1.
Wind instrument
–
The pitch of the vibration is determined by the length of the tube and by manual modifications of the effective length of the vibrating column of air. In the case of wind instruments, sound is produced by blowing through a reed. Using different air columns for different tones, such as in the pan flute and this method is used on nearly all brass instruments. Changing the length of the air column by lengthening and/or shortening the tube using a sliding mechanism. This method is used on the trombone and the slide whistle, changing the frequency of vibration through opening or closing holes in the side of the tube. This can be done by covering the holes with fingers or pressing a key which then closes the hole and this method is used in nearly all woodwind instruments. Making the column of air vibrate at different harmonics without changing the length of the column of air, almost all wind instruments use the last method, often in combination with one of the others, to extend their register. A more accurate way to determine whether an instrument is brass or woodwind is to examine how the player produces sound, in brass instruments, the players lips vibrate, causing the air within the instrument to vibrate. For example, the saxophone is typically made of brass, but is classified as an instrument because it produces sound with a vibrating reed. In the Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification, wind instruments are classed as aerophones, sound production in all wind instruments depends on the entry of air into a flow-control valve attached to a resonant chamber. The resonator is typically a long cylindrical or conical tube, open at the far end, a pulse of high pressure from the valve will travel down the tube at the speed of sound. It will be reflected from the end as a return pulse of low pressure. Under suitable conditions, the valve will reflect the pulse back, with increased energy, Reed instruments such as the clarinet or oboe have a flexible reed or reeds at the mouthpiece, forming a pressure-controlled valve. Standing waves inside the tube will be odd multiples of a quarter-wavelength, with a pressure anti-node at the mouthpiece, the reed vibrates at a rate determined by the resonator. For Lip Reed instruments, the controls the tension in their lips so that they vibrate under the influence of the air flow through them. They adjust the vibration so that the lips are most closed, and the air flow is lowest, standing waves inside the tube will be odd multiples of a quarter-wavelength, with a pressure anti-node at the mouthpiece, and a pressure node at the open end. For Air Reed instruments, the thin grazing air sheet flowing across an opening in the pipe interacts with an edge to generate sound. The jet is generated by the player, when blowing through a thin slit, for recorders and flue organ pipes this slit is manufactured by the instrument maker and has a fixed geometry
Wind instrument
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Erke, wind instrument of Argentina
Wind instrument
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The bell of a B Flat clarinet
2.
Double reed
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A double reed is a type of reed used to produce sound in various wind instruments. The term double reed comes from the fact there are two pieces of cane vibrating against each other. A single reed consists of one piece of cane which vibrates against a mouthpiece made of metal, hardened rubber, resin, the term double reeds can also refer collectively to the class of instruments which use double reeds. There are several differences, the most obvious being size, between various types of reeds, for example between that for a bassoon and that for an oboe or a cor anglais. Typically, Arundo donax cane is used for the making of double reeds, for bassoon reeds, tubes of this cane are first split lengthwise then gouged to a certain thickness. The chosen piece of cane is cut to shape and the centre portion is thinned. The cane is folded end to end to form the two blades of the reed, the unprofiled end of the cane is shaped into a tube with the aid of a mandrel and bound with three strategically placed wires. A turban made out of thread is added on the third wire and it provides a hand hold for the reed that isnt a sharp wire. The folded tip is cut off to allow the blades to vibrate and final adjustments to the interior of the using a reamer. The reed is then ready to fit to the bocal of the bassoon, note that there are many schools of thought and processes for making reeds. However, because the oboe does not have a bocal, the cane must be fastened to a metal tube, the staple is then inserted into the farrow at the upper end of the oboe. There are many different methods of making reeds and many variations of design have been developed, players can buy reeds either ready-made, or in various stages of formation, such as part-scraped, reed blanks, or buy the staples and cane separately. Cane is sold in forms, as tubes, gouged, gouged and shaped. Bassoon cane has the option of being profiled before purchase. Cane from several different regions is used in reed making, traditionally from southern France, there are also many options with regard to staples, shaping equipment, and so forth, which all have a subtle effect on the tone quality a reed will produce. While cane is by far the most common material for double reeds, reeds made out of synthetic materials may be used, these reeds often last longer and are less sensitive to temperature and humidity flucutations. Most reeds produced from synthetic materials have a quality that is dissimilar to that of a cane reed and are not favored by musicians. However, some recent manufacturers produce synthetic reeds that are used in a professional setting, oboe double reeds are about 7 mm in width
Double reed
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Bassoon reeds
Double reed
–
A bassoon reed
Double reed
–
An oboe reed
3.
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
Range (music)
–
Written range of a
Saxophone.
4.
Djivan Gasparyan
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Djivan Gasparyan is an Armenian musician and composer. He plays the duduk, a double reed woodwind instrument related to the orchestral oboe, Gasparyan is known as the Master of the duduk. Born in Solak, Armenia to parents from Mush, Gasparyan started to play duduk when he was six, in 1948 he became a soloist of the Armenian Song and Dance Popular Ensemble and the Yerevan Philharmonic Orchestra. He has won four medals at UNESCO worldwide competitions, in 1973 Gasparyan was awarded the honorary title Peoples Artist of Armenia. In 2002, he received the WOMEX Lifetime Achievement Award, a professor at the Yerevan State Musical Conservatory, he has instructed and nurtured many performers to professional levels of performance in duduk. In 1998 he released an album with a unique duduk quartet he formed and he has toured the world several times with a small ensemble playing Armenian folk music. His music has been chosen on the soundtrack of several international films
Djivan Gasparyan
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Djivan Gasparyan in 2009
5.
Pedro Eustache
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Pedro Eustache, is a flautist, reeds, world woodwinds, wind synthesist, composer and lecturer with extensive academic studies and more than 40 years of professional experience. He has more than seven years of experience and a collection of around 600 instruments from all over the world, many of which having been designed, built and. These include Hindustani classical music and bansuri with Pdt, Mr. Eustache performed a Multidirectional Flute solo concert at the prestigious Conservatoire National Supérieure de Musique et Danse de Paris-France. Eustache had been invited by flute soloist, Prof. Sophie Cherrier and he was the opening soloist of the 3rd. International Spanish Flute Convention Gala concert, before renowned soloists Davide Formisano and Emmanuel Pahud, Mr Eustache was a featured soloist with the wind ensemble of the Samford University, under the baton of soloist and conductor Demondrae Thurman, Birmingham Alabama, Oct.2014. In 2008 and 2015 gave a solo concerts at the biggest concert-hall in Beirut, Lebanon, both events were widely broadcast in both countries-regions, respectively. In this same year he had his solo concert in his native Caracas, as a soloist and guest teacher for the 2nd. Eustache performed the C. Nielsen Concerto For Flute & Orchestra, conducted by the young dynamo Christian Vasquez, as a studio musician, Mr. Eustache has often provided solo woodwind for recording sessions in Los Angeles. He won the 2007 Film & TV Music Award for Best Instrumental Performance by a Soloist in a Film or Television Score category for his work in Hans Zimmers Pirates of the Caribbean, At Worlds End. He played Middle-Eastern flutes, reeds and Armenian duduk featured in Steven Spielbergs Munich, composed and conducted by John Williams, Persian Ney in “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”. He also soloed extensively in Middle-Eastern woodwinds & duduk with the London Symphony Orchestra for the film, the Mummy 3, Beverly Hills Chihuahua, among many other. His world flutes and woodwinds solos are featured with several artists, including Sir Paul McCartney on his song Jenny Wren. For ten years he was the flute of Yanni Orchestra. He collaborated on 2014 Persian traditional music album Beyond Any Form, pedro is also featured prominently in computer games soundtracks World Of Warcraft, The Burning Crusade, a multiplayer title with over 9 million subscribers worldwide, and Sonys Lair. Mr Eustache was a performer on Gustavo Dudamels Libertador orchestral suite, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl in the Noche de Cine concert special. L. A. Times review of this concert He has been the featured soloist with Yannis orchestra since 1995. Tours, and appears on several of his music videos including Yanni Live at Royal Albert Hall, Tribute. He is the flute, sax & world winds soloist with Persian-pop diva Googoosh since 2000 to present
Pedro Eustache
–
Pedro Eustache
6.
