1.
Musical instrument classification
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Throughout history, various methods of musical instrument classification have been used. The most commonly used system divides instruments into string instruments, woodwind instruments, brass instruments and percussion instruments, the oldest known scheme of classifying instruments is Chinese and dates from the 3rd millennium BC. It grouped instruments according to the materials they are made of. However, the Chou-Li, an anonymous treatise compiled from sources in about the 2nd century BC, had the following order, metal, stone, clay, leather, silk, wood, gourd. The same order was presented in the Tso Chuan, attributed to Tso Chiu-Ming, more usually, instruments are classified according to how the sound is initially produced. The modern system divides instruments into wind, strings and percussion, the scheme was later expanded by Martin Agricola, who distinguished plucked string instruments, such as guitars, from bowed string instruments, such as violins. Classical musicians today do not always maintain this division, but distinguish between wind instruments with a reed and those where the air is set in motion directly by the lips, many instruments do not fit very neatly into this scheme. The serpent, for example, ought to be classified as a brass instrument, however, it looks more like a woodwind instrument, and is closer to one in many ways, having finger-holes to control pitch, rather than valves. Keyboard instruments do not fit easily into this scheme, for example, the piano has strings, but they are struck by hammers, so it is not clear whether it should be classified as a string instrument or a percussion instrument. Ottoman encyclopedist Hadji Khalifa also recognized the three classes in his Kashf al-Zunun an Asami al-Kutub wa al-Funun, a treatise on the origin. The division pervades Tboli thought about cosmology, social characters of men and women, victor-Charles Mahillon later adopted a system very similar to this. This scheme was taken up by Erich von Hornbostel and Curt Sachs who published an extensive new scheme for classication in Zeitschrift für Ethnologie in 1914. Their scheme is used today, and is most often known as the Hornbostel-Sachs system. Electrophones, such as the guitar or electric bass, which produce sound through electricity and is required to be plugged in to an amplifier. Later Sachs added a category, electrophones, such as theremins. Modern synthesizers and electronic instruments fall in this category, within each category are many subgroups. The system has been criticised and revised over the years, in 1932, comparative musicologist André Schaeffner developed a new classification scheme that was exhaustive, potentially covering all real and conceivable instruments. The Kpelle of West Africa also use this system and they distinguish the struck, including both beaten and plucked, and the blown
2.
Plucked string instrument
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Plucked string instruments are a subcategory of string instruments that are played by plucking the strings. Plucking is a way of pulling and releasing the string in such a way as to give it an impulse that causes the string to vibrate, plucking can be done with either a finger or a plectrum. Most plucked string instruments belong to the family, which generally consist of a resonating body, and a neck. The zither family does not have a neck, and the strings are stretched across the soundboard, in the harp family, the strings are perpendicular to the soundboard and do not run across it. The harpsichord does not fit any of these categories but is also a string instrument. Bowed string instruments, such as the violin, can also be plucked in the known as pizzicato, however, as they are usually played with a bow. Struck string instruments can be plucked as an extended technique. Plucked string instruments are not a category in the Sachs-Hornbostel classification, as some of them are simple chordophones and others are composite
3.
String instrument
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String instruments, stringed instruments, or chordophones are musical instruments that produce sound from vibrating strings when the performer plays or sounds the strings in some manner. Musicians play some string instruments by plucking the strings with their fingers or a plectrum—and others by hitting the strings with a wooden hammer or by rubbing the strings with a bow. In some keyboard instruments, such as the harpsichord or piano, with bowed instruments, the player rubs the strings with a horsehair bow, causing them to vibrate. With a hurdy-gurdy, the musician operates a wheel that rubs the strings. Bowed instruments include the string instruments of the Classical music orchestra. All of the string instruments can also be plucked with the fingers. Some types of string instrument are mainly plucked, such as the harp, in the Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification, used in organology, string instruments are called chordophones. Other examples include the sitar, rebab, banjo, mandolin, ukulele, in most string instruments, the vibrations are transmitted to the body of the instrument, which often incorporates some sort of hollow or enclosed area. The body of the instrument also vibrates, along with the air inside it, the vibration of the body of the instrument and the enclosed hollow or chamber make the vibration of the string more audible to the performer and audience. The body of most string instruments is hollow, some, however—such as electric guitar and other instruments that rely on electronic amplification—may have a solid wood body. Archaeological digs have identified some of the earliest stringed instruments in Ancient Mesopotamian sites, like the lyres of Ur, the development of lyre instruments required the technology to create a tuning mechanism to tighten and loosen the string tension. During the medieval era, instrument development varied from country to country, Middle Eastern rebecs represented breakthroughs in terms of shape and strings, with a half a pear shape using three strings. Early versions of the violin and fiddle, by comparison, emerged in Europe through instruments such as the gittern, a four stringed precursor to the guitar and these instruments typically used catgut and other materials, including silk, for their strings. String instrument design refined during the Renaissance and into the Baroque period of musical history, violins and guitars became more consistent in design, and were roughly similar to what we use in the 2000s. At the same time, the 19th century guitar became more associated with six string models. In big bands of the 1920s, the guitar played backing chords. The development of guitar amplifiers, which contained a power amplifier, the development of the electric guitar provided guitarists with an instrument that was built to connect to guitar amplifiers. Electric guitars have magnetic pickups, volume control knobs and an output jack, in the 1960s, larger, more powerful guitar amplifiers were developed, called stacks
4.
Range (music)
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In music, the range of a musical instrument is the distance from the lowest to the highest pitch it can play. For a singing voice, the equivalent is vocal range, the range of a musical part is the distance between its lowest and highest note. The terms sounding range, written range, designated range, duration range, a piccolo, for example, typically has a sounding range one octave higher than its written range. The designated range is the set of notes the player should or can achieve while playing, all instruments have a designated range, and all pitched instruments have a playing range. Timbre, dynamics, and duration ranges are interrelated and one may achieve registral range at the expense of timbre, the designated range is thus the range in which a player is expected to have comfortable control of all aspects. The duration range is the difference between the shortest and longest rhythm used, dynamic range is the difference between the quietest and loudest volume of an instrument, part or piece of music. Although woodwind instruments and string instruments have no upper limit to their range. Brass instruments, on the hand, can play beyond their designated ranges. Notes lower than the brass instruments designated range are called pedal tones, the playing range of a brass instrument depends on both the technical limitations of the instrument and the skill of the player. Classical arrangements seldom make woodwind or brass instruments play beyond their designed range, string musicians play the bottom of their ranges very frequently, but the top of a string instruments range is rather fuzzy, and it is unusual for a string player to exceed the designated range. It is quite rare for wind musicians to play the extremes of their instruments, the most common exception is that in many 20th century works, pedal tones are called for in bass trombones. This chart uses standard numberings for octaves where middle C corresponds to C4, in the MIDI language middle C is referred to as MIDI note number 60. The lowest note that an organ can sound is C−1. However, if acoustic combination counts, the lowest note is C−2, *This chart only displays down to C0, though some pipe organs, such as the Boardwalk Hall Auditorium Organ, extend down to C−1. Also, the frequency of the subcontrabass tuba is B♭−1
5.
Musical instrument
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A musical instrument is an instrument created or adapted to make musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can be a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument, the history of musical instruments dates to the beginnings of human culture. Early musical instruments may have used for ritual, such as a trumpet to signal success on the hunt. Cultures eventually developed composition and performance of melodies for entertainment, Musical instruments evolved in step with changing applications. The date and origin of the first device considered an instrument is disputed. The oldest object that some refer to as a musical instrument. Some consensus dates early flutes to about 37,000 years ago, many early musical instruments were made from animal skins, bone, wood, and other non-durable materials. Musical instruments developed independently in many populated regions of the world, however, contact among civilizations caused rapid spread and adaptation of most instruments in places far from their origin. By the Middle Ages, instruments from Mesopotamia were in maritime Southeast Asia, development in the Americas occurred at a slower pace, but cultures of North, Central, and South America shared musical instruments. By 1400, musical instrument development slowed in areas and was dominated by the Occident. Musical instrument classification is a discipline in its own right, Instruments can be classified by their effective range, their material composition, their size, etc. However, the most common method, Hornbostel-Sachs, uses the means by which they produce sound. The academic study of instruments is called organology. Once humans moved from making sounds with their bodies—for example, by using objects to create music from sounds. Primitive instruments were designed to emulate natural sounds, and their purpose was ritual rather than entertainment. The concept of melody and the pursuit of musical composition were unknown to early players of musical instruments. A player sounding a flute to signal the start of a hunt does so without thought of the notion of making music. Musical instruments are constructed in an array of styles and shapes
6.
