Bel canto – beautiful singing – is a vocal technique that is deliberately designed to sound effortless but is, in reality, extremely difficult to achieve. Although the technique reached full flower in the nineteenth century, especially in the operas of Vincenzo Bellini (1801–35), elements of bel canto style first appeared in the Baroque era, in Venetian opera ...
Since Puccini’s death in 1924, opera houses have made little room for living composers. While the core repertory has remained more or less fixed, the need for novelty has necessitated the rediscovery of works long forgotten. This in turn has required singers able to cope with different technical and aesthetic problems; indeed, it is usually the prominence of ...
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 ...
As a member of the first family of country music, Maybelle Carter (1909–78) distinguished herself far beyond her role as accompanist to her brother-in-law A.P. Carter and his wife Sara (Maybelle’s cousin) in the Carter Family, the first recording stars of country music. Maybelle was born Maybelle Addington in Nickelsville, Virginia. In 1926 she married Ezra J. ...
Master of guitar-generated sound effects, Adrian Belew (b. 1949) makes his Parker Deluxe guitar not only sing but also scream, squawk, roar, tweet and talk in elephant tongue. Best known for his time in King Crimson during the early Eighties as comic foil to Robert Fripp’s relatively nerdy straight man, Belew is one of the most ...
Rock’n’roll guitarist Duane Eddy was born in Corning, New York in 1938. His interest in the guitar began when he was five, inspired by singing film-cowboy Gene Autry. In 1951, the family moved to Arizona. While playing guitar in a country duo, Duane met songwriter, producer and disc jockey Lee Hazelwood. The pair embarked on a ...
Twenty-first-century guitar hero Matthew Bellamy (b. 1978) was born in Cambridge, England. His father George was rhythm guitarist in the Tornadoes, who scored a massive transatlantic hit with the Joe Meek-produced ‘Telstar’. Before learning guitar, Bellamy took piano lessons as a boy, equally inspired by Ray Charles and classical music. In the mid-1980s, the family moved ...
(Yo’-han Pakh’-el-bel) 1653–1706 German composer Pachelbel held the position of court organist at Eisenach (where he taught J. S. Bach’s eldest brother Johann Christoph) before taking up the same post at Erfurt. It was here that he published his first organ music, Musicalischen Sterbens-Gedancken (‘Musical Meditation on Death’, 1683). In 1690 he moved to Stuttgart and then Gotha before becoming organist ...
(Zhan Fa-re’ Re-bel’) 1666–1747 French composer Rebel belonged to a family of court musicians. At the age of eight, his violin playing attracted the attention of Lully. From then onwards he occupied posts both at the Académie Royale de Musique and at court. Rebel’s Sonates à II et III parties, written towards the end of the seventeenth century, but ...
(Kärl Fre’-drikh A’-bel) 1723–87 German composer Abel was born at Cöthen, where his father played in J. S. Bach’s group. In 1759 he travelled to London, where he eventually settled, becoming a chamber musician to King George III’s wife Charlotte. It was also in London, in 1764, that Abel, together with J. C. Bach, established ...
(Ven-chant’-zo Bel-le’-ne) 1801–35 Italian composer One of the most important opera composers of the nineteenth century, Bellini cultivated a bel canto (literally ‘fine singing’) melodic style that influenced not only other opera composers but also Chopin and Robert Schumann. He studied first with his grandfather, composing youthful sacred works, ariettas and instrumental pieces, and in 1819 moved to ...
(Zhan Se-bal-yoos) 1865–1957 Finnish composer When Jean (Johan) Sibelius, Finland’s greatest composer, was born on 8 December 1865 at Hämeenlinna, his homeland had been ruled by Russia since Napoleon snatched it from Sweden. As a child he composed and played the violin, but he was 14 before taking up the instrument seriously. He enrolled in 1886 at the ...
Bells are a feature of ceremony and ritual. They are used for meditation and prayer, and to mark significant life events such as funerals and weddings. Bells are used to mark out the timetable of our daily lives – appearing as alarm bells, warning signals and in mechanized chimes in clocks. In Japan, bonsho temple bells are rung ...
Tubular bells, also known as orchestral or symphonic chimes, are a set of tuned steel tubes with a chrome finish, hanging vertically in a stand with a pedal damper. The optimum range for a chromatic set of tubular bells is 11⁄2 octaves rising from middle C (c'–f''), as notes above or below this range are difficult to tune ...
A decibel is a measurement of the ratio between two quantities, and is used as a comparator in many branches of physics. In acoustics, decibels (or dB, for short) are used to indicate the loudness of a single sound in comparison to a fixed reference sound. This reference is the quietest sound audible to the healthy human ear ...
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