Didier Malherbe
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Didier Malherbe, is a jazz, rock and world music musician, known as a member of the bands Gong and Hadouk, as well as a poet. His first instrument was saxophone, but he also plays flutes, alto clarinet, ocarina, Laotian Khen, Bawu flute, Hulusi, since 1995, duduk has been his preferred instrument. Didier Malherbe began playing saxophone at age 13 after hearing Charlie Parkers Bloomdido, after two years of formal training on saxophone he began to participate in jam sessions at various Paris jazz clubs alongside the likes of Alby Cullaz, Eddy Louiss, Jacques Thollot. He then moved away from jazz, I had grown puzzled about bebop because of so many rules. Then free jazz arrived, which got rid of all the rules, I decided Id rather look elsewhere. In1962, after hearing the first Ravi Shankar album, he travelled to India, back in Paris, he took classical flute lessons, while studying ancient languages at the Sorbonne university. In 1964-65, he travelled around Morocco, staying in a community in Tanger, and absorbing elements of Arabic music. This was such a hit that it was made into a film in 1968. In the summer of 1968, Malherbe left for Majorca, in the Balearic Islands, in 1969, back in Paris, he joined a raga-blues-folk trio, Morning Calm, and played free jazz with American pianist Burton Greene, appearing on his album recorded for the BYG label. The same label released Magick Brother, the first Gong album, on which Malherbe appeared alongside musicians of various backgrounds, Gong became a real band for an appearance at the Amougies festival in October 1969. Malherbe received the stage name Bloomdido Bad De Grasse from Daevid Allen, a combination of the title of the Charlie Parker standard and a rough English translation of his surname. The albums Camembert Electrique and Continental Circus made Gong, along with Magma and others, Malherbe achieved a unique sound by electrifying his instrument, and brought to the band many melodic ideas, which I freely gave away, in a communal spirit. Thats one of the features of my character and my music, I am a spontaneous guy, a final line-up with a percussion section and Allan Holdsworth on guitar recorded Gazeuse. He has always been, and remains, the best musician Gong ever had and they recorded an eponymous album in 1978, the band regularly toured France. In 1981, it was replaced by smaller line-ups, Duo du Bas with Yan Emeric Vagh, in 1980, Didier recorded perhaps his first solo album, Bloom, with a jazz-fusion sound common to that era, but with distinctly French vocals and artsy oddities. In 1982, Malherbe began a partnership with Faton Cahen, former pianist with Magma and Zao, the band was completed by Rémy Sarrazin, Éric Bedoucha and Roger Raspail. An eponymous album appeared in 1986, accompanied by copious touring, during that period he also worked with singer Jacques Higelin, on stage and in the studio. He also played on the first album by EquipOut, a band led by ex-Gong drummer Pip Pyle, and joined Daevid Allen in a new line-up of Gong, in 1990, Didier Malherbe released his first true solo album, Fetish, surrounded by a cast of thousands
Didier Malherbe
–
Didier Malherbe
7.
Woodwind instrument
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Woodwind instruments are a family of musical instruments within the more general category of wind instruments. There are two types of woodwind instruments, flutes and reed instruments. What differentiates these instruments from other instruments is the way in which they produce their sound. Examples are a saxophone, a bassoon and a piccolo, flutes produce sound by directing a focused stream of air below the edge of a hole in a cylindrical tube. The flute family can be divided into two sub-families, open flutes and closed flutes, to produce a sound with an open flute, the player is required to blow a stream of air across a sharp edge that then splits the airstream. This split airstream then acts upon the air contained within the flutes hollow causing it to vibrate. Examples of open flutes are the flute, panpipes and shakuhachi. Ancient flutes of this variety were often made from sections of plants such as grasses, reeds. Later, flutes were made of such as tin, copper. Modern concert flutes are made of high-grade metal alloys, usually containing nickel, silver, copper. To produce a sound with a flute, the player is required to blow air into a duct. This duct acts as a channel bringing the air to a sharp edge, as with the open flutes, the air is then split, this causes the column of air within the closed flute to vibrate and produce sound. Examples of this type of include the recorder, ocarina. Reed instruments produce sound by focusing air into a mouthpiece which then causes a reed, or reeds, similar to flutes, Reed pipes are also further divided into two types, single reed and double reed. Single-reed woodwinds produce sound by placing a reed onto the opening of a mouthpiece, when air is forced between the reed and the mouthpiece, the reed causes the air column in the instrument to vibrate and produce its unique sound. Single reed instruments include the clarinet, saxophone, and others such as the chalumeau, double-reed instruments use two precisely cut, small pieces of cane bound together at the base. This form of production has been estimated to have originated in the middle to late Neolithic period. The finished, bound reed is inserted into the instrument and vibrates as air is forced between the two pieces and this family of reed pipes is subdivided further into another two sub-families, exposed double reed, and capped double reed instruments
Woodwind instrument
–
Alto and
tenor saxophone reeds
Woodwind instrument
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A piper playing the
bagpipes
8.
Armenia
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Armenia, officially the Republic of Armenia, is a sovereign state in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia. The Republic of Armenia constitutes only one-tenth of historical Armenia, Armenia is a unitary, multi-party, democratic nation-state with an ancient cultural heritage. Urartu was established in 860 BC and by the 6th century BC it was replaced by the Satrapy of Armenia, in the 1st century BC the Kingdom of Armenia reached its height under Tigranes the Great. Armenia became the first state in the world to adopt Christianity as its official religion, in between the late 3rd century to early years of the 4th century, the state became the first Christian nation. The official date of adoption of Christianity is 301 AD. The ancient Armenian kingdom was split between the Byzantine and Sasanian Empires around the early 5th century, under the Bagratuni dynasty, the Bagratid Kingdom of Armenia was restored in the 9th century. Declining due to the wars against the Byzantines, the fell in 1045. An Armenian principality and later a kingdom Cilician Armenia was located on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea between the 11th and 14th centuries. By the 19th century, Eastern Armenia had been conquered by the Russian Empire, during World War I, Armenians living in their ancestral lands in the Ottoman Empire were systematically exterminated in the Armenian Genocide. By 1920, the state was incorporated into the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, in 1936, the Transcaucasian state was dissolved, transforming its constituent states, including the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic, into full Union republics. The modern Republic of Armenia became independent in 1991 during the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Republic of Armenia recognises the Armenian Apostolic Church, the worlds oldest national church, as the countrys primary religious establishment. The unique Armenian alphabet was invented by Mesrop Mashtots in 405 AD, Armenia is a member of the Eurasian Economic Union, the Council of Europe and the Collective Security Treaty Organization. Armenia supports the de facto independent Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, which was proclaimed in 1991, the native Armenian name for the country is Հայք. The name in the Middle Ages was extended to Հայաստան, by addition of the Persian suffix -stan, the further origin of the name is uncertain. It is also postulated that the name Hay comes from one of the two confederated, Hittite vassal states—the Ḫayaša-Azzi. The exonym Armenia is attested in the Old Persian Behistun Inscription as Armina, the ancient Greek terms Ἀρμενία and Ἀρμένιοι are first mentioned by Hecataeus of Miletus. Xenophon, a Greek general serving in some of the Persian expeditions, describes many aspects of Armenian village life and he relates that the people spoke a language that to his ear sounded like the language of the Persians. According to the histories of both Moses of Chorene and Michael Chamchian, Armenia derives from the name of Aram, a descendant of Hayk
Armenia
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Reconstruction of
Herodotus ' world map c. 450 BC, with Armenia shown in the center
Armenia
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Flag
Armenia
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The Armenian pagan
Temple of Garni, probably built 1st century AD, is the only "Greco-Roman
colonnaded building" in Armenia and the entire
former Soviet Union.
Armenia
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The
Etchmiadzin Cathedral, Armenia's Mother Church traditionally dated 303 AD, is considered the oldest cathedral in the world.
9.