Pandura
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The pandura was an ancient Greek string instrument belonging in the broad class of the lute and guitar instruments. Musical instruments of this class have been observed in ancient Greek artwork from the 3rd or 4th century BC onward, lute-class instruments were present in Mesopotamia since the Akkadian era, or the third millennium BCE. The ancient Greek pandoura was a medium or long-necked lute with a resonating chamber. It commonly had three strings, such an instrument was known as the trichordon. Renato Meucci suggests that the some Italian Renaissance descendants of Pandura type were called chitarra italiana, information about Roman pandura-type instruments comes mainly from ancient Roman artwork. The word pandura was rare in classical Latin writers, there were at least two distinct varieties of pandura. One type was pear-shaped, used in Assyria and Persia, in this type the body had graceful inward curves which led up gradually from base to neck. These curves changed at the end off the instrument to a more sloping outline. The oval type, an instrument of the Egyptians, was also found in ancient Persia. From the ancient Greek word pandoura, an instrument is found in modern Chechnya and Ingushetia. In Georgia the panduri is a fretted instrument. The modern Georganian panduri instrument is in the tanbur class, tambouras Panduri Baglamas Mandora Bandura Tanbur Bouzouki Mandolin J. W. McKinnon Pandoura in New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments Vol 3 p 10 ed S. Sadie. Picture of a pandura, originally published 1947 in the book The Great Palace of the Byzantine Emperors by David Talbot Rice, henry George Farmer calls the instrument a three-stringed pandoura in his 1949 article An Early Greek Pandore. Website that has a history of Pandura with some good photos
7.
Byzantine lyra
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The Byzantine lyra or lira was a medieval bowed string musical instrument in the Byzantine Empire. In its popular form the lyra was an instrument with three to five strings, held upright and played by stopping the strings from the side with fingernails. Remains of two examples of Byzantine lyras from the Middle ages have been found in excavations at Novgorod. The first known depiction of the instrument is on a Byzantine ivory casket, a notable example is the Italian lira da braccio, a 15th-century bowed string instrument which is considered by many as the predecessor of the contemporary violin. The Byzantine lyra had rear tuning pegs set in a flat peg similarly to the fiddle and unlike the rabāb. However, the strings were touched by the nails laterally and not pressed from above with the flesh of the such as in the violin. The lyra depicted on the Byzantine ivory casket of Museo Nazionale, the soundboard is depicted without soundholes and as a distinct and attached piece, however this might be due to stylistic abstraction. The lyras of Novgorod are closer morphologically to the present bowed lyras, they were pear-shaped and 40 cm long, they had semi-circular soundholes, the lyra of the Byzantine empire survives in many post-Byzantine regions until the present day even closely to its archetype form. The gudok, a historical Russian instrument that survived until the 19th century, is also a variant of the Byzantine lyra, the slightly rounded body of the lyra is prolonged by a neck ending on the top in a block which is also pear-shaped or spherical. In that, are set the pegs facing and extending forward, the soundboard is also carved with a shallower arch and has two small semi-circular, D-shaped soundholes. The Cretan lyra is probably the most widely used surviving form of the Byzantine lyra, currently, numerous models tend to integrate the shape of the scroll, the finger board and other morphology of some secondary characteristics of the violin. On Concepts and Classifications of Musical Instruments, University of Chicago Press, ISBN 0-226-42548-7 Grillet, Laurent, Les ancetres du violon v.1, Paris
8.
Tambouras
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The tambouras is a Greek traditional string instrument of Byzantine origin. It has existed since at least the 10th century, when it was known in Assyria, at that time, it might have between two and six strings, but Arabs adopted it, and called it a Tanbur. The characteristic long neck and two strings, tuned 5 notes apart and it also similar instrument Tambur in Turkish and each of them have same origin. It is considered that the ancestor is the ancient Greek pandouris, also known as pandoura, pandouros or pandourida. Since modern Greek words do not have a transliteration into the Latin alphabet. Even the final -s may be dropped at the transliteration, since it marks the nominative in Greek. Variations of the word are to be found in Greece, tsambouras, the word ταμπουράς comes from Turkish tambur from Arabic ṭanbūr or Persian tunbūra. The tambouras is a fretted instrument of the lute family, close to Turkish saz. It has movable frets that permit playing tunes in the Greek traditional modes and it was also known as Pandouris, Pandoura and Fandouros in the Byzantine Empire. When the tambouras was tempered, it gave rise to the bouzouki, which is, in fact, a recent development of the tambouras
9.
Buzuq
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The buzuq is a long-necked fretted lute related to the Greek bouzouki and Turkish saz. It is an instrument in the Rahbani repertoire, but it is not classified among the classical instruments of Arab or Turkish music. However, this instrument may be looked upon as a larger and deeper-toned relative of the saz, before the Rahbanis popularized the use of this instrument, the buzuq had been associated with the music of Lebanon and Syria. Unlike the short-necked unfretted oud, the buzuq has a neck, smaller body and frets tied to the neck. Typically, it is furnished with two courses of strings which are played with a plectrum, offering a metallic yet lyrical resonance. Some instruments have three courses and up to seven strings total, the name of the instrument may come from Turkish bozuk, it refers to Bozuk düzen bağlama, a tuning of Turkish baglama. Another theory on the origin of the name is that it comes from the Persian expression tanbur e bozorg, tanbur Ali Jihad Racy, Professor of Ethnomusicology, UCLA Maqam World
10.
Baglamas
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For the instrument used in Turkish music, see Bağlama. Musically, the baglamas is most often found supporting the bouzouki in the Piraeus city style of rebetiko, the body is often hollowed out from a piece of wood or else made from a gourd, but there are also baglamas with staved backs. Its small size made it popular with musicians who needed an instrument transportable enough to carry around easily or small enough to shelter under a coat. During parts of the 20th century, players of the bouzouki and baglamas were persecuted by the government, the name comes from Turkish bağlama, a similar instrument. Bouzouki Pandura Tambouras Cretan lyra Tzouras
11.
Greek language
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Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece and other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean. It has the longest documented history of any living language, spanning 34 centuries of written records and its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the major part of its history, other systems, such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary, were used previously. The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin, Cyrillic, Armenian, Coptic, Gothic and many other writing systems. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world, during antiquity, Greek was a widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world and many places beyond. It would eventually become the official parlance of the Byzantine Empire, the language is spoken by at least 13.2 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey, and the Greek diaspora. Greek roots are used to coin new words for other languages, Greek. Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around the 3rd millennium BC, the earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the worlds oldest recorded living language. Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now extinct Anatolian languages, the Greek language is conventionally divided into the following periods, Proto-Greek, the unrecorded but assumed last ancestor of all known varieties of Greek. The unity of Proto-Greek would have ended as Hellenic migrants entered the Greek peninsula sometime in the Neolithic era or the Bronze Age, Mycenaean Greek, the language of the Mycenaean civilisation. It is recorded in the Linear B script on tablets dating from the 15th century BC onwards, Ancient Greek, in its various dialects, the language of the Archaic and Classical periods of the ancient Greek civilisation. It was widely known throughout the Roman Empire, after the Roman conquest of Greece, an unofficial bilingualism of Greek and Latin was established in the city of Rome and Koine Greek became a first or second language in the Roman Empire. The origin of Christianity can also be traced through Koine Greek, Medieval Greek, also known as Byzantine Greek, the continuation of Koine Greek in Byzantine Greece, up to the demise of the Byzantine Empire in the 15th century. Much of the written Greek that was used as the language of the Byzantine Empire was an eclectic middle-ground variety based on the tradition of written Koine. Modern Greek, Stemming from Medieval Greek, Modern Greek usages can be traced in the Byzantine period and it is the language used by the modern Greeks, and, apart from Standard Modern Greek, there are several dialects of it. In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia, the historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of the Greek language is often emphasised. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than a foreign language and it is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, Homeric Greek is probably closer to demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English, Greek is spoken by about 13 million people, mainly in Greece, Albania and Cyprus, but also worldwide by the large Greek diaspora. Greek is the language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population
12.
Greece
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Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, historically also known as Hellas, is a country in southeastern Europe, with a population of approximately 11 million as of 2015. Athens is the capital and largest city, followed by Thessaloniki. Greece is strategically located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, situated on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, the Republic of Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to the northeast. Greece consists of nine regions, Macedonia, Central Greece, the Peloponnese, Thessaly, Epirus, the Aegean Islands, Thrace, Crete. The Aegean Sea lies to the east of the mainland, the Ionian Sea to the west, the Cretan Sea and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. Greece has the longest coastline on the Mediterranean Basin and the 11th longest coastline in the world at 13,676 km in length, featuring a vast number of islands, eighty percent of Greece is mountainous, with Mount Olympus being the highest peak at 2,918 metres. From the eighth century BC, the Greeks were organised into various independent city-states, known as polis, which spanned the entire Mediterranean region and the Black Sea. Greece was annexed by Rome in the second century BC, becoming a part of the Roman Empire and its successor. The Greek Orthodox Church also shaped modern Greek identity and transmitted Greek traditions to the wider Orthodox World, falling under Ottoman dominion in the mid-15th century, the modern nation state of Greece emerged in 1830 following a war of independence. Greeces rich historical legacy is reflected by its 18 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, among the most in Europe, Greece is a democratic and developed country with an advanced high-income economy, a high quality of life, and a very high standard of living. A founding member of the United Nations, Greece was the member to join the European Communities and has been part of the Eurozone since 2001. Greeces unique cultural heritage, large industry, prominent shipping sector. It is the largest economy in the Balkans, where it is an important regional investor, the names for the nation of Greece and the Greek people differ from the names used in other languages, locations and cultures. The earliest evidence of the presence of human ancestors in the southern Balkans, dated to 270,000 BC, is to be found in the Petralona cave, all three stages of the stone age are represented in Greece, for example in the Franchthi Cave. Neolithic settlements in Greece, dating from the 7th millennium BC, are the oldest in Europe by several centuries and these civilizations possessed writing, the Minoans writing in an undeciphered script known as Linear A, and the Mycenaeans in Linear B, an early form of Greek. The Mycenaeans gradually absorbed the Minoans, but collapsed violently around 1200 BC and this ushered in a period known as the Greek Dark Ages, from which written records are absent. The end of the Dark Ages is traditionally dated to 776 BC, the Iliad and the Odyssey, the foundational texts of Western literature, are believed to have been composed by Homer in the 7th or 8th centuries BC. With the end of the Dark Ages, there emerged various kingdoms and city-states across the Greek peninsula, in 508 BC, Cleisthenes instituted the worlds first democratic system of government in Athens
13.
