1.
Violin
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The violin is a wooden string instrument in the violin family. It is the smallest and highest-pitched instrument in the family in regular use, smaller violin-type instruments are known, including the violino piccolo and the kit violin, but these are virtually unused in the 2010s. The violin typically has four strings tuned in fifths, and is most commonly played by drawing a bow across its strings. Violins are important instruments in a variety of musical genres. They are most prominent in the Western classical tradition and in varieties of folk music. They are also used in genres of folk including country music and bluegrass music. Electric violins are used in forms of rock music, further. The violin is sometimes called a fiddle, particularly in Irish traditional music and bluegrass. The violin was first known in 16th-century Italy, with further modifications occurring in the 18th and 19th centuries. In Europe it served as the basis for stringed instruments used in classical music, the viola. According to their reputation, the quality of their sound has defied attempts to explain or equal it, many of these trade instruments were formerly sold by Sears, Roebuck and Co. and other mass merchandisers. A person who makes or repairs violins is called a luthier or violinmaker, the parts of a violin are usually made from different types of wood and on the use of a pickup and an amplifier and speaker). Violins can be strung with gut, Perlon or other synthetic, the earliest stringed instruments were mostly plucked. Similar and variant types were probably disseminated along East-West trading routes from Asia into the Middle East, the first makers of violins probably borrowed from various developments of the Byzantine lira. These included the rebec, the Arabic rebab, the vielle, the earliest pictures of violins, albeit with three strings, are seen in northern Italy around 1530, at around the same time as the words violino and vyollon are seen in Italian and French documents. One of the earliest explicit descriptions of the instrument, including its tuning, is from the Epitome musical by Jambe de Fer, by this time, the violin had already begun to spread throughout Europe. The violin proved very popular, both among street musicians and the nobility, the French king Charles IX ordered Andrea Amati to construct 24 violins for him in 1560, one of these noble instruments, the Charles IX, is the oldest surviving violin. The Messiah or Le Messie made by Antonio Stradivari in 1716 remains pristine and it is now located in the Ashmolean Museum of Oxford
2.
Fiddle (film)
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Fiddle is a 2010 Malayalam film directed by Prabhakaran Muthana starring Idea Star Singer fame Varun J. Thilak. It also has Jagathy Sreekumar, Ayilya and Salim Kumar in pivotal roles, fiddle is about a group of youngsters who are also students of the Music College, form an organization called Satkala Sangham under the leadership of Sandeep. They move from village to village doing programmes and help the needy, on one such journey they happen to camp at a hill station called Ponmudi, where Sandeep and his friends get caught up in the mysteries surrounding the life of a girl named Gayatri. Fiddle marks the debut of ISS fame Varun J. Thilak. Ananya does the same as well, and never has to much either. Jagathy, Bindu Panicker and Jagadeesh also chip in their little bits, the same however couldnt be said of the performances of a couple of other new faces who have done significant roles in the film
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.
Chordophone
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A chordophone is a musical instrument that makes sound by way of a vibrating string or strings stretched between two points. It is one of the four divisions of instruments in the original Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification. What many would call string instruments are classified as chordophones, violins, guitars, lyres, and harps are examples. However, the word also embraces instruments that many would hesitate to call string instruments, such as the musical bow, Hornbostel-Sachs divides chordophones into two main groups, instruments without a resonator as an integral part of the instrument, and instruments with such a resonator. Most western instruments fall into the group, but the piano. Hornbostel and Sachs criterion for determining which sub-group an instrument falls into is that if the resonator can be removed without destroying the instrument, then it is classified as 31. This is not true of the violin, because the passes over a bridge located on the resonator box. Electric string instruments often have a pickup that produces a signal that can be amplified. The electric guitar is the most common example, but many other chordophones use pickups—including mandolins, violins, when a chordophone is played, the strings vibrate and interact with each other. There is usually something that makes the sound resonate, such as the body of a guitar or violin, the strings are set into motion by either plucking, strumming, by rubbing with a bow, or by striking. Common chordophones are the banjo, cello, double bass, dulcimer, guitar, harp, lute, piano, sitar, ukulele, viola and violin
5.
Bow (music)
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In music, a bow is a tensioned stick with hair affixed to it which is moved across some part of a musical instrument causing vibration, which the instrument emits as sound. The vast majority of bows are used with string instruments, such as the violin, although some bows are used with musical saws and other bowed idiophones. A bow consists of a specially shaped stick with other material forming a ribbon stretched between its ends, which is used to stroke the string and create sound, different musical cultures have adopted various designs for the bow. For instance, in some bows a single cord is stretched between the ends of the stick, in the Western tradition of bow making—bows for the instruments of the violin and viol families—a hank of horsehair is normally employed. The manufacture of bows is considered a craft, and well-made bows command high prices. Part of the bow makers skill is the ability to high quality material for the stick. Historically, Western bows have been made of wood from Brazil. Carbon fiber bows have become popular, and some of the better carbon fiber bows are now comparable to fine pernambuco sticks. For the frog, which holds and adjusts the near end of the horsehair, ebony is most often used, but other materials, often decorative, were used as well, such as ivory and tortoiseshell. Materials such as mother of pearl or abalone shell are used on the slide which covers the mortise. Sometimes Parisian eyes are used, with the circle of shell surrounded by a metal ring, near the frog is the grip, which is made of a wire, silk, or whalebone wrap and a thumb cushion made of leather or snakeskin. The tip plate of the bow may be made of bone, ivory, mammoth ivory, or metal, a bow maker or archetier typically uses between 150 and 200 hairs from the tail of a horse for a violin bow. Bows for other members of the family typically have a wider ribbon. There is a widely held belief among string players, neither proven nor disproven scientifically, lower quality bows often use nylon or synthetic hair. Rosin, or colophony, a hard, sticky substance made from resin, is applied to the bow hair to increase friction. In making a bow, the greater part of the woodworking is done on a straight stick. According to James McKean, the bow maker graduates the stick in precise gradations so that it is evenly flexible throughout and these gradations were originally calculated by François Tourte, discussed below. In order to shape the curve or camber of the bow stick, the maker carefully heats the stick in an alcohol flame, a metal or wooden template is used to get the models exact curve and shape while heating
6.
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
7.
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
8.
Violin family
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The violin family of musical instruments was developed in Italy in the 16th century. At the time the name of family of instruments was violas da braccio which was used to distinguish them from the viol family. The standard modern violin family consists of the violin, viola, cello, instrument names in the violin family are all derived from the root viola, which is a derivative of the Medieval Latin word vitula. A violin is a viola, a violone is a big viola or a bass violin. The instruments of the family may be descended in part from the lira da braccio. The playing ranges of the instruments in the violin family overlap each other, the ranges are as follows, violin, G3 to E7, viola, C3 to A6, violoncello, C2 to A5, and double-bass, E1 to C5. Both the violin and viola are played under the jaw, the viola, being the larger of the two instruments, has a playing range that reaches a perfect fifth below the violins. The cello is played sitting down with the instrument between the knees, and its range reaches an octave below the violas. The double bass is played standing or sitting on a stool, with a range typically reaches a minor sixth. While the cello, the viola and the violin are indisputable members of the violin or viola da braccio family. Others point out that correlation does not imply causation and say that these similarities are either arbitrary or that they arose from causes other than a relationship to the viol family. Its origins aside, it has historically used as the lowest member of the violin family. All string instruments share similar form, parts, construction and function, however, instruments in the violin family are set apart from viols by similarities in shape, tuning practice and history. Violin family instruments have four each, are tuned in fifths, are not fretted and have four rounded bouts while always having a sound post. The instruments of the family are the most used bowed string instruments in the world today. The violin is used extensively in fiddle music, country music. The double bass plays a part in both classical and jazz music forms. One of the most popular and standardized groupings in classical chamber music and this similarity in the manner of sound production allows string quartets to blend their tone colour and timbre more easily than less homogeneous groups
9.