English horn
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The cor anglais or English horn in North America, is a double-reed woodwind instrument in the oboe family. It is approximately one and a half times the length of an oboe, the cor anglais is a transposing instrument pitched in F, a perfect fifth lower than the oboe. This means that music for the cor anglais is written a fifth higher than the instrument actually sounds. The fingering and playing technique used for the cor anglais are essentially the same as those of the oboe, the cor anglais normally lacks the lowest B♭ key found on most oboes and so its sounding range stretches from E3 below middle C to C6 two octaves above middle C. The pear-shaped bell of the cor anglais gives it a more covered timbre than the oboe, the cor anglais is perceived to have a more mellow and plaintive tone than the oboe. Its appearance differs from the oboe in that the reed is attached to a bent metal tube called the bocal, or crook. The cor anglais is usually notated in the treble clef, a fifth higher than sounding. Some composers notated it in the bass clef, when the register was persistently used. Alto clef written at sounding pitch is used, even by as late a composer as Sergei Prokofiev. In late-18th- and early-19th-century Italy, where the instrument was played by bassoonists instead of oboists. French operatic composers up to Fromental Halévy notated the instrument at sounding pitch in the mezzo-soprano clef, although the instrument usually descends only to low B♮, continental instruments with an extension to low B♭ have existed since early in the 19th century. Examples of works requiring this note include Arnold Schoenbergs Gurre-Lieder and Gustav Mahlers Das Lied von der Erde, antonín Dvořák, in his Scherzo Capriccioso, even writes for the cor anglais down to low A, though it seems unlikely that such an extension ever existed. Reeds used to play the cor anglais are similar to those used for an oboe, consisting of a piece of cane folded in two. While the cane on a reed is mounted on a small metal tube partially covered in cork, there is no such cork on a cor anglais reed. The cane part of the reed is wider and longer than that of the oboe, unlike American style oboe reeds, cor anglais reeds typically have wire at the base, approximately 5 mm from the top of the string used to attach the cane to the staple. This wire serves to hold the two blades of cane together and stabilize tone and pitch. Perhaps the best-known makers of modern cors anglais are the French firms of F. Lorée, Marigaux and Rigoutat, the British firm of T. W. Howarth, instruments from smaller makers, such as A. Laubin, are also sought after. Fox has recently made some instruments in plastic resin and in maple, the instrument originated in Silesia about 1720, when a bulb bell was fitted to a curved oboe da caccia-type body by the Weigel family of Breslau
English horn
–
Cor anglais or English horn
English horn
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Opening motive from the 2nd movement (Largo) of
Dvořák 's
Symphony No. 9, From the New World
10.
Oboe
–
Oboes /ˈoʊboʊ/ OH-boh are a family of double reed woodwind musical instruments. The most common oboe plays in the treble or soprano range, oboes are usually made of wood, but there are also oboes made of synthetic materials. A soprano oboe measures roughly 65 cm long, with keys, a conical bore. Sound is produced by blowing into the reed and vibrating a column of air, the distinctive oboe tone is versatile, and has been described as bright. When the term oboe is used alone, it is taken to mean the standard treble instrument rather than other instruments of the family. In English, prior to 1770, the instrument was called a hautbois, hoboy. The spelling of oboe was adopted into English c.1770 from the Italian oboè, a musician who plays the oboe is called an oboist or simply an oboe player. In comparison to other woodwind instruments, the treble oboe is sometimes referred to as having a clear. The Sprightly Companion, a book published by Henry Playford in 1695, describes the oboe as Majestical and Stately. Humorously, the sound of the oboe is described in the play Angels in America as like that of a if the duck were a songbird. The rich timbre of the oboe is derived from its conical bore, as a result, oboes are readily audible over other instruments in large ensembles. The highest note of the oboe is a lower than the nominally highest note of the B♭ clarinet. Since the clarinet has a range of notes, the lowest note of the B♭ clarinet is significantly deeper than the lowest note of the oboe. Music for the oboe is written in concert pitch. Orchestras normally tune to a concert A played by the oboe, according to the League of American Orchestras, this is done because the pitch of the oboe is secure and its penetrating sound makes it ideal for tuning purposes. The pitch of the oboe is affected by the way in which the reed is made. The reed has a significant effect on the sound of the instrument, Variations in cane and other construction materials, the age of the reed, and differences in scrape and length all affect the pitch of the instrument. German and French reeds, for instance, differ in many ways, weather conditions such as temperature and humidity also affect the pitch
Oboe
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A modern oboe with a reed
Oboe
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Classical oboe, copy by Sand Dalton of an original by Johann Friedrich Floth, c. 1805
Oboe
–
The members of the oboe family from top:
heckelphone,
bass oboe,
cor anglais,
oboe d'amore, regular oboe, and
piccolo oboe
Oboe
–
Oboist
Albrecht Mayer preparing reeds for use. Most oboists scrape their own reeds to achieve the desired tone and response
11.
Shawm
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The shawm is a conical bore, double-reed woodwind instrument made in Europe from the 12th century to the present day. It achieved its peak of popularity during the medieval and Renaissance periods and it is likely to have come to Western Europe from the Eastern Mediterranean around the time of the Crusades. Double reed instruments similar to the shawm were long present in Southern Europe and the East, for instance the Ancient Greek, and later Byzantine, aulos, the Persian sorna, and the Armenian duduk. The body of the shawm is usually turned from a piece of wood. Beginning in the 16th century, shawms were made in sizes, from sopranino to great bass. All later shawms have at least one key allowing an extension of the compass. The pirouette, a small wooden attachment with a cavity in the center resembling a thimble, surrounds the lower part of the reed—this provides support for the lips and embouchure. Since only a portion of the reed protrudes past the pirouette, the player has only limited contact with the reed. In English the name only first appears in the 14th century, the early plural forms were often mistaken for a singular, and new plurals were formed from them. The later reduction in the 15th and 16th centuries to a syllable in forms such as schalme, shaume, shawme. In Portugal there is an instrument called charamela, and the name of the Italian shawm is ciaramella, Instruments resembling the medieval shawm can still be heard in many countries today, played by street musicians or military bands. The latter use would have been familiar to crusaders, who often had to face massed bands of Saracen shawms and nakers and it must have had a profound effect, as the shawm was quickly adopted by Europeans, for dancing as well as for military purposes. The standard outdoor dance band in the century consisted of a slide trumpet playing popular melodies. In many Asian countries, shawm technique includes circular breathing allowing continuous playing without pauses for air, by the early 16th century, the shawm had undergone considerable development. The harsh tonality of the shawm had been modulated somewhat by a narrowing of the bore. This also extended the range, enabling the performer to play the notes in the second octave. Larger sizes of shawm were built, down to the bass in Bb, two octaves and a major third below the soprano in D. However, the larger sizes were unwieldy. The shawm became standard equipment for bands, or waits
Shawm
–
Shawm
Shawm
12.
UNESCO
–
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations based in Paris. It is the heir of the League of Nations International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation, UNESCO has 195 member states and nine associate members. Most of its offices are cluster offices covering three or more countries, national and regional offices also exist. UNESCO pursues its objectives through five major programs, education, natural sciences, social/human sciences, culture and it is also a member of the United Nations Development Group. UNESCO and its mandate for international cooperation can be traced back to a League of Nations resolution on 21 September 1921, on 18 December 1925, the International Bureau of Education began work as a non-governmental organization in the service of international educational development. However, the work of predecessor organizations was largely interrupted by the onset of World War II. On 30 October 1943, the necessity for an organization was expressed in the Moscow Declaration, agreed upon by China, the United Kingdom, the United States. This was followed by the Dumbarton Oaks Conference proposals of 9 October 1944, a prominent figure in the initiative for UNESCO was Rab Butler, the Minister of Education for the United Kingdom. At the ECO/CONF, the Constitution of UNESCO was introduced and signed by 37 countries, the Preparatory Commission operated between 16 November 1945, and 4 November 1946—the date when UNESCOs Constitution came into force with the deposit of the twentieth ratification by a member state. The first General Conference took place between 19 November to 10 December 1946, and elected Dr. Julian Huxley to Director-General and this change in governance distinguished UNESCO from its predecessor, the CICI, in how member states would work together in the organizations fields of competence. In 1956, the Republic of South Africa withdrew from UNESCO claiming that some of the organizations publications amounted to interference in the racial problems. South Africa rejoined the organization in 1994 under the leadership of Nelson Mandela, UNESCOs early work in the field of education included the pilot project on fundamental education in the Marbial Valley, Haiti, started in 1947. This project was followed by missions to other countries, including, for example. In 1948, UNESCO recommended that Member States should make free primary education compulsory, in 1990, the World Conference on Education for All, in Jomtien, Thailand, launched a global movement to provide basic education for all children, youths and adults. Ten years later, the 2000 World Education Forum held in Dakar, Senegal, UNESCOs early activities in culture included, for example, the Nubia Campaign, launched in 1960. The purpose of the campaign was to move the Great Temple of Abu Simbel to keep it from being swamped by the Nile after construction of the Aswan Dam, during the 20-year campaign,22 monuments and architectural complexes were relocated. This was the first and largest in a series of campaigns including Mohenjo-daro, Fes, Kathmandu, Borobudur, the organizations work on heritage led to the adoption, in 1972, of the Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. The World Heritage Committee was established in 1976 and the first sites inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1978, since then important legal instruments on cultural heritage and diversity have been adopted by UNESCO member states in 2003 and 2005
UNESCO
–
UNESCO offices in
Brasília
UNESCO
–
UNESCO
UNESCO
–
UNESCO Institute for Water Education in
Delft
UNESCO
–
The Garden of Peace, UNESCO headquarters, Paris. Donated by the Government of Japan, this garden was designed by American-Japanese sculptor artist Isamu Noguchi in 1958 and installed by Japanese gardener Toemon Sano.
