During the sixteenth century the harp was in danger of falling into disuse as chromatic keyboards raised composers’ expectations of what plucked strings could achieve. But in the third quarter of the century, instrument-builders began to experiment with the double harp, constructed with a second row of strings running next to the first. Arrangements of strings varied as makers ...
By the early eighteenth century, a harp furnished with pedals had been developed in Bavaria. In this instrument, each of the foot-operated pedals directed a mechanism that could sharpen every string playing notes of the same name. Initially there were five such pedals, controlling C, D, F, G and A. By the end of the ...
Between medieval and Renaissance times, the harp underwent some simple developments: it grew a little larger and the number of strings increased to 24. Other than that, it was made and played in the same way as it had been in the Middle Ages. An open triangle supported a sounding box on the side against the player’s body and ...
The harp is clearly recognizable from its triangular shape, consisting of the resonator and neck. The strings in all harps run perpendicular to the resonator. In many cases a supporting arm, known as a forepillar, runs from the end of the neck to the resonator to help sustain the strings’ tension. Early Harps Although the earliest known use ...
The pocket-sized instruments known in English as jew’s harps (or in some periods of history trumps, and in French guimbardes), have no connection with Judaism – nor are they harps. A strip of bamboo or metal, in a frame of the same material, is twanged, and the oral cavity acts as an amplifying soundbox whose capacity can ...
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 ...
controllers that break the mould: instruments that challenge the idea that electronic music needs to be wrapped up in the trappings of the traditional. These are the alternative controllers. Laser Harp The laser harp is an instrument made up of several beams of laser light, each representing a different note. When a beam is blocked (or ‘plucked’, to further the ...
balaban, Iran the ney-anbhan. India’s shruti has been largely supplanted by Scottish Highland bagpipes, many of them made in neighbouring Pakistan. Introduction | Woodwind Instruments Instruments | Jew’s Harp | Woodwind ...
a cor anglais, a clarinet in Eb, a contrabassoon as well as a keyed bugle, an ophicleide and tubular bells in his Symphonie fantastique of 1827. The harp, which had been used as a folk instrument for hundreds of years, was gaining a higher profile, recent improvements in the pedal mechanism by Sébastien Érard (1752–1831) ...
Mask of Orpheus, Birtwistle and his collaborator Barry Anderson used the IRCAM computer to construct six taped inserts for use in performance, transforming notes originally played on a harp into enormous percussion sounds like bongos, bass drums, marimbas and vibraphones. Styles & Forms | Contemporary | Classical Instruments | Marimba | Contemporary | Classical ...
The piano has occupied a special place in music and, since the advent of amplification, musicians have sought ways in which its expressive, versatile sound could be made louder in order to carry above the sound of other amplified instruments and also how it could be packaged into an instrument more easily transportable than the traditional acoustic piano. ...
A musical ensemble is a group of two or more musicians who have come together to play music. In theory, an ensemble could contain any number of instruments in any combination, but in practice, certain combinations just don’t work very well, either for musical reasons or because of the sheer practicality of getting particular instruments and players ...
The birthplace of free reeds seems to have been eastern Asia. There, it is typical to place a small free reed, made of metal or bamboo, into a bamboo tube cut to the appropriate length so that its air column resonates at the reed’s frequency, increasing the volume and allowing the player to allow it to sound ...
cello and harmonium. Free Reeds The harmonium belongs to the family of ‘free-reed’ instruments that includes not only the accordion and concertina but such ancient instruments as the near-universal jew’s harp and the sheng of China, whose importation to St Petersburg in the eighteenth century is said to have directly inspired the precursors of the harmonium. In all of these ...
a group of instruments which are linked by the fact that sets of strings run parallel to their main body, and that – unlike the lute, lyre or harp – they can still be played even without a resonating device. In the concept’s least advanced state, native instruments exist which are little more than a stick carrying strings ...
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