Viola
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The viola is a string instrument that is bowed or played with varying techniques. It is slightly larger than a violin and has a lower and deeper sound. Since the 18th century it has been the middle or alto voice of the family, between the violin and the cello. The strings from low to high are generally tuned to C3, G3, D4. In the past, the viola varied in size and style as did its names, the Italians often used the term, viola da braccio meaning literally, of the arm. Brazzo was another Italian word referring to the viola which the Germans adopted in the form, the French had their own names, Cinquiesme was a small viola, Haute Contre was a large viola and Taile meant Tenor. In the modern era, the French use the term Alto, the viola had enjoyed popularity in the heyday of five-part harmony up until the eighteenth century, taking three lines of the harmony and occasionally playing the melody line. Music that is written for the viola differs from that of most other instruments in that it uses the alto clef. Viola music switches to the treble clef when there are sections of music written in a higher register to make the notes easier to read. The viola often plays the voices in string quartets and symphonic writing. The viola occasionally plays a major, soloistic role in orchestral music, examples include Don Quixote by Richard Strauss and Harold en Italie by Hector Berlioz. In the earlier part of the 20th century, more composers began to write for the viola, encouraged by the emergence of specialized soloists such as Lionel Tertis and William Primrose. English composers Arthur Bliss, York Bowen, Benjamin Dale, Frank Bridge, Benjamin Britten and Ralph Vaughan Williams all wrote substantial chamber, many of these pieces were commissioned by, or written for Lionel Tertis. William Walton, Bohuslav Martinů, Toru Takemitsu, Tibor Serly, Alfred Schnittke, Paul Hindemith wrote a substantial amount of music for viola, including the concerto Der Schwanendreher. The concerti by Paul Hindemith, Béla Bartók, and William Walton are the big three of viola repertoire, the viola is similar in material and construction to the violin. A full-size violas body is between 25 mm and 100 mm longer than the body of a violin, with an average length of 41 cm. Small violas typically made for children typically start at 30 cm, for a child who needs a smaller size, a fractional-sized violin is often strung with the strings of a viola. Unlike the violin, the viola does not have a full size. The body of a viola would need to measure about 51 cm long to match the acoustics of a violin, there have been several experiments intended to increase the size of the viola, in the interest of improving the instruments sound
10.
Cello
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The cello or violoncello is a bowed or plucked string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. The strings from low to high are generally tuned to C2, G2, D3 and A3 and it is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin and viola and the double bass. The cello is used as a musical instrument, as well as in chamber music ensembles, string orchestras, as a member of the string section of symphony orchestras. It is the second-largest and second lowest bowed string instrument in the symphony orchestra. Cello parts are written in the bass clef, but both tenor clef and treble clefs are used for higher-range parts, both in orchestral/chamber music parts and in solo cello works. A person who plays the cello is called a cellist or violoncellist, in a small Classical ensemble, such as a string quartet, the cello typically plays the bass part, the lowest-pitched musical line of the piece. In orchestra, in Baroque era and Classical music period, the cello plays the bass part. In Baroque era music, the cello is used to play the basso continuo bassline, in a Baroque performance, the cello player might be joined by other bass instruments, playing double bass, viol or other low-register instruments. The name cello is a contraction of the Italian violoncello, which means little violone, in modern symphony orchestras, it is the second largest stringed instrument. Thus, the name contained both the augmentative -one and the diminutive -cello. By the turn of the 20th century, it had become common to shorten the name to cello and it is now customary to use cello without apostrophe as the full designation. Viol is derived from the viola, which was derived from Medieval Latin vitula. Cellos are tuned in fifths, starting with C2, followed by G2, D3 and it is tuned in the same intervals as the viola, but an octave lower. Unlike the violin or viola but similar to the double bass, the cello is most closely associated with European classical music, and has been described as the closest sounding instrument to the human voice. The instrument is a part of the orchestra, as part of the string section. A large number of concertos and sonatas have been written for the cello, among the most well-known Baroque works for the cello are Johann Sebastian Bachs six unaccompanied Suites. The Prelude from the First Suite is particularly famous, romantic era repertoire includes the Robert Schumann Concerto, the Antonín Dvořák Concerto as well as the two sonatas and the Double Concerto by Johannes Brahms. The cello is increasingly common in traditional music, especially Scottish fiddle music
11.
Viol
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All members of the viol family are played upright between the legs like a modern cello, hence the Italian name viola da gamba was sometimes applied to the instruments of this family. This distinguishes the viol from the violin family, the viola da braccio. A player of the viol is commonly known as a gambist, violist /ˈvaɪəlɪst/, violist shares the spelling, but not the pronunciation, of the word commonly used since the mid-20th century to refer to a player of the viola. It can therefore cause confusion if used in print where context does not clearly indicate that a player is meant, though it is entirely unproblematic. Vihuelists began playing their instruments with a bow in the second half of the 15th century. An influence in the playing posture has been credited to the example of Moorish rabab players, the viol is unrelated to the much older Hebrew stringed instrument called a viol. This ancient harp-like instrument was similar to the kinnor or nabla, Stefano Pio argues that a re-examination of documents in the light of newly collected data indicates an origin different from the vihuela de arco from Aragon. According to Pio, the viol had its origins and evolved independently in Venice, the fifth string, already present in some specimens of these violette as a drone, was incorporated into the neck when they were expanded in size. This was then surpassed by a string, named basso. Initially the family of shared common characteristics but differed in the way they were played. The increase in the dimensions of the viola determined the birth of the viol, Viols most commonly have six strings, although many 16th-century instruments had only four or five strings. Viols were strung with gut strings of lower tension than on the members of the violin family, gut strings produce a sonority far different from steel, generally described as softer and sweeter. Viols are fretted in a similar to early guitars or lutes, by means of movable wrapped-around. A low seventh string was added in France to the bass viol by Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe, whose students included the French gamba virtuoso. Also, the painting Saint Cecilia with an Angel by Domenichino shows what may be a seven-string viol. Viols were first constructed much like the vihuela de mano, with all surfaces, top, back, however, some viols, both early and later, had carved tops, similar to those more commonly associated with instruments of the violin family. The ribs or sides of early viols were usually quite shallow, rib depth increased during the course of the 16th century, finally coming to resemble the greater depth of the classic 17th-century pattern. The flat backs of most viols have a sharply angled break or canted bend in their close to where the neck meets the body
12.