13.
The Russia House (film)
–
The Russia House is a 1990 American spy film directed by Fred Schepisi. Tom Stoppard wrote the screenplay based on John le Carrés novel of the same name, the film stars Sean Connery, Michelle Pfeiffer, Roy Scheider, James Fox, John Mahoney, and Klaus Maria Brandauer. It was filmed on location in the Soviet Union, only the second American motion picture to do so before its dissolution in 1991, bartholomew Barley Scott-Blair, the head of a British publishing firm, is on a business trip to Moscow. He attends a writers retreat near Peredelkino where he speaks of an end to tensions with the West, attentively listening is a mysterious man called Dante. Dante later demands from Barley a promise to do the thing if the opportunity arises. A few months later, unable to locate Barley at a trade show, Landau sneaks a look at the manuscript and delivers it to British government authorities. The manuscript is a document detailing the Soviet Unions capability for waging nuclear war, an investigation reveals Dante is in fact renowned Soviet physicist Yakov Saveleyev and the author of the manuscript. British intelligence officers track Barley to his flat in Lisbon, Portugal. They realize he is as much in the dark as they are, MI6 realizes that the manuscript is also of vital importance to the American CIA, with both agencies wanting Barley to work on their behalf. British agent Ned then gives Barley some fundamental training as a spy, Barley returns to the Soviet Union to seek out Dante/Yakov and confirm he is a genuine informant. He meets with Katya, with whom he is instantly smitten, through her, he confirms that Dante is indeed the brilliant scientist Saveleyev. Barley also denies to Katya that he is a spy, the British run the operation through its first phase while apprising the CIA of its results. Katya sets up a meeting with Dante, going to lengths to avoid being followed. Barley explains that the manuscript is now in the hands of British, Yakov feels betrayed, but Barley convinces him that the manuscript can still be published. Dante gives Barley another volume of the manuscript after Barley assures him that hes sympathetic to the scientists cause, impressed by the additional volume, Russells boss Brady and U. S. military officer Quinn interrogate Barley to be certain where his loyalties lie. Convinced that Dantes manuscripts are truthful, the CIA and MI6 come up with a shopping list list of questions which is meant to extract as much strategic warfare information as Dante can provide. Russia House handler Ned senses something is amiss with Barley but the British-American team continues with its plans, Barley returns to Russia and declares his love to Katya and admits he is an operative. Katya confesses that Yakov is not acting like himself and fears he may be under KGB observation or control and she gives Barley the address where Yakov will be staying when he is in Moscow
The Russia House (film)
–
Theatrical release poster
14.
Gladiator (2000 film)
–
Gladiator is a 2000 epic historical drama film directed by Ridley Scott and written by David Franzoni, John Logan and William Nicholson. It stars Russell Crowe, Joaquin Phoenix, Connie Nielsen, Ralf Möller, Oliver Reed, Djimon Hounsou, Derek Jacobi, John Shrapnel, reduced to slavery, Maximus rises through the ranks of the gladiatorial arena to avenge the murders of his family and his emperor. The film was released in the United States on May 5,2000, the film won multiple awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor for Crowe and three other Oscars at the 73rd Academy Awards. It has also credited with rekindling interest in films centered around ancient Greek. In AD180, Hispano-Roman General Maximus Decimus Meridius leads the Roman army to a victory against the Germanic tribes near Vindobona on the northern frontier. Now weary of battle, Maximus only desires to retire to his Spanish farm estate, but Emperor Marcus Aurelius tells him that his own son and heir, Commodus, is unfit to rule and that he will appoint Maximus as regent to help save Rome from corruption. When the Emperor reveals his plan to his son, Commodus murders him in a fit of rage, Commodus announces he is the new Emperor and asks Maximus for his loyalty. When the general refuses, he is arrested by his officers and is sentenced to death at dawn, Maximus kills his captors and rides for his farm. However, he too late, and finds it destroyed and his family murdered. Maximus buries his wife and son, and then collapses from his wounds and he is found by slavers who take him to Zucchabar, a colonia in the Roman North African province of Mauretania Caesariensis, where he is sold to a lanista named Proximo. As he wins every match because of his skills and indifference to death, he gains fame. Proximo encourages Maximus to go to Rome and fight in the Colosseum and he could then use the power he commands in the arena as leverage against the Emperor. Maximus first gladiatorial combat in the Colosseum is a re-enactment of the Roman victory over Carthage at the Battle of Zama, although the gladiators are expected to be massacred, Maximus leads them to victory over the legionaries of Scipio Africanus. This prompts a surprised and delighted Commodus to enter the arena to offer his personal congratulations, when the emperors young nephew, Lucius, also joins them, Maximus decides not to kill Commodus. Instead he reveals himself and vows to have vengeance, the Praetorian Guard is ordered to attack but this angers the crowd. Under pressure to keep the mob of Rome happy, Commodus angrily relents, Maximus next fight is a victory against a large undefeated gladiator. Despite Commoduss orders to kill the loser, Maximus spares his opponents life. This defiance earns him the nickname Maximus the Merciful and more cheers of adulation, angered at this outcome, Commodus enters the arena to taunt Maximus about his familys death
Gladiator (2000 film)
–
Theatrical release poster
Gladiator (2000 film)
–
Pollice Verso (Thumbs Down) by
Jean-Léon Gérôme, the 19th-century painting that inspired Ridley Scott to tackle the project.
Gladiator (2000 film)
–
Several scenes included extensive use of computer-generated imagery shots for views of Rome.
Gladiator (2000 film)
–
The
Numidian king
Juba. The Numidians were most likely of
Berber origin, instead of Sub-saharan origin.
15.
Eastern Europe
–
Eastern Europe, also known as East Europe, is the eastern part of the European continent. There is no consensus on the area it covers, partly because the term has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, cultural. There are almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region, a related United Nations paper adds that every assessment of spatial identities is essentially a social and cultural construct. One definition describes Eastern Europe as an entity, the region lying in Europe with main characteristics consisting in Byzantine, Orthodox. Another definition was created during the Cold War and used more or less synonymously with the term Eastern Bloc, a similar definition names the formerly communist European states outside the Soviet Union as Eastern Europe. Historians and social scientists generally view such definitions as outdated or relegating, several definitions of Eastern Europe exist today, but they often lack precision or are extremely general. These definitions vary both across cultures and among experts, even scientists, recently becoming more and more imprecise. The Ural Mountains, Ural River, and the Caucasus Mountains are the land border of the eastern edge of Europe. Eurovoc, a multilingual thesaurus maintained by the Publications Office of the European Union, provides entries for 23 EU languages, of these, those in italics are classified as Eastern Europe in this source. Other official web-pages of the European Union classify some of the countries as strictly Central European. The East–West Schism is the break of communion and theology between what are now the Eastern and Western churches which began in the 11th century and lasts until this very day and it divided Christianity in Europe, and consequently the world, into Western Christianity and Eastern Christianity. Since the Great Schism of 1054, Europe has been divided between Roman Catholic and Protestant churches in the West, and the Eastern Orthodox Christian churches in the east, due to this religious cleavage, Eastern Orthodox countries are often associated with Eastern Europe. A cleavage of this sort is, however, often problematic, for example, Greece is overwhelmingly Orthodox, the fall of the Iron Curtain brought the end of the East–West division in Europe, but this geopolitical concept is sometimes still used for quick reference by the media. The Baltic states have seats in the Nordic Council as observer states and they also are members of the Nordic-Baltic Eight whereas Eastern European countries formed their own alliance called the Visegrád Group. Estonia Latvia Lithuania The Caucasus nations may be included in the definitions of Eastern Europe, the extent of their geographic or political affiliation with Europe varies by country and source. All three states are members of the European Unions Eastern Partnership program and the Euronest Parliamentary Assembly, on 12 January 2002, the European Parliament noted that Armenia and Georgia may enter the EU in the future. Georgia — in modern geography, Georgia has been classified as part of Eastern Europe. Under the European Union’s geographic criteria, Georgia is viewed as part of Eastern Europe and is the only Caucasus country to be actively seeking EU membership and it is a member of Council of Europe and Eurocontrol
Eastern Europe
–
Division between the Eastern and Western Churches
Eastern Europe
–
Geographic features of Eastern Europe
16.