1900s (decade)
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The 1900s was a decade of the Gregorian calendar that began on January 1,1900, and ended on December 31,1909. The term nineteen-hundreds can also equally be used for the years 1900–1999, the Edwardian era covers a similar span of time. There are several varieties of how individual years of the decade are pronounced in English. Using 1906 as an example, they are nineteen-oh-six, nineteen-six, which variety is most prominent depends somewhat on global region and generation. In American English, nineteen-oh-six is the most common, nineteen-six is less common, nineteen-ought-six is recognized, the strength of the comedic effect diminished during the aughts of the next century, as the public grew used to questioning how to refer to an ohs or aughts decade. Russo-Japanese War establishes the Empire of Japan as a world power, battle of Riyadh was a minor battle of the Unification of Saudi Arabia. Battle of Dilam was a battle of the Unification War between Rashidi and Saudi rebels. First Saudi–Rashidi War was engaged between the Saudi loyal forces of the newborn Emirate of Riyadh versus the Emirate of Hail, demand for Home Rule for Ireland Herero and Namaqua Genocide in German South-West Africa. January 1,1901, British colonies in Australia federate, forming the Commonwealth of Australia May 20,1902 — Cuba gains independence from the United States, june 7,1905 — The Norwegian Parliament declares the union with Sweden dissolved, and Norway achieves full independence. October 5,1908 — Bulgaria declares its independence from the Ottoman Empire, April 19,1902 — A magnitude 7.5 earthquake rocks Guatemala, killing 2,000. May 8,1902 — In Martinique, Mount Pelée erupts, destroying the town of Saint-Pierre, April 7,1906 — Mount Vesuvius erupts and devastates Naples. September 18,1906 — A typhoon and tsunami kill an estimated 10,000 in Hong Kong, January 14,1907 — An earthquake in Kingston, Jamaica kills more than 1,000. December 28,1908 — An earthquake and tsunami destroys Messina, Sicily and Calabria, April 26,1900 — The Great Lumber Fire of Ottawa–Hull kills 7 and leaves 15,000 homeless. The fire began on a wharf and spread to the adjacent piers, warehouses, may 3,1901 — The Great Fire of 1901 begins in Jacksonville, FL, USA. July 10,1902 – The Rolling Mill Mine disaster in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, August 10,1903 — Paris Métro train fire. December 30,1903 — A fire at the Iroquois Theater in Chicago, February 7,1904 — The Great Baltimore Fire in Baltimore, USA destroys over 1,500 buildings in 30 hours. June 15,1904 — A fire aboard the steamboat General Slocum in New York Citys East River kills 1,021, june 28,1904 — The Danish ocean liner SS Norge runs aground and sinks close to Rockall, killing 635, including 225 Norwegian emigrants. January 22,1906 — The SS Valencia strikes a reef off Vancouver Island, Canada, the 1900s were marked by several notable assassinations and assassination attempts, July 29,1900 — King Umberto I of Italy is assassinated by Italian-born anarchist Gaetano Bresci
14.
Greeks
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The Greeks or Hellenes are an ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus, southern Albania, Turkey, Sicily, Egypt and, to a lesser extent, other countries surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. They also form a significant diaspora, with Greek communities established around the world, many of these regions coincided to a large extent with the borders of the Byzantine Empire of the late 11th century and the Eastern Mediterranean areas of ancient Greek colonization. The cultural centers of the Greeks have included Athens, Thessalonica, Alexandria, Smyrna, most ethnic Greeks live nowadays within the borders of the modern Greek state and Cyprus. The Greek genocide and population exchange between Greece and Turkey nearly ended the three millennia-old Greek presence in Asia Minor, other longstanding Greek populations can be found from southern Italy to the Caucasus and southern Russia and Ukraine and in the Greek diaspora communities in a number of other countries. Today, most Greeks are officially registered as members of the Greek Orthodox Church, the Greeks speak the Greek language, which forms its own unique branch within the Indo-European family of languages, the Hellenic. They are part of a group of ethnicities, described by Anthony D. Smith as an archetypal diaspora people. Both migrations occur at incisive periods, the Mycenaean at the transition to the Late Bronze Age, the Mycenaeans quickly penetrated the Aegean Sea and, by the 15th century BC, had reached Rhodes, Crete, Cyprus and the shores of Asia Minor. Around 1200 BC, the Dorians, another Greek-speaking people, followed from Epirus, the Dorian invasion was followed by a poorly attested period of migrations, appropriately called the Greek Dark Ages, but by 800 BC the landscape of Archaic and Classical Greece was discernible. The Greeks of classical antiquity idealized their Mycenaean ancestors and the Mycenaean period as an era of heroes, closeness of the gods. The Homeric Epics were especially and generally accepted as part of the Greek past, as part of the Mycenaean heritage that survived, the names of the gods and goddesses of Mycenaean Greece became major figures of the Olympian Pantheon of later antiquity. The ethnogenesis of the Greek nation is linked to the development of Pan-Hellenism in the 8th century BC, the works of Homer and Hesiod were written in the 8th century BC, becoming the basis of the national religion, ethos, history and mythology. The Oracle of Apollo at Delphi was established in this period, the classical period of Greek civilization covers a time spanning from the early 5th century BC to the death of Alexander the Great, in 323 BC. It is so named because it set the standards by which Greek civilization would be judged in later eras, the Peloponnesian War, the large scale civil war between the two most powerful Greek city-states Athens and Sparta and their allies, left both greatly weakened. Many Greeks settled in Hellenistic cities like Alexandria, Antioch and Seleucia, two thousand years later, there are still communities in Pakistan and Afghanistan, like the Kalash, who claim to be descended from Greek settlers. The Hellenistic civilization was the period of Greek civilization, the beginnings of which are usually placed at Alexanders death. This Hellenistic age, so called because it saw the partial Hellenization of many non-Greek cultures and this age saw the Greeks move towards larger cities and a reduction in the importance of the city-state. These larger cities were parts of the still larger Kingdoms of the Diadochi, Greeks, however, remained aware of their past, chiefly through the study of the works of Homer and the classical authors. An important factor in maintaining Greek identity was contact with barbarian peoples and this led to a strong desire among Greeks to organize the transmission of the Hellenic paideia to the next generation
15.
Anatolia
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Anatolia, in geography known as Asia Minor, Asian Turkey, Anatolian peninsula, or Anatolian plateau, is the westernmost protrusion of Asia, which makes up the majority of modern-day Turkey. The region is bounded by the Black Sea to the north, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, the Sea of Marmara forms a connection between the Black and Aegean Seas through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits and separates Anatolia from Thrace on the European mainland. Traditionally, Anatolia is considered to extend in the east to a line between the Gulf of Alexandretta and the Black Sea to the Armenian Highlands, thus, traditionally Anatolia is the territory that comprises approximately the western two-thirds of the Asian part of Turkey. The Turkification of Anatolia began under the Seljuk Empire in the late 11th century, however, various non-Turkic languages continue to be spoken by minorities in Anatolia today, including Kurdish, Assyrian, Armenian, Arabic, Laz, Georgian, and Greek. Traditionally, Anatolia is considered to extend in the east to a line running from the Gulf of Alexandretta to the Black Sea. This traditional geographical definition is used, for example, in the latest edition of Merriam-Websters Geographical Dictionary, under this definition, Anatolia is bounded to the east by the Armenian Highlands, and the Euphrates before that river bends to the southeast to enter Mesopotamia. To the southeast, it is bounded by the ranges that separate it from the Orontes valley in Syria, the first name the Greeks used for the Anatolian peninsula was Ἀσία, presumably after the name of the Assuwa league in western Anatolia. As the name of Asia came to be extended to areas east of the Mediterranean. The name Anatolia derives from the Greek ἀνατολή meaning “the East” or more literally “sunrise”, the precise reference of this term has varied over time, perhaps originally referring to the Aeolian, Ionian and Dorian colonies on the west coast of Asia Minor. In the Byzantine Empire, the Anatolic Theme was a theme covering the western, the modern Turkish form of Anatolia is Anadolu, which again derives from the Greek name Aνατολή. The Russian male name Anatoly and the French Anatole share the same linguistic origin, in English the name of Turkey for ancient Anatolia first appeared c. It is derived from the Medieval Latin Turchia, which was used by the Europeans to define the Seljuk controlled parts of Anatolia after the Battle of Manzikert. Human habitation in Anatolia dates back to the Paleolithic, neolithic Anatolia has been proposed as the homeland of the Indo-European language family, although linguists tend to favour a later origin in the steppes north of the Black Sea. However, it is clear that the Anatolian languages, the oldest branch of Indo-European, have spoken in Anatolia since at least the 19th century BC. The earliest historical records of Anatolia stem from the southeast of the region and are from the Mesopotamian-based Akkadian Empire during the reign of Sargon of Akkad in the 24th century BC, scholars generally believe the earliest indigenous populations of Anatolia were the Hattians and Hurrians. The region was famous for exporting raw materials, and areas of Hattian-, one of the numerous cuneiform records dated circa 20th century BC, found in Anatolia at the Assyrian colony of Kanesh, uses an advanced system of trading computations and credit lines. They were speakers of an Indo-European language, the Hittite language, originating from Nesa, they conquered Hattusa in the 18th century BC, imposing themselves over Hattian- and Hurrian-speaking populations. According to the most widely accepted Kurgan theory on the Proto-Indo-European homeland, however, the Hittites adopted the cuneiform script, invented in Mesopotamia
16.