Double bass
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The double bass, or simply the bass, is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra. It is an instrument and is typically notated one octave higher than sounding to avoid excessive ledger lines below the staff. The double bass is the modern bowed string instrument that is tuned in fourths, rather than fifths, with strings usually tuned to E1, A1, D2. The instruments exact lineage is still a matter of some debate, the double bass is a standard member of the orchestras string section, as well as the concert band, and is featured in concertos, solo and chamber music in Western classical music. The bass is used in a range of genres, such as jazz, 1950s-style blues and rock and roll, rockabilly, psychobilly, traditional country music, bluegrass, tango. The double bass is played either with a bow or by plucking the strings, in orchestral repertoire and tango music, both arco and pizzicato are employed. In jazz, blues, and rockabilly, pizzicato is the norm, Classical music uses just the natural sound produced acoustically by the instrument, so does traditional bluegrass. In jazz, blues, and related genres, the bass is typically amplified with an amplifier and speaker, the double bass stands around 180 cm from scroll to endpin. However, other sizes are available, such as a 1⁄2 or 3⁄4 and these sizes do not reflect the size relative to a full size, or 4⁄4 bass, a 1⁄2 bass is not half the size of a bass but is only slightly smaller. It is typically constructed from several types of wood, including maple for the back, spruce for the top and it is uncertain whether the instrument is a descendant of the viola da gamba or of the violin, but it is traditionally aligned with the violin family. While the double bass is nearly identical in construction to other violin family instruments, like other violin and viol-family string instruments, the double bass is played either with a bow or by plucking the strings. In orchestral repertoire and tango music, both arco and pizzicato are employed, in jazz, blues, and rockabilly, pizzicato is the norm, except for some solos and also occasional written parts in modern jazz that call for bowing. In classical pedagogy, almost all of the focus is on performing with the bow and producing a good bowed tone, some of these articulations can be combined, for example, the combination of sul ponticello and tremolo can produce eerie, ghostly sounds. Classical bass players do play pizzicato parts in orchestra, but these parts generally require simple notes, vibrato is used to add expression to string playing. In general, very loud, low-register passages are played with little or no vibrato, mid- and higher-register melodies are typically played with more vibrato. The speed and intensity of the vibrato is varied by the performer for an emotional and musical effect, in jazz, rockabilly and other related genres, much or all of the focus is on playing pizzicato. In jazz and jump blues, bassists are required to play extremely rapid pizzicato walking basslines for extended periods, as well, jazz and rockabilly bassists develop virtuoso pizzicato techniques that enable them to play rapid solos that incorporate fast-moving triplet and sixteenth note figures. In jazz and related styles, bassists often add semi-percussive ghost notes into basslines, to add to the rhythmic feel and to add fills to a bassline
13.
History of the violin
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The violin, viola, and cello were first made in the early 16th century, in Italy. The earliest evidence for their existence is in paintings by Gaudenzio Ferrari from the 1530s, the Academie musicale, a treatise written in 1556 by Philibert Jambe de Fer, gives a clear description of the violin family much as we know it today. Violins are likely to have developed from a number of other string instruments of the 15th and 16th centuries, including the vielle, rebec. The history of bowed string instruments in Europe goes back to the 9th century with the Byzantine lira, since their invention, instruments in the violin family have seen a number of changes. The Byzantine lira spread through Europe westward and in the 11th and 12th centuries European writers use the terms fiddle, during the Renaissance the gambas were important and elegant instruments, they eventually lost ground to the louder lira da braccio family of the modern violin. The first clear record of an instrument comes from paintings by Gaudenzio Ferrari. In his Madonna of the Orange Tree, painted 1530, a cherub is seen playing an instrument which clearly has the hallmarks of violins. A few years later, on a fresco inside the cupola of the church of Madonna dei Miracoli in Saronno, the instruments Ferrari depicts have bulging front and back plates, strings which feed into peg-boxes with side pegs, and f-holes. The only real difference between these instruments and the violin is that Ferraris have three strings, and a rather more extravagant curved shape. It is not clear exactly who made these first violins, but there is evidence that they originate from northern Italy. Not only are Ferraris paintings in this area, but at the towns like Brescia. The first extant written use of the Italian term violino occurs in 1538, the oldest confirmed surviving violin, dated inside, is the Charles IX by Andrea Amati, made in Cremona in 1564, but the label is very doubtful. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has an Amati violin that may be older, possibly dating to 1558. One of the most famous and certainly the most pristine is the Messiah Stradivarius made by Antonio Stradivari in 1716 and very little played, perhaps almost never and it is now located in the Ashmolean Museum of Oxford. Instruments of approximately 300 years of age, especially made by Stradivari and Guarneri del Gesù, are the most sought after instruments. In addition to the skill and reputation of the maker, an age can also influence both price and quality. The fingerboard was tilted a little more, to even more volume as larger and larger orchestras became popular. Nearly all old instruments were modified, including lengthening of the neck by one centimeter, the bass bar of nearly all old instruments was made heavier to allow a greater string tension
14.
Violin musical styles
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Since the Baroque era, the violin has been one of the most important of all instruments in classical music, for several reasons. The tone of the violin stands out above other instruments, making it appropriate for playing a melody line, in the hands of a good player, the violin is extremely agile, and can execute rapid and difficult sequences of notes. Indeed, the violin seems to itself to virtuosity more than any other instrument. The violin is also considered a very expressive instrument, which is felt to approximate the human voice. This may be due to the possibility of vibrato and of slight expressive adjustments in pitch, many leading composers have contributed to the violin concerto and violin sonata repertories. Violins make up a part of an orchestra, and are usually divided into two sections, known as the first and second violins. Composers often assign the melody to the first violins, while second violins play harmony, a string quartet similarly has parts for first and second violins, as well as a viola part, and a bass instrument, such as the cello or, rarely, the double bass. During the 1920s and early-1930s, violins were a part of popular music. Dances orchestras typically had at least 2 or 3 violins, although high class society orchestras would often include as many as 6 or 7. With the introduction of swing music in 1935, the violin, along with string instruments. Violins would only re-emerge in popular music in the late-1960s, while the violin has had very little usage in rock music compared to its brethren the guitar and bass guitar, it is being increasingly absorbed into mainstream pop. Independent artists such as Final Fantasy and Andrew Bird have increased interest as well, the violin is also a part of the huge phenomenon called cello rock. The hugely popular Motown recordings of the 1960s and 1970s relied heavily on strings as part of the trademark texture, the 1980s saw an insurgence of electronic music mimicking strings with little or no use of traditional strings in music compositions. Now strings are making a comeback in pop music, Indian, Pakistani, Turkish and Arabic pop music is filled with the sound of violins, both soloists and ensembles. The earliest references to jazz performance using the violin as an instrument are documented during the first decades of the 20th century. The first great jazz violinist was Eddie South who is best known as the Dark Angel Of Violin, in the swing and post-war eras there were many superb improvising violinists including Stéphane Grappelli, Stuff Smith, Ray Perry, Ray Nance and Claude Fiddler Williams. Younger performers include Mat Maneri, Katt Hernandez and Regina Carter, jazz fusion violinists include Jean-Luc Ponty and Michal Urbaniak. Like many other instruments of music, the violin descends from remote ancestors, cruder in form
15.