Middle East
–
The Middle East is a transcontinental region centered on Western Asia and Egypt. The corresponding adjective is Middle-Eastern and the noun is Middle-Easterner. The term has come into usage as a replacement of the term Near East beginning in the early 20th century. Arabs, Turks, Persians, Kurds, and Azeris constitute the largest ethnic groups in the region by population. Indigenous minorities of the Middle East include Jews, Assyrians and other Arameans, Baloch, Berbers, Copts, Druze, Lurs, Mandaeans, Samaritans, Shabaks, Tats, in the Middle East, there is also a Romani community. European ethnic groups form a diaspora in the region include Albanians, Bosniaks, Circassians, Crimean Tatars, Franco-Levantines. Among other migrant populations are Bengalis as well as other Indians, Chinese, Filipinos, Indonesians, Pakistanis, the history of the Middle East dates back to ancient times, with the importance of the region being recognized for millennia. Most of the countries border the Persian Gulf have vast reserves of crude oil. The term Middle East may have originated in the 1850s in the British India Office, however, it became more widely known when American naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan used the term in 1902 to designate the area between Arabia and India. During this time the British and Russian Empires were vying for influence in Central Asia, Mahan realized not only the strategic importance of the region, but also of its center, the Persian Gulf. Mahan first used the term in his article The Persian Gulf and International Relations, published in September 1902 in the National Review, a British journal. The Middle East, if I may adopt a term which I have not seen, will some day need its Malta, as well as its Gibraltar, it does not follow that either will be in the Persian Gulf. The British Navy should have the facility to concentrate in force if occasion arise, about Aden, India, mahans article was reprinted in The Times and followed in October by a 20-article series entitled The Middle Eastern Question, written by Sir Ignatius Valentine Chirol. During this series, Sir Ignatius expanded the definition of Middle East to include regions of Asia which extend to the borders of India or command the approaches to India. After the series ended in 1903, The Times removed quotation marks from subsequent uses of the term, in the late 1930s, the British established the Middle East Command, which was based in Cairo, for its military forces in the region. After that time, the term Middle East gained broader usage in Europe, the description Middle has also led to some confusion over changing definitions. Before the First World War, Near East was used in English to refer to the Balkans and the Ottoman Empire, while Middle East referred to Iran, the Caucasus, Afghanistan, Central Asia, and Turkestan. The first official use of the term Middle East by the United States government was in the 1957 Eisenhower Doctrine, the Associated Press Stylebook says that Near East formerly referred to the farther west countries while Middle East referred to the eastern ones, but that now they are synonymous
Middle East
–
The
Temple Mount in
Jerusalem
Middle East
–
Map of the Middle East (green).
Middle East
–
The
Kaaba, located in
Mecca,
Saudi Arabia
Middle East
–
Islam is the largest religion in the Middle East. Here, Muslim men are
prostrating during prayer in a mosque.
17.
Central Asia
–
Central Asia stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to China in the east and from Afghanistan in the south to Russia in the north. It is also referred to as the -stans as the five countries generally considered to be within the region all have names ending with the Persian suffix -stan. Central Asias five former Soviet republics are Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Central Asia has historically been closely tied to its nomadic peoples and the Silk Road. It has acted as a crossroads for the movement of people, goods, the Silk Road connected Muslim lands with the people of Europe, India, and China. This crossroads position has intensified the conflict between tribalism and traditionalism and modernization, in pre-Islamic and early Islamic times, Central Asia was predominantly Iranian, peopled by Eastern Iranian-speaking Bactrians, Sogdians and Chorasmians and the semi-nomadic Scythians and Parthians. Central Asia is sometimes referred to as Turkestan, the idea of Central Asia as a distinct region of the world was introduced in 1843 by the geographer Alexander von Humboldt. The borders of Central Asia are subject to multiple definitions, historically built political geography and geoculture are two significant parameters widely used in the scholarly literature about the definitions of the Central Asia. The most limited definition was the one of the Soviet Union. This definition was also used outside the USSR during this period. However, the Russian culture has two terms, Средняя Азия and Центральная Азия. Since then, this has become the most common definition of Central Asia, the UNESCO general history of Central Asia, written just before the collapse of the USSR, defines the region based on climate and uses far larger borders. An alternative method is to define the region based on ethnicity and these areas include Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, the Turkic regions of southern Siberia, the five republics, and Afghan Turkestan. Afghanistan as a whole, the northern and western areas of Pakistan, the Tibetans and Ladakhi are also included. Insofar, most of the peoples are considered the indigenous peoples of the vast region. Central Asia is a large region of varied geography, including high passes and mountains, vast deserts. The vast steppe areas of Central Asia are considered together with the steppes of Eastern Europe as a geographical zone known as the Eurasian Steppe. Much of the land of Central Asia is too dry or too rugged for farming, the Gobi desert extends from the foot of the Pamirs, 77° E, to the Great Khingan Mountains, 116°–118° E. Central Asia has the following geographic extremes, The worlds northernmost desert, at Buurug Deliin Els, Mongolia, the Northern Hemispheres southernmost permafrost, at Erdenetsogt sum, Mongolia, 46°17′ N
Central Asia
–
On the southern shore of Issyk Kul lake,
Issyk Kul Region.
Central Asia
–
Central Asia
Central Asia
–
Uzbek men from
Khiva, ca. 1861–1880
Central Asia
–
Kazakh man on a horse with golden eagle
18.
Balaban (instrument)
–
Balaban, or balaman is cylindrical-bore, double-reed wind instrument about 35 centimetres long with eight finger holes and one thumb hole. This instrument is played in Iranian Azerbaijan and in the Republic of Azerbaijan, in Turkey it is called mey. The origins of this instrument come from Armenian Duduk, which looks similar to it. Balaban can be made of mulberry or other woods, such as walnut. The bore through the instrument is about 1.5 centimetres in diameter, the double reed is made out of a single tube of cane about six cm long and pressed flat at one end. The performer uses air stored in his cheeks to keep playing the balaban while he inhales air into his lungs and this “circular” breathing technique is commonly used with all the double-reed instruments in the Middle East. The balaban consists of a stem, a reed, a regulator, the stem of the balaban, or govda, is a 280–320 millimetres cylindrical tube made primarily of apricot wood. The process of carving a balaban stem is called balaban chakma, the upper end of the stem is given a round shape, whereas the lower end is sharpened. The bore is 10 millimetres in diameter, eight holes or tones constituting a sound tone are made on the obverse and another one is made on the bottom side, opposite of the interval between the first and the second holes of the sas pardasi. Sometimes an additional hole called nizam pardasi is made on the end of the bottom side to ensure good timbre. The holes made on the stem are classified as follows, The reed made of club-rush that grows in an area is inserted into the upper end. It flattens and takes the shape of a double reed and it is tied to a 60 millimetres long and 10 millimetres wide regulator made of a willow or grape branch cut lengthways. The reed is fixed by a collar-like regulator on one side. The cap made of willow, hazel, cornel or mulberry is put on the reed to prevent it from damage and it is tied to the regulator in order not to be lost. On solemn occasions such as weddings and holiday ceremonies, a balaban-player is accompanied by a percussionist, a traditional Azeri musical group consisting of two balaban-players and a percussionist is called balabanchilar dastasi. In the past, the balaban was a musical element in the performance of mugham. It was also used in songs and funeral music. According to Huseyngulu Sarabski, hunters played the balaban to attract quails, certain types of the balaban are also used in ashik music
Balaban (instrument)
–
Azerbaijani folk instrument Balaban.
Balaban (instrument)
–
Balaban in
Azerbaijan State Museum of History
Balaban (instrument)
–
Ashuq plays balaban in
Baku
Balaban (instrument)
–
Azerbaijani musical instruments (including balaban) on the stamp of
USSR, 1990
19.