Rebetiko
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Rebetiko briefly can be described as the urban popular song of the Greeks, especially the poorest, from the late 19th century to the 1950s. The word rebetiko is a form derived from the Greek word rebetis. The word rebetis is today construed to mean a person who embodies aspects of character, dress, behavior, morals, the word is closely related, but not identical in meaning, to the word mangas, which means strong guy that needs correction. The earliest source of the word to date is to be found in a Greek-Latin dictionary published in Leyden, Holland in 1614 where the word ῥεμπιτός is defined as a wanderer, blind, misguided, etc. The melodies of most rebetiko songs are often considered to follow one or more dromoi (Greek for roads or routes. The names of the dromoi are derived in all but a few cases from the names of various Turkish modes, furthermore, rebetika has come to be played on instruments tuned in equal temperament, in direct conflict with the more complex pitch divisions of the makam system. During the later period of the rebetiko revival there has been a cultural entente between Greek and Turkish musicians, mostly of the younger generations. This portion of the repertoire was played almost exclusively on the instruments of Smyrneika/Ottoman café music, such as kanonaki, santouri, politikí lyra, tsimbalo. The scales used in music are the traditional western major and minor scales, such as a series of eastern makams. Some of them include rast, uşşâk, hijaz, saba, most rebetiko songs are based on traditional Greek or Anatolian dance rhythms. Most common are, Syrtos, a name for many Greek dances, Zeibekiko. There is one component within the tradition which is common to many musical styles within Eastern musical spheres. This is the freely improvised unmeasured prelude, within a given dromos/makam and this is known in Greek as taxim or taximi after the Arabic word usually transliterated as taqsim or taksim. The first rebetiko songs to be recorded, as mentioned above, were mostly in Ottoman/Smyrna style and it is a view of the studio of the Athens luthier Leonidas Gailas, whom the artist describes as Fabricatore di bossuchi. The drawing clearly shows a number of bouzouki-like instruments, despite this evidence, we still know nothing of the early history of instruments association with what came to be called rebetiko. This recording, reissued for the first time in 2013, reveals a folk melodic style never recorded before or since, the first recording to feature the instrument clearly in a recognisable somewhat more modern melodic role, was made in 1929, in New York. Three years later the first true bouzouki solo was recorded by Ioannis Halikias, also in New York, in Greece the bouzouki had been allowed into a studio for the very first time a few months previously, in October 1931. The amateur bouzouki player Konstandinos Kalamaras accompanied a professional Byzantine singer, Konstandinos Vorgias, and these recordings marked the real beginning of the bouzoukis recorded career in Greece, a career which continues unbroken to the present day
17.
Greek music
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The music of Greece is as diverse and celebrated as its history. Greek music separates into two parts, Greek traditional music and Byzantine music, with more eastern sounds, Music is a significant aspect of Hellenic culture, both within Greece and in the diaspora. Greek musical history extends far back into ancient Greece, since music was a part of ancient Greek theater. Later influences from the Roman Empire, Eastern Europe and the Byzantine Empire changed the form, in the 19th century, opera composers, like Nikolaos Mantzaros, Spyridon Xyndas and Spyridon Samaras and symphonists, like Dimitris Lialios and Dionysios Rodotheatos revitalized Greek art music. In ancient Greece, men usually performed choruses performed for entertainment, celebration, Instruments included the double-reed aulos and the plucked string instrument, the lyre, especially the special kind called a kithara. Music was an important part of education in ancient Greece, due to Romes reverence for Greek culture, the Romans borrowed the Greek method of enchiriadic notation to record their music, if they used any notation at all. In his lexicographical discussion of instruments, the Persian geographer Ibn Khurradadhbih cited the lūrā as an instrument of the Byzantines along with the urghun, shilyani. These genres have certainly reached a degree of evolution. They were forms of a music that had many elements of ancient Greek origin but also. By the beginning of the 20th century, music-cafés were popular in Greek cities like Constantinople and Smyrna, the bands were typically led by a female vocalist and included a violin. The improvised songs typically exclaimed amán amán, which led to the name amanédhes or café-aman, Greek musicians of this period included Marika Papagika, Rosa Eskenazi and Rita Abatzi. This period also brought in the Rebetiko movement, which had local Smyrnaic, Greek folk traditions are said to derive from the music played by ancient Greeks. There are said to be two musical movements in Greek folk music, Acritic songs and Klephtic songs, akritic music comes from the 9th century akrites, or border guards of the Byzantine Empire. Following the end of the Byzantine period, klephtic music arose before the Greek Revolution, developed among the kleftes, Klephtic music is monophonic and uses no harmonic accompaniment. Many of the earliest recordings were done by Arvanites like Yiorgia Mittaki, instrumentalists include clarinet virtuosos like Petroloukas Halkias, Yiorgos Yevyelis and Yiannis Vassilopoulos, as well as oud and fiddle players like Nikos Saragoudas and Yiorgos Koros. Nisiotika is a term denoting folk songs from the Greek islands. Among the most popular types of them is Ikariótiko traghoúdhi, song from Ikaria, ikariótikos is a traditional type of dance, and also the name of its accompanying type of singing, originating in the Aegean island of Ikaria. At first it was a slow dance, but today Ikariotikos is a very quick dance
18.
Nacre
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Nacre, also known as mother of pearl, is an organic-inorganic composite material produced by some molluscs as an inner shell layer, it also makes up the outer coating of pearls. It is strong, resilient, and iridescent, nacre is found in some of the most ancient lineages of bivalves, gastropods, and cephalopods. The outer layer of pearls and the layer of pearl oyster and freshwater pearl mussel shells are made of nacre. Other mollusc families that have an inner shell layer include marine gastropods such as the Haliotidae, the Trochidae. Nacre is composed of hexagonal platelets of aragonite 10–20 µm wide and 0.5 µm thick arranged in a continuous parallel lamina and these layers are separated by sheets of organic matrix composed of elastic biopolymers. This mixture of brittle platelets and the layers of elastic biopolymers makes the material strong and resilient. Strength and resilience are also likely to be due to adhesion by the arrangement of the platelets. This structure, at multiple length sizes, greatly increases its toughness, nacre appears iridescent because the thickness of the aragonite platelets is close to the wavelength of visible light. These structures interfere constructively and destructively with different wavelengths of light at different viewing angles, the crystallographic c-axis points approximately perpendicular to the shell wall, but the direction of the other axes varies between groups. Adjacent tablets have shown to have dramatically different c-axis orientation. In bivalves and cephalopods, the points in the direction of shell growth. The interlocking of bricks of nacre has large impact on both the mechanism as well as its toughness. In addition, the mineral–organic interface results in enhanced resilience and strength of the organic interlayers, nacre formation is not fully understood. The initial onset assembly, as observed in Pinna nobilis, is driven by the aggregation of nanoparticles within a matrix that arrange in fibre-like polycrystalline configurations. The particle number increases successively and, when critical packing is reached, nacre growth is mediated by organics, controlling the onset, duration and form of crystal growth. Individual aragonite bricks are believed to grow to the full height of the nacreous layer. This produces the hexagonal close-packing characteristic of nacre, bricks may nucleate on randomly dispersed elements within the organic layer, well-defined arrangements of proteins, or may grow epitaxially from mineral bridges extending from the underlying tablet. Nacre differs from fibrous aragonite – a brittle mineral of the same form – in that the growth in the c-axis is slow in nacre, nacre is secreted by the epithelial cells of the mantle tissue of various molluscs
19.