Violin making and maintenance
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Making an instrument of the violin family may be done in different ways, many of which have changed very little in nearly 500 years since the first violins were made. Some violins, called bench-made instruments, are made by an individual, either a master maker. Several people may participate in the making of a shop-made instrument, various levels of trade violin exist, often mass-produced by workers who each focus on a small part of the overall job, with or without the aid of machinery. Setting up a violin is generally considered to be a separate activity, the outer contour of a new violin, one of the more important aspects of the instrument, is designed by the violin maker, and today the outlines of the old masters violins are usually used. Different methods of violin making include using a mould, an outside mould. The inside mould approach starts with a set of plans, which include a drawing of the shape of the instrument. From these plans a template is constructed, which can be made from metal or other materials. The template is used to construct a mould, which is a piece of wood, plywood. Around the mould are built the sides, which are pieces of wood curved by means of careful heating. The completed garland of ribs, blocks, and linings is removed from the mould to allow attachment of the carved top. When the body is complete, the neck, which is carved out of a piece of wood, is set in its mortise to complete the basic structure of the instrument. A removable chinrest may be put on at this time, then the instrument begins the playing-in process, as its parts adjust to the string tension. The sound of a violin is said to open up in the first weeks and months of use, however, this process may be aborted at some point. If you put a violin to storage and pull it out a while later, you will notice when you first play that the violin has lost volume, and loss of quality. If you put a violin into storage, pull it out a while later, quite as important as the excellence of the instrument is its care. With careful maintenance, a violin can last and improve for many years, a well-tended violin can outlive many generations of players, so it is wise to take a curatorial view when caring for a violin. Most importantly, if the collected rosin dust is not wiped from the varnish, and left for long enough, it will fuse with the varnish, cleaning the rosin off strings can make a striking difference to the sound. A common wine cork serves admirably, quietly scrubbing off the crust of rosin without damaging the winding of the string, a dry microfiber cloth is often recommended, it retains the dust well, but makes a penetrating squeaking noise
16.
Violin technique
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Playing the violin entails holding the instrument under the chin, supported by the left shoulder. The strings are sounded either by drawing the bow across them, the left hand regulates the sounding length of the strings by stopping them against the fingerboard with the fingers, producing different notes. It is possible to play the violin holding it in a variety of ways, most players hold the lower bout of the instrument between the left shoulder and the jaw, often assisted by a semi-permanently attached chinrest and detachable shoulder rest. If held properly under the chin, the violinist can let go of the instrument with their hands, in Morocco the violin is often held completely upright resting on the seated players thigh with the left hand stabilizing the balance while fingering. The chinrest and shoulder rest accessories come in a variety of styles and shapes, so each individual may find the combination that best suits their build. The search for the combination can be a lengthy one in some cases. Whatever the equipment, the player will usually aim to maintain a balanced, natural, many violinists have a reddish mark on the neck, the so-called violin hickey from long-term pressure at that spot. The spot may be aggravated by a reaction to nickel plating on the chinrest clamp hardware. Keeping the left wrist relaxed and nearly straight allows freedom of finger motion, collapsing the wrist to support the violin with the heel of the hand is an unfortunate habit that many novice players fall into, and may take years of constant vigilance to overcome. The left forearm will be rather extremely supinated, and the left elbow drawn medially, players may sometimes be advised to bring their left elbow to where they can see it, so as to reach the lower strings more easily. Raising either shoulder beyond a natural relaxed position is a habit to acquire without noticing it. Like any other unwarranted tension, it limits freedom of motion and it is useful to pay attention to the square formed by the right arm and bow, keeping it in a flat plane, and noticing which parts lead in string-crossing motions. Singing the note mentally helps to land in the right spot and that said, a quote widely attributed to Jascha Heifetz goes something like, I play as many wrong notes as anyone, but I fix them before most people can hear them. The fingers are conventionally numbered 1 to 4, the second finger may be either low or high, corresponding to G or G♯ on the E string in first position. Similarly, the first finger may reach a half-step down for the F, the lower chart on the left shows the arrangement of notes reachable in first position. Note also that the spacing between note positions becomes closer as the move up from the nut. The blue bars on the sides of the chart represent the possibilities for beginners tape placements, at 1st, high 2nd, 3rd fingers. This particular pattern results in an A major scale on the A and E strings, the placement of the left hand on the fingerboard is characterized by positions
17.
Violin construction and mechanics
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A violin consists of a body or corpus, a neck, a finger board, a bridge, a soundpost, four strings, and various fittings. The body of the violin is made of two arched plates fastened to a garland of ribs with animal hide glue, the ribs are what is commonly seen as the sides of the box. The rib garland includes a top block, four corner blocks a bottom block, and narrow strips called linings, which help solidify the curves of the ribs, from the top or back, the body shows an hourglass shape formed by an upper bout and a lower bout. Two concave C-bouts between each sides corners form the waist of this figure, providing clearance for the bow, the best woods, especially for the plates, have been seasoned for many years in large wedges, and the seasoning process continues indefinitely after the violin has been made. Glue joints of the instrument are held with hide glue, since other adhesives can be difficult or impossible to reverse when future repairs are in order. Parts attached with hide glue can be separated when needed by using heat and moisture, a well-tended violin can outlive many generations of players, so it is wise to take a curatorial view when caring for a violin. The sound-holes affect the patterns of the top, or table. It is also claimed to allow the top to flex more independently of the rib structure, Some instruments have two lines of purfling, or have knot-work type ornaments inlaid in the back. Painted-on faux purfling on the top is usually a sign of an inferior instrument, a slab-sawn bass bar fitted inside the top, running lengthwise under the bass foot of the bridge, gives added mass and rigidity to the top plate. Some cheaper mass-produced violins have a bass bar, carved from the same piece as the top. Ideally the top is glued to the ribs and linings with slightly diluted hide glue, the back and ribs are typically made of maple, most often with a matching striped figure, called flame. Backs may be one-piece slab-cut or quarter-sawn, or bookmatched two-piece quarter-sawn, backs are also purfled, but in their case the purfling is less structurally important than for the top. Some fine old violins have scribed or painted rather than inlaid purfling on the back, the small semicircular extension of the back known as the button provides extra gluing surface for the crucial neck joint, and is neglected when measuring the length of the back. Occasionally a half-circle of ebony surrounds the button, either to restore material lost in resetting the neck of an old instrument, or to imitate that effect. The ribs, having been bent to shape by heat, have their curved shape somewhat reinforced by lining strips of wood at the top. The linings also provide additional gluing surface for the seams between the plates and the rib edges, the neck is usually maple with a flamed figure compatible with that of the ribs and back. It carries the fingerboard, typically made of ebony, but often some other wood stained or painted black, ebony is considered the preferred material because of its hardness, appearance, and superior resistance to wear. Some very old violins were made with maple fingerboards, carrying a veneer of ebony, at the peg end of the fingerboard sits a small ebony or ivory nut, infrequently called the upper saddle, with grooves to position the strings as they lead into the pegbox
18.