Armenian language
–
The Armenian language is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenians. Like Hellenic Greek, it has its own branch in the language tree. It is the language of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. It has historically been spoken throughout the Armenian Highlands and today is spoken in the Armenian diaspora. Armenian has its own script, the Armenian alphabet, introduced in 405 AD by Mesrop Mashtots. Armenian is an independent branch of the Indo-European languages and it is of interest to linguists for its distinctive phonological developments within that family. Armenian exhibits more satemization than centumization, although it is not classified as belonging to either of these subgroups, Armenia was a monolingual country by the 2nd century BC at the latest. Its language has a literary history, with a 5th-century Bible translation as its oldest surviving text. Its vocabulary has been influenced by Western Middle Iranian languages, particularly Parthian, and to an extent by Greek, Persian. There are two standardized modern literary forms, Eastern Armenian and Western Armenian, with which most contemporary dialects are mutually intelligible and he is also credited by some with the creation of the Caucasian Albanian alphabet. In The Anabasis, Xenophon describes many aspects of Armenian village life and he relates that the Armenian people spoke a language that to his ear sounded like the language of the Persians. W. M. However, unlike shared innovations, the retention of archaisms is not considered conclusive evidence of a period of common isolated development. Some of the terms he gives admittedly have an Akkadian or Sumerian provenance, loan words from Iranian languages, along with the other ancient accounts such as that of Xenophon above, initially led linguists to erroneously classify Armenian as an Iranian language. Scholars such as Paul de Lagarde and F. Müller believed that the similarities between the two meant that Iranian and Armenian were the same language. The distinctness of Armenian was recognized when philologist Heinrich Hübschmann used the method to distinguish two layers of Iranian loans from the older Armenian vocabulary. Meillets hypothesis became popular in the wake of his Esquisse, eric P. Hamp supports the Graeco-Armenian thesis, anticipating even a time when we should speak of Helleno-Armenian. Nevertheless, as Fortson comments, by the time we reach our earliest Armenian records in the 5th century AD, graeco--Aryan is a hypothetical clade within the Indo-European family, ancestral to the Greek language, the Armenian language, and the Indo-Iranian languages. Graeco-Aryan unity would have divided into Proto-Greek and Proto-Indo-Iranian by the mid-third millennium BC
Armenian language
–
Armenian manuscript, 5th–6th century.
Armenian language
–
regions where Armenian is the language of the majority
Armenian language
–
The Four Gospels, 1495, Portrait of St Mark Wellcome with Armenian inscriptions
Armenian language
–
First Armenian language Bible.
20.
Turkish language
–
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
Turkish language
–
Old Turkic inscription with the
Orkhon script (c. 8th century).
Kyzyl, Russia
Turkish language
–
Countries where Turkish is an official language
Turkish language
–
Road signs in
Prizren,
Republic of Kosovo. Official languages are:
Albanian (top),
Serbian (middle) and Turkish (bottom).
Turkish language
–
Map of the main subgroups of
Turkish dialects.
21.
Apricot
–
An apricot is a fruit, or the tree that bears the fruit, of several species in the genus Prunus. The apricot is a tree, 8–12 m tall, with a trunk up to 40 cm in diameter. The leaves are ovate, 5–9 cm long and 4–8 cm wide, with a base, a pointed tip. The flowers are 2–4.5 cm in diameter, with five white to pinkish petals, the flesh is usually firm and not very juicy. Its taste can range from sweet to tart, the single seed is enclosed in a hard, stony shell, often called a stone, with a grainy, smooth texture except for three ridges running down one side. The origin of the apricot is disputed and it was known in Armenia during ancient times, and has been cultivated there for so long that it is often thought to have originated there. Its scientific name Prunus armeniaca derives from that assumption, for example, the Belgian arborist baron de Poerderlé, writing in the 1770s, asserted, Cet arbre tire son nom de lArménie, province dAsie, doù il est originaire et doù il fut porté en Europe. An archaeological excavation at Garni in Armenia found apricot seeds in an Eneolithic-era site, other sources say that the apricot was first cultivated in India in about 3000 BC. Subsequent sources were often confused about the origin of the species, john Claudius Loudon believed it had a wide native range including Armenia, the Caucasus, the Himalayas, China, and Japan. Apricots have been cultivated in Persia since antiquity, and dried ones were an important commodity on Persian trade routes, apricots remain an important fruit in modern-day Iran, where they are known under the common name of zard-ālū. Egyptians usually dry apricots, add sweetener, and then use them to make a drink called amar al-dīn, in the 17th century, English settlers brought the apricot to the English colonies in the New World. Most of modern American production of apricots comes from the seedlings carried to the west coast by Spanish missionaries, almost all U. S. commercial production is in California, with some in Washington and Utah. In states other than South Australia, apricots are still grown, particularly in Tasmania and western Victoria and southwest New South Wales, today, apricot cultivation has spread to all parts of the globe with climates that support it. Although the apricot is native to a climate region with cold winters. A dry climate is good for fruit maturation, the tree is slightly more cold-hardy than the peach, tolerating winter temperatures as cold as −30 °C or lower if healthy. A limiting factor in culture is spring frosts, They tend to flower very early. Furthermore, the trees are sensitive to changes during the winter season. In China, winters can be cold, but temperatures tend to be more stable than in Europe and especially North America
Apricot
–
Apricot and its cross-section
Apricot
–
Apricot tree in central
Cappadocia, Turkey
Apricot
–
Apricot flowers in the village of Benhama,
Kashmir
Apricot
–
Apricots drying on the ground in Turkey
22.
Diatonic scale
–
This pattern ensures that, in a diatonic scale spanning more than one octave, all the half steps are maximally separated from each other. The word diatonic comes from the Greek διατονικός, meaning progressing through tones, the seven pitches of any diatonic scale can be obtained using a chain of six perfect fifths. Musical keyboards are designed to play notes, and hence diatonic scales. A diatonic scale can be described as two tetrachords separated by a whole tone. The term diatonic originally referred to the genus, one of the three genera of the ancient Greeks. In musical set theory, Allen Forte classifies diatonic scales as set form 7–35 and this article does not concern alternative seven-note diatonic scales such as the harmonic minor or the melodic minor. Western music from the Middle Ages until the late 19th century is based on the diatonic scale, there is one claim that the 45, 000-year-old Divje Babe Flute uses a diatonic scale, but there is no proof or consensus it is even a musical instrument. There is evidence that the Sumerians and Babylonians used some version of the diatonic scale and this derives from surviving inscriptions that contain a tuning system and musical composition. Despite the conjectural nature of reconstructions of the known as the Hurrian songs from the surviving score. The scales corresponding to the medieval Church modes were diatonic, one of these, the one starting on B, has no pure fifth above its reference note, it is probably for this reason that it was not used. Of the six remaining scales, two were described as corresponding to two others with a B♭ instead of a B♮, A–B–C–D–E–F–G–A was described as D–E–F–G–A–B♭C–D and C–D–E–F–G–A–B–C as F–G–A–B♭–C–D–E–F, as a result, medieval theory described the Church modes as corresponding to four diatonic scales only. Heinrich Glarean considered that the modal scales including a B♭ had to be the result of a transposition, by the beginning of the Baroque period, the notion of musical key was established, describing additional possible transpositions of the diatonic scale. Major and minor scales came to dominate until at least the start of the 20th century, some Church modes survived into the early 18th century, as well as appearing occasionally in classical and 20th-century music, and later in modal jazz. Glareans six natural scales could be transposed not only to include one flat in the signature, of these six scales, three are major scales, three are minor. To these may be added the seventh diatonic scale, with a fifth above the reference note. Transposing each of seven scales on the twelve degrees of the chromatic scale results in a total of eighty-four diatonic scales. The modern musical keyboard originated as a keyboard with only lower keys. The major scale, for instance, can be represented as T–T–S–T–T–T–S or 2–2–1–2–2–2–1 The major scale or Ionian scale is one of the diatonic scales and it is made up of seven distinct notes, plus an eighth that duplicates the first an octave higher
Diatonic scale
–
The modern
piano keyboard is based on the interval patterns of the diatonic scale. Any sequence of seven successive white keys plays a diatonic scale.
23.
Octave
–
In music, an octave or perfect octave is the interval between one musical pitch and another with half or double its frequency. It is defined by ANSI as the unit of level when the base of the logarithm is two. The octave relationship is a phenomenon that has been referred to as the basic miracle of music. The most important musical scales are written using eight notes. For example, the C major scale is typically written C D E F G A B C, two notes separated by an octave have the same letter name and are of the same pitch class. Three commonly cited examples of melodies featuring the perfect octave as their opening interval are Singin in the Rain, Somewhere Over the Rainbow, the interval between the first and second harmonics of the harmonic series is an octave. The octave has occasionally referred to as a diapason. To emphasize that it is one of the intervals, the octave is designated P8. The octave above or below a note is sometimes abbreviated 8a or 8va, 8va bassa. For example, if one note has a frequency of 440 Hz, the note one octave above is at 880 Hz, the ratio of frequencies of two notes an octave apart is therefore 2,1. Further octaves of a note occur at 2n times the frequency of that note, such as 2,4,8,16, etc. and the reciprocal of that series. For example,55 Hz and 440 Hz are one and two away from 110 Hz because they are 1⁄2 and 4 times the frequency, respectively. After the unison, the octave is the simplest interval in music, the human ear tends to hear both notes as being essentially the same, due to closely related harmonics. Notes separated by a ring together, adding a pleasing sound to music. For this reason, notes an octave apart are given the note name in the Western system of music notation—the name of a note an octave above A is also A. The conceptualization of pitch as having two dimensions, pitch height and pitch class, inherently include octave circularity, thus all C♯s, or all 1s, in any octave are part of the same pitch class. Octave equivalency is a part of most advanced cultures, but is far from universal in primitive. The languages in which the oldest extant written documents on tuning are written, leon Crickmore recently proposed that The octave may not have been thought of as a unit in its own right, but rather by analogy like the first day of a new seven-day week
Octave
24.