Plectrum
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A plectrum is a small flat tool used to pluck or strum a stringed instrument. For hand-held instruments such as guitars and mandolins, the plectrum is often called a pick, in harpsichords, the plectra are attached to the jack mechanism. A plectrum for electric guitars, acoustic guitars, bass guitars, the size, shape and width may vary considerably. Thin items such as coins, bread clips or broken compact discs. Banjo and guitar players may wear a metal or plastic thumb pick mounted on a ring, guitar picks are made of a variety of materials, including celluloid, metal, and rarely other exotic materials such as turtle shell, but today delrin is the most common. For other instruments in the day most players use plastic plectra but a variety of other materials, including wood. Many guitarists also use the pick and the remaining right-hand fingers simultaneously to combine some advantages of flat picking and this technique is called hybrid picking. A plectrum of the type is often called a pick. The plectra for the Japanese biwa and shamisen can be large. Plectra used for Chinese instruments such as the sanxian were formerly made of animal horn, click on the images to view them in full size. In a harpsichord, there is a plectrum for each string. These plectra are very small, often only about a long, about 1.5 millimeters wide. The plectrum is gently tapered, being narrowest at the plucking end, the top surface of the plectrum is flat and horizontal, and is held in the tongue of the jack, which permits it to pluck moving upward and pass almost silently past the string moving downward. In the historical period of harpsichord construction plectra were made of feather quills. In Italy, some makers used vulture quills, other Italian harpsichords employed plectra of leather. In late French harpsichords by the great builder Pascal Taskin, peau de buffle, modern harpsichords frequently employ plectra made with plastic, specifically the plastic known as acetal. Some plectra are of the variety of acetal, sold by DuPont under the name Delrin, while others are of the copolymer variety. Harpsichord technicians and builders generally use the names to refer to these materials
20.
Mandolin
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A mandolin is a musical instrument in the lute family and is usually plucked with a plectrum or pick. It commonly has four courses of doubled metal strings tuned in unison, although five, the courses are normally tuned in a succession of perfect fifths. It is the member of a family that includes the mandola, octave mandolin, mandocello. There are many styles of mandolin, but three are common, the Neapolitan or round-backed mandolin, the mandolin and the flat-backed mandolin. The round-back has a bottom, constructed of strips of wood. The carved-top or arch-top mandolin has a shallower, arched back. The flat-backed mandolin uses thin sheets of wood for the body, each style of instrument has its own sound quality and is associated with particular forms of music. Neapolitan mandolins feature prominently in European classical music and traditional music, carved-top instruments are common in American folk music and bluegrass music. Flat-backed instruments are used in Irish, British and Brazilian folk music. Some modern Brazilian instruments feature a fifth course tuned a fifth lower than the standard fourth course. There has also been a type and an instrument with sixteen-strings. Much of mandolin development revolved around the soundboard, pre-mandolin instruments were quiet instruments, strung with as many as six courses of gut strings, and were plucked with the fingers or with a quill. However, modern instruments are louder—using four courses of metal strings, the modern soundboard is designed to withstand the pressure of metal strings that would break earlier instruments. The soundboard comes in many shapes—but generally round or teardrop-shaped, sometimes with scrolls or other projections, there is usually one or more sound holes in the soundboard, either round, oval, or shaped like a calligraphic f. A round or oval sound hole may be covered or bordered with decorative rosettes or purfling, Mandolins evolved from the lute family in Italy during the 17th and 18th centuries, and the deep bowled mandolin, produced particularly in Naples, became common in the 19th century. Dating to around c.13,000 BC, a painting in the Trois Frères cave in France depicts what some believe is a musical bow. From the musical bow, families of stringed instruments developed, since each string played a note, adding strings added new notes, creating bow harps, harps. In turn, this led to being able to play dyads and chords, another innovation occurred when the bow harp was straightened out and a bridge used to lift the strings off the stick-neck, creating the lute
21.
Turkish language
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Outside of Turkey, significant smaller groups of speakers exist in Germany, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Northern Cyprus, Greece, the Caucasus, and other parts of Europe and Central Asia. Cyprus has requested that the European Union add Turkish as an official EU language, in 1928, as one of Atatürks Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman Turkish alphabet was replaced with a Latin alphabet. The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination, the basic word order of Turkish is subject–object–verb. Turkish has no classes or grammatical gender. Turkish has a strong T–V distinction and usage of honorifics, Turkish uses second-person pronouns that distinguish varying levels of politeness, social distance, age, courtesy or familiarity toward the addressee. The plural second-person pronoun and verb forms are used referring to a person out of respect. Turkic languages belong to the Altaic language group, the Turkic family comprises some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and Siberia. Turkish is a member of the Oghuz group of languages, a subgroup of the Turkic language family, there is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz Turkic languages, including Azerbaijani, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, and Balkan Gagauz Turkish. The earliest known Old Turkic inscriptions are the three monumental Orkhon inscriptions found in modern Mongolia, erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khagan, these date back to the second Turk Kaghanate. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, following the adoption of Islam c. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Divan poetry, was influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a reform to replace loanwords of Arabic. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the terms of Arabic or Persian origin. The past few decades have seen the work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance, however, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changes—such as bölem to replace fırka, political party—also failed to meet with popular approval, some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings, for example betik is now used to mean script in computer science
22.
Reentrant tuning
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On a stringed instrument, a break in an otherwise ascending order of string pitches is known as a re-entry. A re-entrant tuning, therefore, is a tuning where the strings are not all ordered from the lowest pitch to the highest pitch, most common re-entrant tunings have only one re-entry. In the case of the ukulele, for example, the re-entry is between the third and fourth strings, while in the case of the Venezuelan cuatro it is between the first and second strings. Ukuleles other than the tenor and baritone are most commonly tuned in re-entrant fashion and these conventional re-entrant tunings are sometimes known as high 4th tunings. Non re-entrant tunings, also known as low 4th tunings, exist for these instruments, the Andean charango, a small 5-course, 10-string guitar frequently made from an armadillo shell, is most usually tuned in re-entrant fashion, with re-entry between the third and second courses. Other members of the family, such as the hualaycho and charangon are usually similarly tuned, the ronroco is often. The ten string guitar was originally designed for a specific re-entrant tuning invented by Narciso Yepes. Both this and other re-entrant tunings, such as the Marlow tunings, are now used and these tunings may also be used on related instruments, such as ten string electric and jazz guitars. The Venezuelan cuatro is a member of the family, smaller in size. The cuatro is similar in size and construction to the ukulele and it is one of several South American instruments by the name of cuatro, despite of the name, not all instruments called Cuatro have four strings, but the Venezuelan Cuatro, preserves this number of strings. The traditional Camburpinton tuning is re-entrant, but with the re-entry between the second and first strings, rather than third and fourth as in the ukulele. The results are different in tone. Other tunings of the Venezuelan cuatro are not re-entrant however they are not as popular as the Camburpinton tuning, note that there is also a 10-string/5-course Puerto Rican cuatro which is not tuned re-entrantly, but in straight fourths. A variety of tunings are used for the four string tenor guitar, one example of a re-entrant tuning for tenor guitar is D4–G3–B3–E4 with strings 3–1 as for the normal 6-string guitar, but string 4 tuned to D an octave above the 4th string of the 6 string guitar. The five string banjo is used in bluegrass music and old-time music. The four string plectrum banjo, and the four string tenor banjo, lack this shorter string, see also the detailed articles on particular instruments
23.
Lute
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The European lute and the modern Near-Eastern oud descend from a common ancestor via diverging evolutionary paths. The lute is used in a variety of instrumental music from the Medieval to the late Baroque eras and was the most important instrument for secular music in the Renaissance. It is also an instrument, especially in vocal works. The player of a lute is called a lutenist, lutanist or lutist, the words lute and oud possibly derive from Arabic al-ʿud. Recent research by Eckhard Neubauer suggests ʿud may in turn be an Arabized version of the Persian name rud and it has equally been suggested the wood in the name may have distinguished the instrument by its wooden soundboard from skin-faced predecessors. Gianfranco Lotti suggests the wood appellation originally carried derogatory connotations because of proscriptions of all music in early Islam. Lutes are made almost entirely of wood, the soundboard is a teardrop-shaped thin flat plate of resonant wood. In all lutes the soundboard has a single decorated sound hole under the strings called the rose. The sound hole is not open, but rather covered with a grille in the form of a vine or a decorative knot. Robert Lundberg, in his book Historical Lute Construction, suggests ancient builders placed bars according to ratios of the scale length. He further suggests the inward bend of the soundboard is an adaptation by ancient builders to afford the lutenists right hand more space between the strings and soundboard. Soundboard thickness varies, but generally hovers between 1.5 and 2 mm, some luthiers tune the belly as they build, removing mass and adapting bracing to produce desirable sonic results. The lute belly is almost never finished, but in cases the luthier may size the top with a very thin coat of shellac or glair to help keep it clean. After joining the top to the sides, a half-binding is usually installed around the edge of the soundboard, the half-binding is approximately half the thickness of the soundboard and is usually made of a contrasting color wood. The rebate for the half-binding must be precise to avoid compromising structural integrity. The back or the shell is assembled from strips of hardwood called ribs. There are braces inside on the soundboard to give it strength, the neck is made of light wood, with a veneer of hardwood to provide durability for the fretboard beneath the strings. Unlike most modern stringed instruments, the fretboard is mounted flush with the top
24.
