AUTHORITATIVE | CURATED | First 500 words Free

• Instruments
• Classical
• Renaissance

the archlute, a little under half way up the neck. The theorbo’s neck was straight and the peg box at the end was not set at an angle. The theorbo was an important continuo instrument, playing with the bass viol, cello or keyboard player’s left hand. Styles & Forms | Renaissance | Classical Instruments | Cittern | Renaissance ...

• Instruments
• Classical
• Renaissance

developed in the 1590s and was used both as a solo instrument and in a continuo role throughout the seventeenth century. Styles & Forms | Renaissance | Classical Instruments | Theorbo | Renaissance | Classical ...

• Instruments
• Brass
• Electric & Electronic
• Keyboards
• Percussion
• Stringed
• Woodwind

instruments such as the harpsichord and the chamber organ became essential in opera orchestras. As their bass notes were fairly weak, other instruments such as the cittarone, the theorbo and viola da gamba, were used to reinforce the bass notes and together these instruments formed a ‘continuo group’. In early opera, passages for solo singer and continuo ...

• Instruments
• Stringed

Acoustic Guitar Throughout its history, the guitar has – perhaps more than any other instrument – managed to bridge the gap between the often disconnected worlds of classical, folk and popular music. Its roots go back to Babylonian times; by the 1500s it was prevalent in Spain, and is still sometimes called the Spanish guitar. Medieval versions – ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Early Baroque

was six years old. He enrolled under the confirmed royalist Captain Henry Cooke, and in addition to learning singing and sight-reading he was given lessons on the lute, theorbo, violin and harpsichord. The first musical composition attributed to Purcell, aged 11, is An Address of the Children of the Chapel Royal to the King, and ...

• Opera
• Late Baroque

addition of viols and harp in Cleopatra’s ‘V’adoro pupille’ in Handel’s Giulio Cesare in Egitto (‘Julius Caesar in Egypt’, 1724). Nicola Antonio Porpora’s Flavio Anicio Olibrio (1711) requires lute, theorbo, viola da gamba, cello, double bass and harpsichord to contribute towards the continuo line, although it is unlikely that they all played together in every aria. ...

• Styles & Forms
• Classical
• Early Baroque

forms of Baroque music, the main element was contrast, here of solo voices (petit choeur) and chorus (grand choeur), the soloists accompanied by continuo instruments (bass viol, theorbo and harpsichord) and with the chorus often doubled by instruments. Lully’s grands motets are typical: they begin with an orchestral introduction and the orchestra returns throughout the work to mark ...