Accidental (music)
–
In music, an accidental is a note of a pitch that is not a member of the scale or mode indicated by the most recently applied key signature. In musical notation, the sharp, flat, and natural symbols, among others, in the measure where it appears, an accidental sign raises or lowers the immediately following note from its normal pitch, overriding sharps or flats in the key signature. A note is raised or lowered by a semitone, although microtonal music may use fractional accidental signs. One occasionally sees double sharps or flats, which raise or lower the note by a whole tone. Accidentals apply within the measure and octave in which appear, unless canceled by another accidental sign. If a note has an accidental and the note is repeated in a different octave within the same measure, the accidental does not apply to the same note of the different octave. The modern accidental signs derive from the two forms of the letter b used in Gregorian chant manuscripts to signify the two pitches of B, the only note that could be altered. The round b became the sign, while the square b diverged into the sharp. Sometimes the black keys on a keyboard are called accidentals or sharps. In most cases, a sharp raises the pitch of a note one semitone while a flat lowers it a semitone, a natural is used to cancel the effect of a flat or sharp. This system of accidentals operates in conjunction with the key signature, whose effect continues throughout an entire piece, an accidental can also be used to cancel a previous accidental or reinstate the flats or sharps of the key signature. Accidentals apply to subsequent notes on the staff position for the remainder of the measure where they occur, unless explicitly changed by another accidental. Once a barline is passed, the effect of the accidental ends, subsequent notes at the same staff position in the second or later bars are not affected by the accidental carried through with the tied note. Though this convention is still in use particularly in music, it may be cumbersome in music that features frequent accidentals. As a result, a system of note-for-note accidentals has been adopted. Accidentals are not repeated for repeated notes unless one or more different pitches intervene, if a sharp or flat pitch is followed directly by its natural form, a natural is used. Cautionary accidentals or naturals may be used to clarify ambiguities, because seven of the twelve notes of the chromatic equal-tempered scale are naturals this system can significantly reduce the number of naturals required in a notated passage. Thus, the effect of the accidental must be understood in relation to the meaning of the notes staff position
Accidental (music)
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This is an example of the use of a double accidental.
Accidental (music)
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Accidentals: sharp, flat, natural.
25.
Chromatic scale
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The chromatic scale is a musical scale with twelve pitches, each a semitone above or below another. On a modern piano or other equal-tempered instrument, all the semitones have the same size, in other words, the notes of an equal-tempered chromatic scale are equally spaced. An equal-tempered chromatic scale is a nondiatonic scale having no tonic because of the symmetry of its equally spaced notes, the most common conception of the chromatic scale before the 13th century was the Pythagorean chromatic scale. Due to a different tuning technique, the twelve semitones in this scale have two different sizes. Thus, the scale is not perfectly symmetric, many other tuning systems, developed in the ensuing centuries, share a similar asymmetry. Equally spaced pitches are provided only by equal temperament tuning systems, the term chromatic derives from the Greek word chroma, meaning color. Chromatic notes are understood as harmonically inessential embellishments, shadings. The chromatic scale may be notated in a variety of ways, ascending and descending, The chromatic scale has no set spelling agreed upon by all. Its spelling is, however, often dependent upon major or minor key signatures, the images above, therefore, are only examples of chromatic scale notations. As an abstract entity, the chromatic scale is usually notated such that no scale degree is used more than twice in succession. The ancient Chinese chromatic scale is called Shí-èr-lǜ, however, it should not be imagined that this gamut ever functioned as a scale, and it is erroneous to refer to the Chinese chromatic scale, as some Western writers have done. The series of twelve known as the twelve lü were simply a series of fundamental notes from which scales could be constructed. The Indian solfège, i. e. sargam, makes up the notes of the chromatic scale with respective sharps. The total chromatic is the set of all pitch classes. An array is a succession of aggregates and these are 19-EDO just intonation approximations. In Pythagorean tuning the chromatic scale is tuned as follows, with higher than their enharmonic flats. The 12 golden notes of music Hewitt, Michael
Chromatic scale
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Chromatic scale drawn as a
circle: each note is equidistant from its neighbors, separated by a semitone of the same size.
26.
Reed (music)
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A reed is a thin strip of material which vibrates to produce a sound on a musical instrument. The reeds of most woodwind instruments are made from Arundo donax or synthetic material, musical instruments may be classified according to the type and number of reeds used. The earliest types of single-reed instruments used idioglottal reeds, where the reed is a tongue cut. Much later, single-reed instruments started using heteroglottal reeds, where a reed is cut and separated from the tube of cane, by contrast, in a an uncapped double reed instrument, there is no mouthpiece, the two parts of the reed vibrate against one another. Single reeds are used on the mouthpieces of clarinets and saxophones, the back of the reed is flat and is placed against the mouthpiece, the rounded top side tapers to a thin tip. These reeds are roughly rectangular in shape except for the thin vibrating tip, all single reeds are shaped similarly but vary in size to fit each instruments mouthpiece. Reeds designed for the instrument may look identical to each other. Hardness is generally measured on a scale of 1 through 5 from softest to hardest and this is not a standardized scale and reed strengths vary by manufacturer. The thickness of the tip and heel and the profile in between affect the sound and playability, cane of different grades, even if cut with the same profile, will also respond differently. This is due to the natural differences in the density of the cane fibers. The cane used to make reeds for saxophone, clarinet, once the cane is cut, it must lay out and dry in direct sunlight for about a month. The cane is rotated regularly to ensure proper and complete drying, once dry, they are taken to be stored in a warehouse. As the cane is needed, it is pulled from the warehouse, once at the factory, the cane is taken to the cutting department where it is cut into tubes. The tubes are graded by diameter and wall density, the tubes are then cut into splits which are transformed into reed blanks. The blanks are tapered and profiled using blades or CNC machines into reeds, after the reeds are completed, they are taken to a machine that grades them for strength. Double reeds are used on the oboe, oboe damore, English horn, bass oboe, Heckelphone, bassoon, contrabassoon, sarrusophone, shawm, bagpipes, nadaswaram and they are typically not used in conjunction with a mouthpiece, rather the two reeds vibrate against each other. Reed strengths are graded from hard to soft, the making of double reeds begins in the same way as how single reeds are made. The cane is collected from Arundo donax, dried, processed, similar to single reed production, the cane is separated into various diameters. The most common diameters for American-style oboe reeds are as follows,9. 5–10 mm, 10–10.5 mm, many American oboists prefer a specific diameter at one time of the year and a different diameter at other times, depending on the season and the weather
Reed (music)
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Alto and
tenor saxophone reeds.
Reed (music)
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Bassoon double reeds.
Reed (music)
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An oboe reed.
27.