Classical music
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Classical music is art music produced or rooted in the traditions of Western music, including both liturgical and secular music. The central norms of this tradition became codified between 1550 and 1900, which is known as the common-practice period, Western staff notation is used by composers to indicate to the performer the pitches, tempo, meter and rhythms for a piece of music. This can leave less room for such as improvisation and ad libitum ornamentation. The term classical music did not appear until the early 19th century, the earliest reference to classical music recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary is from about 1836. This score typically determines details of rhythm, pitch, and, the written quality of the music has enabled a high level of complexity within them, J. S. The use of written notation also preserves a record of the works, Musical notation enables 2000s-era performers to sing a choral work from the 1300s Renaissance era or a 1700s Baroque concerto with many of the features of the music being reproduced. That said, the score does not provide complete and exact instructions on how to perform a historical work, even if the tempo is written with an Italian instruction, we do not know exactly how fast the piece should be played. Bach was particularly noted for his complex improvisations, during the Classical era, the composer-performer Mozart was noted for his ability to improvise melodies in different styles. During the Classical era, some virtuoso soloists would improvise the cadenza sections of a concerto, during the Romantic era, Beethoven would improvise at the piano. The instruments currently used in most classical music were largely invented before the mid-19th century and they consist of the instruments found in an orchestra or in a concert band, together with several other solo instruments. The symphony orchestra is the most widely known medium for music and includes members of the string, woodwind, brass. The concert band consists of members of the woodwind, brass and it generally has a larger variety and number of woodwind and brass instruments than the orchestra but does not have a string section. However, many bands use a double bass. Many of the used to perform medieval music still exist. Medieval instruments included the flute, the recorder and plucked string instruments like the lute. As well, early versions of the organ, fiddle, Medieval instruments in Europe had most commonly been used singly, often self accompanied with a drone note, or occasionally in parts. From at least as early as the 13th century through the 15th century there was a division of instruments into haut, during the earlier medieval period, the vocal music from the liturgical genre, predominantly Gregorian chant, was monophonic, using a single, unaccompanied vocal melody line. Polyphonic vocal genres, which used multiple independent vocal melodies, began to develop during the medieval era, becoming prevalent by the later 13th
19.
Folk music
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Folk music includes both traditional music and the genre that evolved from it during the 20th century folk revival. The term originated in the 19th century, but is applied to music older than that. Some types of music are also called world music. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways, as music transmitted orally, music with unknown composers and it has been contrasted with commercial and classical styles. Starting in the century, a new form of popular folk music evolved from traditional folk music. This process and period is called the revival and reached a zenith in the 1960s. This form of music is called contemporary folk music or folk revival music to distinguish it from earlier folk forms. Smaller, similar revivals have occurred elsewhere in the world at other times and this type of folk music also includes fusion genres such as folk rock, folk metal, electric folk, and others. Even individual songs may be a blend of the two, a consistent definition of traditional folk music is elusive. The terms folk music, folk song, and folk dance are comparatively recent expressions and they are extensions of the term folklore, which was coined in 1846 by the English antiquarian William Thoms to describe the traditions, customs, and superstitions of the uncultured classes. Traditional folk music also includes most indigenous music, however, despite the assembly of an enormous body of work over some two centuries, there is still no certain definition of what folk music is. Some do not even agree that the term Folk Music should be used, Folk music may tend to have certain characteristics but it cannot clearly be differentiated in purely musical terms. One meaning often given is that of old songs, with no known composers, the fashioning and re-fashioning of the music by the community that give it its folk character. Such definitions depend upon processes rather than abstract musical types, one widely used definition is simply Folk music is what the people sing. For Scholes, as well as for Cecil Sharp and Béla Bartók, Folk music was already. seen as the authentic expression of a way of life now past or about to disappear, particularly in a community uninfluenced by art music and by commercial and printed song. In these terms folk music may be seen as part of a schema comprising four types, primitive or tribal, elite or art, folk. Music in this genre is often called traditional music. Although the term is only descriptive, in some cases people use it as the name of a genre
20.
Bariolage
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The bowed string instrument musical technique bariolage involves, the alternation of notes on adjacent strings, one of which is usually open, exploiting, the individual timbre of the various strings. This may involve quick alternation between a note and changing notes, that form a melody either above or below the static note. The static note is usually an open string note, which creates a resonant sound. Bariolage is a term for an eighteenth-century violin technique, the mechanics of which are not discussed by nineteenth-century writers. The usual bowing technique required, which also may be used separately from bariolage, is called ondulé in French or ondeggiando In Italian, however, it may also be executed with separate bow strokes. In bluegrass fiddling the technique is known as cross-fingering, joseph Haydn used this effect in the minuet of his Symphony No. 28, in the finale of the Farewell Symphony, No,45, and throughout the finale of his String Quartet Op.50, No.6. The croaking or gurgling unison bariolage passages on D and A gives this quartet its nickname of The Frog, in the following example, from a violin sonata by Handel, the second measure is to be played with bariolage. The repeated A is played on the open A string, alternating with Fs, another well-known example of bariolage is in Bachs Preludio to the E major Partita No.3 for solo violin, where three strings are involved in the maneuver. In the nineteenth century, notable examples of its use are found in Brahmss works, brahms used this device in the String Sextet in G Major and in the Third Violin Sonata, Op.108. Examples may be found in Mauricio Kagels 1993 string quartet Notturno, notable trombone pieces using this device are Luciano Berios Sequenza V for solo trombone, and Vinko Globokars Eppure si muove for a conducting solo trombonist and eleven musicians
21.
Vibrato
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Vibrato is a musical effect consisting of a regular, pulsating change of pitch. It is used to add expression to vocal and instrumental music, Vibrato is typically characterised in terms of two factors, the amount of pitch variation and the speed with which the pitch is varied. In singing it can occur spontaneously through variations in the larynx, the vibrato of a string instrument and wind instrument is an imitation of that vocal function. In practice, it is difficult for a singer or musical instrument player to achieve a pure vibrato or tremolo, electronic manipulation or generation of signals makes it easier to achieve or demonstrate pure tremolo or vibrato. A Leslie speaker creates vibrato as a byproduct of tremolo production, as a Leslie speaker is moved by the rotating mechanism on which it is mounted, it moves closer to or farther away from any given object not also mounted on the mechanism. e. However, the size of effect is likely to be tiny compared against the tremolo effect since the distance oscillation is very small. The use of vibrato is intended to add warmth to a note and this can add a shimmer to the sound, with a well-made instrument it may also help a solo player to be heard more clearly when playing with a large orchestra. The rate and extent of the variation in pitch during vibrato is controlled by the performer, wind and bowed instruments generally use vibratos with an extent of less than half a semitone either side. Despite his technique, he was unable to play without vibrato, the featured saxophonist in Benny Goodmans Orchestra, George Auld, was brought in to play the part. Many classical musicians, especially singers and string players, have a similar problem, the use of vibrato in classical music is a matter of some dispute. For much of the 20th century it was used almost continuously in the performance of pieces from all eras from the Baroque onwards, especially by singers, a drastic change in approach cannot be understood wholly without regarding the rise of notionally historically informed performance from the 1970s onwards. However, there is no proof that singers performed without vibrato in the baroque era. Vocal music of the renaissance is almost never sung with vibrato as a rule, there are only a few texts from the period on vocal production, but they all condemn excessive use of vibrato. However, it should be understood that vibrato occurs over a range of intensities, slow, fast, wide. Leopold Mozart’s Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule, for example, provides an indication of the state of vibrato in string playing at the end of the baroque period. This however, does not give anything more than an indication of Mozarts own personal taste, in this respect he resembles his contemporary, Francesco Geminiani, who advocated using vibrato as frequently as possible on short notes for this purpose. Certain types of vibrato, then, were seen as an ornament, in wind playing too, it seems that vibrato in music up to the 20th century was seen as an ornament to be used selectively. Martin Agricola writing in his Musica instrumentalis deudsch writes of vibrato in this way, occasionally, composers up to the baroque period indicated vibrato with a wavy line in the sheet music
22.