Manolis Chiotis
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Manolis Chiotis was a Greek rebetiko and laiko composer, singer, and bouzouki player. He is considered one of the greatest bouzouki soloists of all time and he popularised the four-course bouzouki and introduced the guitar-like tuning, who found it better suited to the kind of virtuoso playing he was famous for. The late Jimi Hendrix has often named the world’s greatest guitarist. But when asked by American reporters who his choice was, he surprised them by saying, “You believe I’m the best because you have not listened to Greek Manolis Chiotis playing his bouzouki. ”Hendrix first met Chiotis and his partner, singer Mary Linda, while they were on tour around the United States back in the 1960s. Having attended one of Chiotis’ shows, Hendrix admitted he admired him, Hendrix was Chiotis’ biggest backer even before then-U. S. President Lyndon Johnson invited Chiotis and Mary Linda to the White House to play on his birthday, in the summer of 1961, he played for Aristotle Onassis and Maria Callas, Prince Rainier III of Monaco and Grace Kelly. Journalist Dimitris Liberopoulos, Onassis’ biographer, writes in his book that when the two couples joined one of Chiotis’ shows in Athens, they asked to him in person to congratulate him. Callas told Chiotis that she had been translating the lyrics of his songs to Princess Grace all night long, bouzouki Rebetes Rebetiko Laiko Greek nightclubs Greek music
25.
Gore (segment)
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A gore is a sector of a curved surface or the curved surface that lies between two close lines of longitude on a globe and may be flattened to a plane surface with little distortion. The term has been extended to include similarly shaped pieces such as the panels of a balloon or parachute. Spherical globes of the Earth and Celestial sphere were first mass-produced by Johannes Schöner using a process of printing map details on 12 paper gores that were cut out then pasted to a sphere and this process is still often used. The gores are conveniently made to each have a width of 30 degrees of longitude matching the principal meridians from the South Pole, parachutes and hot air balloons are made from gores of lightweight material. The gores are cut from flat material, and stitched together to various shapes. Corners in round duct-work can be created by welding or fixing gores of metal sheet to form a bend, some designers use the stretched grid method to design gores that are cut out of weather-resistant fabric and then stitched together to form fabric structures
26.
Shellac
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Shellac is a resin secreted by the female lac bug, on trees in the forests of India and Thailand. It is processed and sold as dry flakes and dissolved in ethanol to make liquid shellac, Shellac functions as a tough natural primer, sanding sealant, tannin-blocker, odour-blocker, stain, and high-gloss varnish. Shellac was once used in applications as it possesses good insulation qualities. Phonograph and 78 rpm gramophone records were made of it until vinyl long-playing records from the 1950s onwards, Shellac comes from shell and lac, a calque of French laque en écailles, lac in thin pieces, later gomme-laque, gum lac. Most European languages have borrowed the word for the substance from English or from the German equivalent Schellack. Shellac is scraped from the bark of the trees where the female lac bug, Kerria lacca, though these tunnels are sometimes referred to as cocoons, they are not literally cocoons in the entomological sense. This insect is in the superfamily as the insect from which cochineal is obtained. The insects suck the sap of the tree and excrete sticklac almost constantly, the least coloured shellac is produced when the insects feed on the kusum tree. The number of lac bugs required to produce 1 kilogram of shellac has variously been estimated as 50,000,200,000, or 300,000. The root word lakh is a South Asian unit for 100,000 and presumably refers to the numbers of insects that swarm on host trees. The raw shellac, which contains bark shavings and lac bugs removed during scraping, is placed in canvas tubes and this causes the shellac to liquefy, and it seeps out of the canvas, leaving the bark and bugs behind. The thick, sticky shellac is then dried into a sheet and broken into flakes, or dried into buttons, then bagged. The end-user then crushes it into a powder and mixes it with ethyl alcohol before use, to dissolve the flakes. Liquid shellac has a shelf life, so is sold in dry form for dissolution before use. Liquid shellac sold in stores is often marked with the production date. Some manufacturers have ceased labeling shellac with the date but the production date may be discernible from the production lot code. Alternatively, old shellac may be tested to see if it is still usable, Shellac that remains tacky for a long time is no longer usable. Storage life depends on temperature, so refrigeration extends shelf life
27.
Athens
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Athens is the capital and largest city of Greece. In modern times, Athens is a cosmopolitan metropolis and central to economic, financial, industrial, maritime. In 2015, Athens was ranked the worlds 29th richest city by purchasing power, Athens is recognised as a global city because of its location and its importance in shipping, finance, commerce, media, entertainment, arts, international trade, culture, education and tourism. It is one of the biggest economic centres in southeastern Europe, with a financial sector. The municipality of Athens had a population of 664,046 within its limits. The urban area of Athens extends beyond its administrative city limits. According to Eurostat in 2011, the Functional urban areas of Athens was the 9th most populous FUA in the European Union, Athens is also the southernmost capital on the European mainland. The city also retains Roman and Byzantine monuments, as well as a number of Ottoman monuments. Athens is home to two UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the Acropolis of Athens and the medieval Daphni Monastery, Athens was the host city of the first modern-day Olympic Games in 1896, and 108 years later it welcomed home the 2004 Summer Olympics. In Ancient Greek, the name of the city was Ἀθῆναι a plural, in earlier Greek, such as Homeric Greek, the name had been current in the singular form though, as Ἀθήνη. It was possibly rendered in the later on, like those of Θῆβαι and Μυκῆναι. During the medieval period the name of the city was rendered once again in the singular as Ἀθήνα, an etiological myth explaining how Athens has acquired its name was well known among ancient Athenians and even became the theme of the sculpture on the West pediment of the Parthenon. The goddess of wisdom, Athena, and the god of the seas, Poseidon had many disagreements, in an attempt to compel the people, Poseidon created a salt water spring by striking the ground with his trident, symbolizing naval power. However, when Athena created the tree, symbolizing peace and prosperity. Different etymologies, now rejected, were proposed during the 19th century. Christian Lobeck proposed as the root of the name the word ἄθος or ἄνθος meaning flower, ludwig von Döderlein proposed the stem of the verb θάω, stem θη- to denote Athens as having fertile soil. In classical literature, the city was referred to as the City of the Violet Crown, first documented in Pindars ἰοστέφανοι Ἀθᾶναι. In medieval texts, variant names include Setines, Satine, and Astines, today the caption η πρωτεύουσα, the capital, has become somewhat common
28.
Ancient Greece
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Ancient Greece was a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th-9th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and this was followed by the period of Classical Greece, an era that began with the Greco-Persian Wars, lasting from the 5th to 4th centuries BC. Due to the conquests by Alexander the Great of Macedonia, Hellenistic civilization flourished from Central Asia to the end of the Mediterranean Sea. Classical Greek culture, especially philosophy, had a influence on ancient Rome. For this reason Classical Greece is generally considered to be the culture which provided the foundation of modern Western culture and is considered the cradle of Western civilization. Classical Antiquity in the Mediterranean region is considered to have begun in the 8th century BC. Classical Antiquity in Greece is preceded by the Greek Dark Ages and this period is succeeded, around the 8th century BC, by the Orientalizing Period during which a strong influence of Syro-Hittite, Jewish, Assyrian, Phoenician and Egyptian cultures becomes apparent. The end of the Dark Ages is also dated to 776 BC. The Archaic period gives way to the Classical period around 500 BC, Ancient Periods Astronomical year numbering Dates are approximate, consult particular article for details The history of Greece during Classical Antiquity may be subdivided into five major periods. The earliest of these is the Archaic period, in which artists made larger free-standing sculptures in stiff, the Archaic period is often taken to end with the overthrow of the last tyrant of Athens and the start of Athenian Democracy in 508 BC. It was followed by the Classical period, characterized by a style which was considered by observers to be exemplary, i. e. classical, as shown in the Parthenon. This period saw the Greco-Persian Wars and the Rise of Macedon, following the Classical period was the Hellenistic period, during which Greek culture and power expanded into the Near and Middle East. This period begins with the death of Alexander and ends with the Roman conquest, Herodotus is widely known as the father of history, his Histories are eponymous of the entire field. Herodotus was succeeded by authors such as Thucydides, Xenophon, Demosthenes, Plato, most of these authors were either Athenian or pro-Athenian, which is why far more is known about the history and politics of Athens than those of many other cities. Their scope is limited by a focus on political, military and diplomatic history, ignoring economic. In the 8th century BC, Greece began to emerge from the Dark Ages which followed the fall of the Mycenaean civilization, literacy had been lost and Mycenaean script forgotten, but the Greeks adopted the Phoenician alphabet, modifying it to create the Greek alphabet. The Lelantine War is the earliest documented war of the ancient Greek period and it was fought between the important poleis of Chalcis and Eretria over the fertile Lelantine plain of Euboea. Both cities seem to have suffered a decline as result of the long war, a mercantile class arose in the first half of the 7th century BC, shown by the introduction of coinage in about 680 BC
29.