Circular breathing
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Circular breathing is a technique used by players of some wind instruments to produce a continuous tone without interruption. This is accomplished by breathing in through the nose while simultaneously pushing air out through the mouth using air stored in the cheeks, the technique was developed independently by several cultures, and is used for many traditional wind instruments. In the 13th century, Asian metalsmiths who specialized in gold and silver used circular breathing techniques for crafting various decorative and ornamental items. In crafting such items, craftsmen were required to blow continuously to the flame through a pipe with a needle-like hole, from such necessity, craftsmen mastered a circular-like cycle of breathing, simultaneously inhaling through their nose while blowing without any pauses. The introduction of the breathing technique in the art of ancient windplayers was a productive invention in its performing technique. A few jazz and classical wind and brass players also use some form of circular breathing, although many professional wind players find circular breathing highly useful, few pieces of European orchestral music composed before the 20th century actually require its use. A notable example of this phenomenon is Moto Perpetuo, transcribed for trumpet by Rafael Méndez from the work for violin by Paganini. In 1997, a Guinness World Record was set for longest held musical note, Kenny G used circular breathing to sustain an E-flat on a saxophone for 45 minutes and 47 seconds. On February 2000, Vann Burchfield set a new Guinness world record for circular breathing, holding one continuous note for 47 minutes,6 seconds, mark Atkins on Didgeridoo Concerto plays for over 50 minutes continuously. The musician inhales fully and begins to exhale and blow, when the lungs are nearly empty, the last volume of air is blown into the mouth, and the cheeks are inflated with part of this air. Then, while still blowing this last bit of air out by squeezing the cheeks, if done correctly, by the time the air in the mouth is nearly exhausted the musician can begin to exhale from the lungs once more, ready to repeat the process again. Essentially, circular breathing bridges the gap between exhalations with air stored in the cheeks, an air reserve to play with while sneaking in a breath through the nose. The usual first difficulty is to inhale through the nose while blowing out air stored in the cheeks, to some this may be a big hurdle, to others no problem at all. One can practice this anywhere anytime by holding a finger in front of an air stream out of the lips. A very simple method to practice this is using a straw to blow on the surface of a cup of water. The aim is to blow continually and switch between cheek air and lung air without any change in the depth of this depression. The traditional method of learning in groups is to have one elder player lead as the chanter zurna. Professional zurna groups may play non-stop for as long as the party lasts, author of Clark Terrys System of Circular Breathing
Circular breathing
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Davul and zurna players. Wind players use circular breathing.
28.
Caucasus
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The Caucasus /ˈkɔːkəsəs/ or Caucasia /kɔːˈkeɪʒə/ is a region at the border of Europe and Asia, situated between the Black and the Caspian seas. It is home to the Caucasus Mountains, which contain Europes highest mountain, politically, the Caucasus region is separated between northern and southern parts. The southern parts consist of independent sovereign states, and the parts are under the jurisdiction of the Russian Federation. The region is known for its diversity, aside from Indo-European and Turkic languages, the Kartvelian, Northwest Caucasian. Pliny the Elders Natural History derives the name of the Caucasus from Scythian kroy-khasis, German linguist Paul Kretschmer notes that the Latvian word Kruvesis also means ice. According to German philologists Otto Schrader and Alfons A. Nehring, the South Caucasus region and southern Dagestan were the furthest points of Persian expansions, with areas to the north of Caucasus Mountains practically impregnable. The mythological mountain of Qaf, the worlds highest mountain that ancient lore shrouded in mystery, was said to be situated in this region, therefore, the Caucasus might be associated with the legendary mountain. The Ciscaucasus contains the majority of the Greater Caucasus Mountain range. It includes Southwestern Russia and northern parts of Georgia and Azerbaijan, the Transcaucasus is bordered on the north by Russia, on the west by the Black Sea and Turkey, on the east by the Caspian Sea, and on the south by Iran. It includes the Caucasus Mountains and surrounding lowlands, all of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia are in South Caucasus. The main Greater Caucasus range is generally perceived to be the line between Asia and Europe. The highest peak in the Caucasus is Mount Elbrus in the western Ciscaucasus in Russia, the Caucasus is one of the most linguistically and culturally diverse regions on Earth. The nation states that comprise the Caucasus today are the post-Soviet states Georgia, Armenia, three territories in the region claim independence but are recognized as such by only a handful or by no independent states, Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Abkhazia and South Ossetia are recognised by the majority of independent states as part of Georgia, the Russian divisions include Krasnodar Krai, Stavropol Krai, and the autonomous republics of Adygea, Karachay–Cherkessia, Kabardino-Balkaria, North Ossetia, Ingushetia, Chechnya, and Dagestan. The region has many different languages and language families, there are more than 50 ethnic groups living in the region. Russian is used as a common language, today the peoples of the Northern and Southern Caucasus tend to be either Eastern Orthodox Christians, Oriental Orthodox Christians, or Sunni Muslims. Shia Islam has had many adherents historically in Azerbaijan, located in the part of the region. Located on the peripheries of Turkey, Iran, and Russia, the region has been an arena for political, military, religious, throughout its history, the Caucasus was usually incorporated into the Iranian world
Caucasus
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Caucasus from the sea by
Ivan Aivazovsky, 1899
Caucasus
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Caucasus mountain range
Caucasus
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View of the Caucasus Mountains in
Dagestan, Russia
Caucasus
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Petroglyphs in
Gobustan,
Azerbaijan, dating back to 10,000 BC indicating a thriving culture. It is a
UNESCO World Heritage Site.
29.
Tigran the Great
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Tigranes II, more commonly known as Tigranes the Great was King of Armenia under whom the country became, for a short time, the strongest state east of the Roman Republic. He was a member of the Artaxiad Royal House, Tigranes had been a hostage until the age of 45 at the court of King Mithridates II of Parthia after the Armenian defeat in 105 BC. Other sources give the date as much earlier, at around 112–111 BC, after the death of King Tigranes I in 95 BC, Tigranes bought his freedom, according to Strabo, by handing over seventy valleys in Atropatene to the Parthians. When he came to power, the foundation upon which Tigranes was to build his Empire was already in place, a legacy of the founder of the Artaxiad Dynasty, Artaxias I and this did not suit Tigranes, who wanted to create a centralist empire. He thus proceeded by consolidating his power within Armenia before embarking on his campaign and he deposed Artanes, the last king of Armenian Sophene and a descendant of Zariadres. During the First Mithridatic War, Tigranes supported Mithridates VI of Pontus and he rapidly built up his power and established an alliance with Mithridates VI, marrying his daughter Cleopatra. Tigranes agreed to extend his influence in the East, while Mithridates set to conquer Roman land in Asia Minor, by creating a stronger Hellenistic state, Mithridates was to contend with the well-established Roman foothold in Europe. The slaughter of 80,000 people in the province of Asia Minor was known as the Asiatic Vespers, the two kings attempts to control Cappadocia and then the massacres resulted in guaranteed Roman intervention. The senate decided that Lucius Cornelius Sulla, who was one of the consuls. Magadates was appointed as his governor in Antioch, the southern border of his domain reached as far as Ptolemais. Many of the inhabitants of conquered cities were sent to his new metropolis of Tigranocerta, at its height, his empire extended from the Pontic Alps to Mesopotamia, and from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean. A series of victories led him to assume the Achaemenid title of King of Kings and he was called Tigranes the Great by many Western historians and writers, such as Plutarch. The King of Kings never appeared in public without having four kings attending him, cicero, referring to his success in the east, said that he made the Republic of Rome tremble before the prowess of his arms. Tigranes coin consist of tetradrachms and copper coins having on the obverse his portrait wearing a decorated Armenian tiara with ear-flaps, the reverse has a completely original design. There are the seated Tyche of Antioch and the river god Orontes at her feet, Mithridates had found refuge in Armenian land after confronting Rome, considering the fact that Tigranes was his ally and relative. The King of Kings eventually came into contact with Rome. The Roman commander, Lucullus, demanded the expulsion of Mithridates from Armenia – to comply with such a demand would be, in effect, to accept the status of vassal to Rome and this Tigranes refused. Charles Rollin, in his Ancient History, says, Lucullus reaction was an attack that was so precipitate that he took Tigranes by surprise, according to Roman historians Mithrobazanes, one of Tigranes generals, told Tigranes of the Roman approach
Tigran the Great
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A
tetradrachm of
Tigranes II bearing his
bust
Tigran the Great
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Tigranes the Great with four Kings surrounding him
Tigran the Great
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Statue of Tigranes the Great in Yerevan
Tigran the Great
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Illustration of Tigranes the Great in 1898 book Illustrated Armenia and the Armenians
30.
Frula
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The frula, also known as svirala or jedinka, is a musical instrument which resembles a medium sized flute, traditionally played in Serbia. It is typically made of wood and has six holes, the frula is a traditional instrument of shepherds, who would play while tending their flocks. For a list of instruments, see the section below. In Croatia it is known as jedinka. Other local names in Croatia include žveglica, šaltva, kavela and it has also been simply called Serbian flute. The frula is a wooden flute with six holes. In the Balkans, the frula was played by shepherds while tending their flocks and it is a traditional instrument of Serbia, one of several aerophones used for leisure time, rituals, or accompanying the kolo, along with long flutes, the double flute, and the bag-pipe. A popular Serbian folk song is Ej čija frula, recorded by, among others, Braća Bajić, Radiša Urošević, man — Instrument — Sound, Aspects of the Development of Svirala in Serbia. Frula a dvojnice v kontextu srbské hudební tradice
Frula
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Folk dance ensemble "Kolo", playing the frula.