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
23.
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
24.
Persian people
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The Persians are an Iranian ethnic group that make up over half the population of Iran. They share a cultural system and are native speakers of the Persian language. The ancient Persians were originally a branch of the ancient Iranian population who entered modern-day Iran by the early 10th century BC. The English term Persian derives from Latin Persia, itself deriving from Greek Persís, in the Bible, it is referred to as Parás —sometimes Paras uMadai —within the books of Esther, Daniel, Ezra and Nehemya. Although Persis was originally one of the provinces of ancient Iran, varieties of this term were adopted through Greek sources, thus, in the Western world, the term Persian came to refer to all inhabitants of the country. 10th-century Iraqi historian Al-Masudi refers to Pahlavi, Dari and Azari as dialects of the Persian language, in 1333, medieval Moroccan traveler and scholar Ibn Battuta, referred to the people of Kabul as a specific sub-tribe of Persians. Lady Mary Sheil, in her observation of Iran during the Qajar era, describes Persians, Kurds and Leks to identify themselves as descendants of the ancient Persians. On March 21,1935, the king of Iran, Reza Shah Pahlavi, issued a decree asking the international community to use the term Iran. However, the term Persian is still used to designate the predominant population of the Iranian peoples living in the Iranian cultural continent. The earliest known written record attributed to the Persians is from the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, the inscription mentions Parsua as a tribal chiefdom in modern-day western Iran. The ancient Persians were originally a branch of the Iranian population that, in the early 10th century BC. They were initially dominated by the Assyrians for much of the first three centuries after arriving in the region, however, they played a role in the downfall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. The Medes, another branch of population, founded the unified empire of Media as the regions dominant cultural and political power in c.625 BC. Meanwhile, the Persian dynasty of the Achaemenids formed a state to the central Median power. In c.552 BC, the Achaemenids began a revolution which led to the conquest of the empire by Cyrus II in c.550 BC. They spread their influence to the rest of what is called the Iranian Plateau, at its greatest extent, the Achaemenid Empire stretched from parts of Eastern Europe in the west, to the Indus Valley in the east, making it the largest empire the world had yet seen. The Achaemenids developed the infrastructure to support their growing influence, including the creation of Pasargadae and its legacy and impact on the kingdom of Macedon was also notably huge, even for centuries after the withdrawal of the Persians from Europe following the Greco-Persian Wars. The empire collapsed in 330 BC following the conquests of Alexander the Great, until the Parthian era, the Iranian identity had an ethnic, linguistic, and religious value, however, it did not yet have a political import
25.
Rebab
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The bowed variety often has a spike at the bottom to rest on the ground, and is thus called a spike fiddle in certain areas, but plucked versions like the kabuli rebab also exist. Besides the spike fiddle variant, there exists a variant with a pear-shaped body, quite similar to the Byzantine lyra. This latter variant travelled to western Europe in the 11th century, there is a long thin neck with a pegbox at the end and there are one, two or three strings. The instrument is held upright, either resting on the lap or on the floor, the bow is usually more curved than that of the violin. The rebab, though valued for its tone, has a very limited range. The Iraqi version of the instrument has four strings, the rebab is used in a wide variety of musical ensembles and genres, corresponding with its wide distribution, and is built and played somewhat differently in different areas. The body varies from being carved, as in Java. They may have a made of half a coconut shell, while the more sophisticated versions have a metal soundbox, and the front may be half-covered with beaten copper. The rebab was heavily used, and continues to be used, in Arabic Bedouin music as well traditional Iraqi music under the name joza, there is also a bowed instrument in Persian music named Kamanche which has similar shape and structure. The Rebab is also played in Afghanistan and Pakistan, however they are unrelated in terms of origin, for a famous Iranian singer and rebab player see Hassaan Egzaar Chenani. These are generally used in playing traditional folk tunes, but have become popular in arrangements of contemporary music, including such genres as classical, jazz. In the Indonesian gamelan the rebab is an essential elaborating instrument, a two-string bowed lute consisting of a wooden body, traditionally though now rarely a single coconut shell, covered with very fine stretched skin. Two brass strings are tuned a fifth apart and the hair bow is tied loosely with the proper tension controlled by the players bow hand. There are typically two per ensemble, one for pelog and one for slendro, never played together. The rebab does not have to exactly to the scale of the other gamelan instruments and can be played in relatively free time. The rebab also frequently plays the buka when it is part of the ensemble, in the eastern Malaysian states of Kelantan and Terengganu, the Rebab is used in a healing ritual called Main Puteri. The musician healer is sometimes taken to hospitals in cases where doctors are unable to heal ailing patients, margaret J. Kartomi, On Concepts and Classifications of Musical Instruments. liuteriaetnica. it FERNWOOD, an American music group that uses a Rebab
26.
Renaissance
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The Renaissance was a period in European history, from the 14th to the 17th century, regarded as the cultural bridge between the Middle Ages and modern history. It started as a movement in Italy in the Late Medieval period and later spread to the rest of Europe. This new thinking became manifest in art, architecture, politics, science, Early examples were the development of perspective in oil painting and the recycled knowledge of how to make concrete. Although the invention of movable type sped the dissemination of ideas from the later 15th century. In politics, the Renaissance contributed to the development of the customs and conventions of diplomacy, the Renaissance began in Florence, in the 14th century. Other major centres were northern Italian city-states such as Venice, Genoa, Milan, Bologna, the word Renaissance, literally meaning Rebirth in French, first appeared in English in the 1830s. The word also occurs in Jules Michelets 1855 work, Histoire de France, the word Renaissance has also been extended to other historical and cultural movements, such as the Carolingian Renaissance and the Renaissance of the 12th century. The Renaissance was a movement that profoundly affected European intellectual life in the early modern period. Renaissance scholars employed the humanist method in study, and searched for realism, however, a subtle shift took place in the way that intellectuals approached religion that was reflected in many other areas of cultural life. In addition, many Greek Christian works, including the Greek New Testament, were back from Byzantium to Western Europe. Political philosophers, most famously Niccolò Machiavelli, sought to describe life as it really was. Others see more competition between artists and polymaths such as Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Donatello, and Masaccio for artistic commissions as sparking the creativity of the Renaissance. Yet it remains much debated why the Renaissance began in Italy, accordingly, several theories have been put forward to explain its origins. During the Renaissance, money and art went hand in hand, Artists depended entirely on patrons while the patrons needed money to foster artistic talent. Wealth was brought to Italy in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries by expanding trade into Asia, silver mining in Tyrol increased the flow of money. Luxuries from the Eastern world, brought home during the Crusades, increased the prosperity of Genoa, unlike with Latin texts, which had been preserved and studied in Western Europe since late antiquity, the study of ancient Greek texts was very limited in medieval Western Europe. One of the greatest achievements of Renaissance scholars was to bring this entire class of Greek cultural works back into Western Europe for the first time since late antiquity, Arab logicians had inherited Greek ideas after they had invaded and conquered Egypt and the Levant. Their translations and commentaries on these ideas worked their way through the Arab West into Spain and Sicily and this work of translation from Islamic culture, though largely unplanned and disorganized, constituted one of the greatest transmissions of ideas in history
27.
