• Rock

(Vocal/instrumental group, 2006–present) A Liverpudlian duo formed by a pair of Eno and Kraftwerk fans, Andy McCluskey (bass, vocals) and Paul Humphreys (keyboards). Their supporting cast varied as they produced a series of fine electro pop albums, including Architecture And Morality (1981) and Dazzle Ships (1983), and a string of brooding hits which married intelligence and innovation: ...

• Personalities
• Early Years
• Jazz & Blues

(Instrumental group, 1922–25) The New Orleans Rhythm Kings (NORK) were one of the major white groups in early New Orleans jazz; after a run at Chicago’s Friar’s Club in 1922, they recorded with Paul Mares (trumpet), George Brunis (trombone), Leon Roppolo (clarinet), Jack Pettis (alto sax), Elmer Schoebel (piano), Lew Black (banjo), Steve Brown (bass) and Frank Snyder (drums). ...

• Classical
• Classical Era

The very name, ‘Classical Era’, speaks for itself: it proclaims a period that is regarded as ‘Standard, first-class, of allowed excellence’, with manifestations that are ‘simple, harmonious, proportioned, finished’, to quote a dictionary definition. The period from 1750 to roughly 1820 is widely recognized as one of exceptional achievement in music – it is the ...