National Archaeological Museum, Athens
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The National Archaeological Museum in Athens houses some of the most important artifacts from a variety of archaeological locations around Greece from prehistory to late antiquity. It is considered one of the greatest museums in the world, the first national archaeological museum in Greece was established by prime minister of Greece Ioannis Kapodistrias in Aigina in 1829. The initial name for the museum was The Central Museum and it was renamed to its current name in 1881 by Prime Minister of Greece Charilaos Trikoupis. In 1887 the important archaeologist Valerios Stais became the museums curator, during World War II the museum was closed and the antiquities were sealed in special protective boxes and buried, in order to avoid their destruction and looting. In 1945 exhibits were displayed under the direction of Christos Karouzos. The south wing of the houses the Epigraphic Museum with the richest collection of inscriptions in the world. The inscriptions museum expanded between 1953 and 1960 with the designs of Patroklos Karantinos. The museum has an imposing neo-classical design which was popular in Europe at the time and is in accordance with the classical style artifacts that it houses. The initial plan was conceived by the architect Ludwig Lange and it was modified by Panagis Kalkos who was the main architect, Armodios Vlachos. At the front of the museum there is a large neo-classic design garden which is decorated with sculptures, the building has undergone many expansions. These expansions were necessary to accommodate the growing collection of artifacts. The most recent refurbishment of the museum more than 1.5 years to complete. The Minoan frescoes rooms opened to the public in 2005, on May 2008 the Culture Minister Mihalis Liapis inaugurated the much anticipated collection of Egyptian antiquities and the collection of Eleni and Antonis Stathatos. Today, there is a discussion regarding the need to further expand the museum to adjacent areas. A new plan has made for a subterranean expansion at the front of the museum. The museums collections are organised in sections, The prehistoric collection displays objects from the Neolithic era, Early and Mid-Bronze age, objects classified as Cycladic and Mycenaean art. There are ceramic finds from various important Neolithic sites such as Dimini and Sesclo from middle Helladic ceramics from Boeotia, Attica, some objects from Heinrich Schliemann excavations in Troy are also on display. Cycladic collection features the famous marble figurines from the Aegean islands of Delos and Keros including the Lutist, of great interest are the two golden cups from Vafeio showing a scene of the capture of a bull
30.
Byzantine Empire
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It survived the fragmentation and fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD and continued to exist for an additional thousand years until it fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. During most of its existence, the empire was the most powerful economic, cultural, several signal events from the 4th to 6th centuries mark the period of transition during which the Roman Empires Greek East and Latin West divided. Constantine I reorganised the empire, made Constantinople the new capital, under Theodosius I, Christianity became the Empires official state religion and other religious practices were proscribed. Finally, under the reign of Heraclius, the Empires military, the borders of the Empire evolved significantly over its existence, as it went through several cycles of decline and recovery. During the reign of Maurice, the Empires eastern frontier was expanded, in a matter of years the Empire lost its richest provinces, Egypt and Syria, to the Arabs. This battle opened the way for the Turks to settle in Anatolia, the Empire recovered again during the Komnenian restoration, such that by the 12th century Constantinople was the largest and wealthiest European city. Despite the eventual recovery of Constantinople in 1261, the Byzantine Empire remained only one of several small states in the area for the final two centuries of its existence. Its remaining territories were annexed by the Ottomans over the 15th century. The Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453 finally ended the Byzantine Empire, the term comes from Byzantium, the name of the city of Constantinople before it became Constantines capital. This older name of the city would rarely be used from this point onward except in historical or poetic contexts. The publication in 1648 of the Byzantine du Louvre, and in 1680 of Du Canges Historia Byzantina further popularised the use of Byzantine among French authors, however, it was not until the mid-19th century that the term came into general use in the Western world. The Byzantine Empire was known to its inhabitants as the Roman Empire, the Empire of the Romans, Romania, the Roman Republic, Graikia, and also as Rhōmais. The inhabitants called themselves Romaioi and Graikoi, and even as late as the 19th century Greeks typically referred to modern Greek as Romaika and Graikika. The authority of the Byzantine emperor as the legitimate Roman emperor was challenged by the coronation of Charlemagne as Imperator Augustus by Pope Leo III in the year 800. No such distinction existed in the Islamic and Slavic worlds, where the Empire was more seen as the continuation of the Roman Empire. In the Islamic world, the Roman Empire was known primarily as Rûm, the Roman army succeeded in conquering many territories covering the entire Mediterranean region and coastal regions in southwestern Europe and north Africa. These territories were home to different cultural groups, both urban populations and rural populations. The West also suffered heavily from the instability of the 3rd century AD
31.
Old Parliament House, Athens
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The Old Parliament building at Stadiou Street in Athens, housed the Greek Parliament between 1875 and 1935. It now houses the countrys National Historical Museum, the site was occupied originally by the house of the Athenian magnate and politician, Alexandros Kontostavlos. After Athens became the capital of Greece in 1833, King Otto selected it as temporary residence, pending the construction of the Royal Palace. In 1835, a dance and banquet hall was added to the house, and after the 1843 Revolution, which forced King Otto to grant a constitution. In October 1854, however, the burned down in a fire. Construction of a new building began in August 1858, with the foundation laid by Queen Amalia. During the interim, Parliament had been housed on the back of the square in a building, hastily erected in 1863. The Hellenic Parliament would remain in the building from 1875 until its move to its current location in the Old Palace in 1935, after the parliament was moved, the building housed the Ministry of Justice. In 1961 the building underwent extensive restoration and became the seat of the National History Museum, in front of the building stands a large bronze equestrian statue of General Theodoros Kolokotronis. The bronze statue of the commander in chief of the Revolution of 1821 is a work of sculptor Lazaros Sochos, and was originally placed at the beginning of Kolokotronis street. It was transferred to its current location in 1954, during the restoration of the Old Parliament Building and its pedestal features bronze reliefs of the Battle of Dervenakia, and of a session of the Peloponnesian Senate during the Greek Revolution. The statue faces Stadiou Street, Kolokotronis turns his head towards the Parliament House and his hand is pointing the way where, during the 19th century. According to a joke, the hero of the Revolution was showing parliamentarians that, because of their subservience to the King. The museum houses the collection of the Historical and Ethnological Society of Greece and it is the oldest collection of its kind in Greece, and prior to its transfer to the Old Parliament, was housed in the main building of the National Technical University. The collection is displayed in the corridors and rooms of the building, Old Parliament, From Action to Memory, from the Foundation of the Hellenic World Official site of the museum Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Tourism Hellenic Ministry of Foreign Affairs
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Greek War of Independence
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The Greek War of Independence, also known as the Greek Revolution, was a successful war of independence waged by the Greek revolutionaries between 1821 and 1832 against the Ottoman Empire. Even several decades before the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453, during this time, there were several revolt attempts by Greeks to gain independence from Ottoman control. In 1814, an organization called the Filiki Eteria was founded with the aim of liberating Greece. The Filiki Eteria planned to launch revolts in the Peloponnese, the Danubian Principalities, the first of these revolts began on 6 March 1821 in the Danubian Principalities, but it was soon put down by the Ottomans. The events in the north urged the Greeks in the Peloponnese into action and on 17 March 1821 and this declaration was the start of a spring of revolutionary actions from other controlled states against the Ottoman Empire. By the end of the month, the Peloponnese was in revolt against the Turks and by October 1821. The Peloponnesian revolt was followed by revolts in Crete, Macedonia, and Central Greece. Meanwhile, the makeshift Greek navy was achieving success against the Ottoman navy in the Aegean Sea, tensions soon developed among different Greek factions, leading to two consecutive civil wars. In the meantime, the Ottoman Sultan negotiated with Mehmet Ali of Egypt, although Ibrahim was defeated in Mani, he had succeeded in suppressing most of the revolt in the Peloponnese, and Athens had been retaken. Following years of negotiation, three Great Powers—Russia, Britain and France—decided to intervene in the conflict and each sent a navy to Greece. Following news that combined Ottoman–Egyptian fleets were going to attack the Greek island of Hydra, the battle began after a tense week-long standoff, ending in the destruction of the Ottoman–Egyptian fleet. As a result of years of negotiation, Greece was finally recognized as an independent nation in the Treaty of Constantinople of May 1832, the Revolution is celebrated by the modern Greek state as a national day on 25 March. The Fall of Constantinople on 29 May 1453 and the subsequent fall of the states of the Byzantine Empire marked the end of Byzantine sovereignty. After that, the Ottoman Empire ruled the Balkans and Anatolia, Orthodox Christians were granted some political rights under Ottoman rule, but they were considered inferior subjects. The majority of Greeks were called Rayah by the Turks, a name referred to the large mass of non-Muslim subjects under the Ottoman ruling class. Demetrius Chalcondyles called on Venice and all of the Latins to aid the Greeks against the abominable, monstrous, however, Greece was to remain under Ottoman rule for several more centuries. The Greek Revolution was not an event, numerous failed attempts at regaining independence took place throughout the history of the Ottoman era. Throughout the 17th century there was resistance to the Ottomans in the Morea and elsewhere
33.