Germanic languages
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It is the third most spoken Indo-European subdivision, behind Italic and Indo-Iranian, and ahead of Balto-Slavic languages. Limburgish varieties have roughly 1.3 million speakers along the Dutch–Belgian–German border, the main North Germanic languages are Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, and Faroese, which have a combined total of about 20 million speakers. The East Germanic branch included Gothic, Burgundian, and Vandalic, the last to die off was Crimean Gothic, spoken in the late 18th century in some isolated areas of Crimea. The total number of Germanic languages throughout history is unknown, as some of them—especially East Germanic languages—disappeared during or after the Migration Period. Proto-Germanic, along all of its descendants, is characterized by a number of unique linguistic features. Early varieties of Germanic enter history with the Germanic tribes moving south from Scandinavia in the 2nd century BC, to settle in the area of todays northern Germany, furthermore, it is the de facto language of the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia. It is also a language in Nicaragua and Malaysia. German is a language of Austria, Belgium, Germany, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and Switzerland and has regional status in Italy, Poland, Namibia. German also continues to be spoken as a minority language by immigrant communities in North America, South America, Central America, Mexico, a German dialect, Pennsylvania Dutch, is still present amongst Anabaptist populations in Pennsylvania in the United States. Dutch is a language of Aruba, Belgium, Curaçao. The Netherlands also colonised Indonesia, but Dutch was scrapped as a language after Indonesian independence. Dutch was until 1925 an official language in South Africa, but evolved in and was replaced by Afrikaans, Afrikaans is one of the 11 official languages in South Africa and is a lingua franca of Namibia. It is used in other Southern African nations as well, low German is a collection of sometimes very diverse dialects spoken in the northeast of the Netherlands and northern Germany. Scots is spoken in Lowland Scotland and parts of Ulster, frisian is spoken among half a million people who live on the southern fringes of the North Sea in the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark. Luxembourgish is mainly spoken in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, though it extends into small parts of Belgium, France. Limburgish varieties are spoken in the Limburg and Rhineland regions, along the Dutch–Belgian–German border, Swedish is also one of the two official languages in Finland, along with Finnish, and the only official language in the Åland Islands. Danish is also spoken natively by the Danish minority in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, Norwegian is the official language of Norway. Icelandic is the language of Iceland, and is spoken by a significant minority in the Faroe Islands
28.
Romance languages
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Today, around 800 million people are native speakers worldwide, mainly in Europe, Africa and the Americas, but also elsewhere. Additionally, the major Romance languages have many speakers and are in widespread use as lingua francas. This is especially the case for French, which is in use throughout Central and West Africa, Madagascar, Mauritius. The five most widely spoken Romance languages by number of speakers are Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian. Because of the difficulty of imposing boundaries on a continuum, various counts of the modern Romance languages are given, for example, Dalby lists 23 based on mutual intelligibility. Between 350 BC and 150 AD, the expansion of the Empire, together with its administrative and educational policies, Latin also exerted a strong influence in southeastern Britain, the Roman province of Africa, western Germany and the Balkans north of the Jireček Line. Despite other influences, the phonology, morphology, and lexicon of all Romance languages consist mainly of evolved forms of Vulgar Latin, however, some notable differences occur between todays Romance languages and their Roman ancestor. With only one or two exceptions, Romance languages have lost the system of Latin and, as a result, have SVO sentence structure. From this adverb the noun romance originated, which applied initially to anything written romanice, the word romance with the modern sense of romance novel or love affair has the same origin. In the medieval literature of Western Europe, serious writing was usually in Latin, while popular tales, often focusing on love, were composed in the vernacular, for example, the Portuguese word fresta is descended from Latin fenestra window, but now means skylight and slit. Cognates may exist but have become rare, such as finiestra in Spanish, the Spanish and Portuguese terms defenestrar meaning to throw through a window and fenestrado meaning replete with windows also have the same root, but are later borrowings from Latin. Galician has both fiestra and the frequently used ventá and xanela. As an alternative to lei, Italian has the pronoun ella, a cognate of the words for she. Sardinian balcone comes from Old Italian and is similar to other Romance languages such as French balcon, Portuguese balcão, Romanian balcon, Spanish balcón, Catalan balcó and Corsican balconi. Documentary evidence is limited about Vulgar Latin for the purposes of research. Many of its speakers were soldiers, slaves, displaced peoples, other scholars argue that the distinctions are more rightly viewed as indicative of sociolinguistic and register differences normally found within any language. Both were mutually intelligible as one and the language, which was true until the second half of the 7th century. Central Europe and the Balkans were occupied by the Germanic and Slavic tribes, as well as by the Huns, over the course of the fourth to eighth centuries, Vulgar Latin, by this time highly dialectalized, broke up into discrete languages that were no longer mutually intelligible
29.
Old English
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Old English or Anglo-Saxon is the earliest historical form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers probably in the mid 5th century, Old English developed from a set of Anglo-Frisian or North Sea Germanic dialects originally spoken by Germanic tribes traditionally known as the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. As the Anglo-Saxons became dominant in England, their language replaced the languages of Roman Britain, Common Brittonic, a Celtic language, Old English had four main dialects, associated with particular Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, Mercian, Northumbrian, Kentish and West Saxon. It was West Saxon that formed the basis for the standard of the later Old English period, although the dominant forms of Middle. The speech of eastern and northern parts of England was subject to strong Old Norse influence due to Scandinavian rule, Old English is one of the West Germanic languages, and its closest relatives are Old Frisian and Old Saxon. Like other old Germanic languages, it is different from Modern English. Old English grammar is similar to that of modern German, nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and verbs have many inflectional endings and forms. The oldest Old English inscriptions were using a runic system. Old English was not static, and its usage covered a period of 700 years, from the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain in the 5th century to the late 11th century, some time after the Norman invasion. While indicating that the establishment of dates is a process, Albert Baugh dates Old English from 450 to 1150, a period of full inflections. Perhaps around 85 per cent of Old English words are no longer in use, Old English is a West Germanic language, developing out of Ingvaeonic dialects from the 5th century. It came to be spoken over most of the territory of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms which became the Kingdom of England and this included most of present-day England, as well as part of what is now southeastern Scotland, which for several centuries belonged to the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria. Other parts of the island – Wales and most of Scotland – continued to use Celtic languages, Norse was also widely spoken in the parts of England which fell under Danish law. Anglo-Saxon literacy developed after Christianisation in the late 7th century, the oldest surviving text of Old English literature is Cædmons Hymn, composed between 658 and 680. There is a corpus of runic inscriptions from the 5th to 7th centuries. The Old English Latin alphabet was introduced around the 9th century, with the unification of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms by Alfred the Great in the later 9th century, the language of government and literature became standardised around the West Saxon dialect. In Old English, typical of the development of literature, poetry arose before prose, a later literary standard, dating from the later 10th century, arose under the influence of Bishop Æthelwold of Winchester, and was followed by such writers as the prolific Ælfric of Eynsham. This form of the language is known as the Winchester standard and it is considered to represent the classical form of Old English
30.