Yannis Makriyannis
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Yannis Makriyannis, born Ioannis Triantaphyllos, was a Greek merchant, military officer, politician and author, best known today for his Memoirs. Starting from humble origins, he joined the Greek struggle for independence, achieving the rank of general, despite his important contributions to the political life of the early Greek state, general Makriyannis is mostly remembered for his Memoirs. Aside from being a source of historical and cultural information about the period, indeed, its literary quality led Nobel laureate Giorgos Seferis to call Makriyannis one of the greatest masters of Modern Greek prose. Yannis Makriyannis was born to a family in the village of Avoriti. Makriyannis was a nickname he acquired because of his height and his father, Dimitris Triantaphyllou, was killed in a clash with the forces of Ali Pasha. His family was forced to flee to Levadeia, where Makriyannis spent his childhood up to 1811. At age seven, he was given as a son to a wealthy man from Levadeia. Thus, in 1811 he left for Arta to stay with an acquaintance who maintained relations with Ali Pasha. There, still a teenager, he was involved in trade and, according to his memoirs and his property amounted to 40,000 piastres. According to Sphyroeras, he joined the Filiki Etaireia, a secret anti-Ottoman society. In March 1821 he left for Patras, in the Peloponnese and his actual assignment, however, was to inform local members of the Filiki Etaireia of the state of affairs in his native Roumeli. He was held captive for 90 days but managed to escape and, in August 1821, first took up arms against the Ottomans under chieftain Gogos Bakolas. Under the command of Gogos Bakolas, in September 1821 he took part in the battle of Stavros, near Tzoumerka, and in the battle of Peta, a few days later he took part in the siege of Arta that temporarily brought the city under Greek control. In late 1821, he left for Mesolonghi, but there, according to his memoirs, he fell seriously ill, only recovering in March 1822. Having spent his recovery in the village of Sernikaki, near Salona, he resumed military action and he fought alongside several other chieftains during the successful siege of Patratziki, which had been fortified with considerable Ottoman forces. After the Acropolis of Athens was surrendered by the Ottomans in June 1822, in that office, he took severe measures aimed at stopping arbitrary oppression of the populace and thievery. In the summer of 1823, he fought alongside Nikitaras in the part of Central Greece. In October 1823, he led a force of Roumeliots in the Peloponnese, for his actions during that conflict, he was rewarded with the rank of brigadier, promoted to lieutenant general in August 1824 and full general in late 1824
34.
National Historical Museum, Athens
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The National Historical Museum, founded in 1882, is the oldest of its kind in Greece. It is located in the Old Parliament House at Stadiou Street in Athens, the museum houses the collection of the Historical and Ethnological Society of Greece, founded in 1882. It is the oldest collection of its kind in Greece, the collection is displayed in the corridors and rooms of the building, while the great central hall of the National Assembly is used for conferences. Official site of the museum Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Tourism Hellenic Ministry of Foreign Affairs
35.
Tzouras
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The Tzouras, is a Greek stringed musical instrument related to the Bouzouki. Its name comes from the Turkish Cura and it has 6 strings in 3 courses and is tuned D3 D4, A3 A3, D4 D4 or D4 D3, A3 A3, D4 D4. The strings are made of steel, saro Tribastone Mikal Cronin Greek musical instruments Greek music Pandura Cretan lyra
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Andy Irvine (musician)
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Andrew Kennedy Andy Irvine is an Irish folk musician, singer-songwriter, and a founding member of popular bands Sweeneys Men, Planxty, Patrick Street, Mozaik, LAPD and Ushers Island. He plays the mandolin, mandola, bouzouki, harmonica and hurdy-gurdy, imbued with a sense of social justice, Irvine often selects or writes songs that are based on historical events and presented from the victims perspective. Some of these songs chronicle the abject living and working conditions imposed on groups of people, the emigrants, the migrant workers. Irvines songs also denounce worker deaths and industrial diseases, and lament the plight of hunted animals and his repertoire includes humorous songs, but also bittersweet ones of unrequited love, or of lovers cruelly separated or dramatically reunited. He also sings about famous racehorses, men or women masquerading in various disguises, a fantastical fox preying on young maidens, as a child actor, Irvine honed his performing talent from an early age and learned the classical guitar. He switched to music after discovering Woody Guthrie, also adopting the latter’s other instruments, harmonica. Along with Johnny Moynihan and Dónal Lunny, Irvine is one of the pioneers who adapted the Greek bouzouki—with a new tuning—into an Irish instrument, although touring mainly as a soloist, Irvine has also enjoyed great success in pursuing collaborations through many projects that have influenced contemporary folk music. He continues to tour and perform extensively in Ireland, Great Britain, Europe, North and South America, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. Andy Irvine was born in St Johns Wood, northwest London on 14 June 1942 to an Irish mother from Lisburn, County Antrim, and a Scottish father from Glasgow. His mother, Felice Lascelles, had been a comedy actress and Irvine would later say that she may have given up the stage. As a child, Irvine was given opportunities to appear on stage, TV, in the summer holidays of 1950, when he was eight years old, his first role was to play Jimmy in the film A Tale of Five Cities. At thirteen, he starred as Nokie in the ITV childrens series Round at the Redways, the same year, he was Eric Brandt in Escape to Happiness, for the Armchair Theatre programme and also played John Logie Baird as a boy in the film A Voice in Vision. In early 1958, Irvine featured as Archie Almond in five episodes of Run to Earth. Aged fifteen, he played Lord Heybrook in French Without Tears, for the Saturday Playhouse TV series and, soon after, was one of the Pygmies in Brouhaha, with Peter Sellers as the Sultan. In late 1959, he featured as Lanky Graham in Ask for King Billy and, in early 1960 and his mother had a stack of old, cracked 78s that he used to play on a wind-up gramophone. They were mainly songs from long forgotten musical comedies but I wish I had them now, Guthrie was to become an enduring influence on his music, on his choice of additional instruments and general outlook on life. She was the first person to call him Andy, and thereafter remained a conduit between him and Guthrie. During 1959, Irvine and Elliott also recorded audio tapes to send Guthrie and, after recording one of Guthries songs, Elliott exclaimed, Andy, just as Guthrie had once said to Elliott, Jack, you sound more like me than I do
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Markos Vamvakaris
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Márkos Vamvakáris, was a rebetiko musician. He is universally referred to by writers and fans simply by his first name. The great significance of Vamvakaris for the rebetiko is also reflected by his nickname, Vamvakaris was born on 10 May 1905 in Ano Syros, Syros, Greece. His family belonged to the sizeable Roman Catholic community of the island, the Francosyrians, at the age of twelve, in the false belief that he was wanted by the police, Vamvakaris fled Syros for the port of Piraeus. He worked as a stevedore, a miner, a shoe-polisher, a paperboy, a butcher. He heard a bouzouki player playing, and vowed that if he did not learn to play the instrument in six months he would chop off his own hand with a cleaver and he learned bouzouki, becoming an innovative virtuoso player, and began to write songs of his own. They were extremely popular, and Markos made many recordings, spyros Peristeris, a well-educated musician and repertory manager and orchestra leader for several recording companies, persuaded Vamvakaris to record his songs sung with his own voice. Vamvakaris recorded his first rebetiko disc, Narchósouna re magka mou in 1932, among other songs in that period, he wrote the classic love song Frankosyriani. After the liberation of Greece from the occupation of Nazi Germany, difficult times persisted and he also suffered badly with arthritis in his hands which crippled his bouzouki playing, and from asthma that hampered his singing. Vamvakaris died on 8 February 1972 at the age of 66, Markos composing style was utterly simple, minimal orchestration, melodic lines stripped of any embellishment, and lyrics as devoid of ornamentation as possible. His strophic masterpiece Your eyelashes shine is an example of his art. Your eyes, sister, make my little heart crack, search till youre blind, you wont find another like me. As the years pass, his contribution to Greek music emerges. All other Greek composers, of his time and afterwards, revere him as their master teacher, Markos may be heard on many of the anthology CDs listed in the rebetiko discography. CDs of his own which may be available in English language countries include, Markos Vamvakaris Bouzouki Pioneer, Rembetika 5-Master of Rembetika 1932-193 Jsp Records,2010. Crossroads,2010 Stavros Xarchakos and Nikos Gatsos wrote a song called Gramma sto Marko Vamvakari, sung by George Dalaras, also, Thodoros Derveniotis and Kostas Virvos wrote Markos, sung by Kaiti Abavi. Zervas, in Greek with English subtitles
38.
Guitar
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The guitar is a musical instrument classified as a fretted string instrument with anywhere from four to 18 strings, usually having six. The sound is projected either acoustically, using a wooden or plastic and wood box, or through electrical amplifier. It is typically played by strumming or plucking the strings with the fingers, the guitar is a type of chordophone, traditionally constructed from wood and strung with either gut, nylon or steel strings and distinguished from other chordophones by its construction and tuning. There are three types of modern acoustic guitar, the classical guitar, the steel-string acoustic guitar, and the archtop guitar. The tone of a guitar is produced by the strings vibration, amplified by the hollow body of the guitar. The term finger-picking can also refer to a tradition of folk, blues, bluegrass. The acoustic bass guitar is an instrument that is one octave below a regular guitar. Early amplified guitars employed a body, but a solid wood body was eventually found more suitable during the 1960s and 1970s. As with acoustic guitars, there are a number of types of guitars, including hollowbody guitars, archtop guitars and solid-body guitars. The electric guitar has had a influence on popular culture. The guitar is used in a variety of musical genres worldwide. It is recognized as an instrument in genres such as blues, bluegrass, country, flamenco, folk, jazz, jota, mariachi, metal, punk, reggae, rock, soul. The term is used to refer to a number of chordophones that were developed and used across Europe, beginning in the 12th century and, later, in the Americas. The modern word guitar, and its antecedents, has applied to a wide variety of chordophones since classical times. Many influences are cited as antecedents to the modern guitar, at least two instruments called guitars were in use in Spain by 1200, the guitarra latina and the so-called guitarra morisca. The guitarra morisca had a back, wide fingerboard. The guitarra Latina had a sound hole and a narrower neck. By the 14th century the qualifiers moresca or morisca and latina had been dropped, and it had six courses, lute-like tuning in fourths and a guitar-like body, although early representations reveal an instrument with a sharply cut waist
Media related to Bouzoukis at Wikimedia Commons