Spelmanslag
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The spelmanslag is an amateur organization of Swedish folk musicians, usually dominated by fiddles, who play tunes together. Often these groups play tunes from the area of Sweden with which they are affiliated. The term has also the meaning for Norwegian folk music. Spelmanslag meetings tend to serve social function as much as they do musical ones, the first Swedish spelmanslag was Dalaföreningens spelmanslag, formed in 1940 by folk musicians from Dalarna who at the time were living in Stockholm. Over the course of the 1940s, the spread throughout the province of Dalarna. The spelmanslag movement saw new life beginning in 2003, with the establishment of the annual student spelmanslag world championships at the Linköping Folk Festival. A number of student spelmanslag have been formed in order to compete—in 2003, there were four competing teams and these student groups tend to be characterized by high-energy playing, and generally do not limit themselves to tunes from one particular region within Sweden. Most spelmanslag are dominated by fiddles, though some are dedicated primarily to the nyckelharpa, often, the spelmanslag will also have one or more instruments that support the melody with chord progressions, such as cittra, accordion, bass, and/or guitar. Spelman Swedish folk music Riksspelman Spelemann - player of Norwegian folk music Spelemannslag - organization of Norwegian folk musicians Kaminsky, hidden Traditions, Conceptualizing Swedish Folk Music in the Twenty-First Century. Ett nyår för svensk folkmusik, Om spelmansrörelsen, in Folkmusikboken, edited by Jan Ling, et al
31.
Irish traditional music session
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Irish traditional music sessions are mostly informal gatherings at which people play Irish traditional music. The Irish language word for session is seisiún and this article discusses tune-playing, although session can also refer to a singing session or a mixed session. Barry Foys Field Guide to the Irish Music Session defines a session as, the general session scheme is that someone starts a tune, and those who know it join in. Good session etiquette requires not playing if one does not know the tune, in an open session, anyone who is able to play Irish music is welcome. Most often there are more-or-less recognized session leaders, sometimes there are no leaders, at times a song will be sung or a slow air played by a single musician between sets. The session is an experience that is shared, not a performance that is bought, the sessions are a key aspect of traditional music, it is the main sphere in which the music is formulated and innovated. Further, the sessions enable less advanced musicians to practice in a group, socially, sessions have often been compared to an evening of playing card games, where the conversation and camaraderie are an essential component. In many rural communities in Ireland, sessions are a part of community life. Typically, the first tune is followed by two or three tunes in a set. The art of putting together a set is hard to put into words, although bands sometimes arrange sets of reels and jigs together, this is uncommon in an Irish session context. Some sets are specific to a locale, or even to a session, whilst others, like the Coleman set of reels. Sets are sometimes thrown together ad hoc, which sometimes works brilliantly, after the set ends, someone will usually start another. Sessions are usually held in houses or taverns. A pub owner might have one or two musicians paid to come regularly in order for the session to have a base and these musicians can perform during any gaps during the day or evening when no other performers are there and wish to play. When a particularly large musical event takes over an entire village, sessions may also take place occasionally at wakes. House sessions are not as now as they were in the past. This can be seen in the book Peig by Peig Sayers, in the early stages of the book when Peig was young they often went to sessions at peoples houses in a practice called bothántiocht. List of All-Ireland Champions Irish traditional music Pub session
32.
Orchestra
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The term orchestra derives from the Greek ὀρχήστρα, the name for the area in front of a stage in ancient Greek theatre reserved for the Greek chorus. A full-size orchestra may sometimes be called an orchestra or philharmonic orchestra. The actual number of employed in a given performance may vary from seventy to over one hundred musicians, depending on the work being played. The term chamber orchestra usually refers to smaller-sized ensembles of about fifty musicians or fewer, the typical orchestra grew in size throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, reaching a peak with the large orchestras called for in the works of Richard Wagner, and later, Gustav Mahler. Orchestras are usually led by a conductor who directs the performance with movements of the hands and arms, the conductor unifies the orchestra, sets the tempo and shapes the sound of the ensemble. The first violin, commonly called the concertmaster, also plays an important role in leading the musicians, the typical symphony orchestra consists of four groups of related musical instruments called the woodwinds, brass, percussion, and strings. The orchestra, depending on the size, contains almost all of the instruments in each group. Chamber orchestra usually refers to smaller-sized ensembles, a chamber orchestra might employ as many as fifty musicians. The term concert orchestra may also be used, as in the BBC Concert Orchestra, the so-called standard complement of doubled winds and brass in the orchestra from the first half of the 19th century is generally attributed to the forces called for by Beethoven. The composers instrumentation almost always included paired flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, the exceptions to this are his Symphony No. 4, Violin Concerto, and Piano Concerto No,4, which each specify a single flute. Beethoven carefully calculated the expansion of this particular timbral palette in Symphonies 3,5,6, the third horn in the Eroica Symphony arrives to provide not only some harmonic flexibility, but also the effect of choral brass in the Trio movement. Piccolo, contrabassoon, and trombones add to the finale of his Symphony No.5. A piccolo and a pair of trombones help deliver the effect of storm and sunshine in the Sixth, for several decades after his death, symphonic instrumentation was faithful to Beethovens well-established model, with few exceptions. Apart from the core orchestral complement, various instruments are called for occasionally. These include the guitar, heckelphone, flugelhorn, cornet, harpsichord. Saxophones, for example, appear in some 19th- through 21st-century scores.6 and 9 and William Waltons Belshazzars Feast, and many other works as a member of the orchestral ensemble. The euphonium is featured in a few late Romantic and 20th-century works, usually playing parts marked tenor tuba, including Gustav Holsts The Planets, cornets appear in Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovskys ballet Swan Lake, Claude Debussys La Mer, and several orchestral works by Hector Berlioz
33.
Natalie Haas
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Natalie Haas is an American cellist, originally from Menlo Park, California. A graduate of the Juilliard School, she has toured and recorded extensively with Scottish fiddler Alasdair Fraser, also, she has toured and recorded with Mark OConnor and his Appalachia Waltz Trio, and with Natalie MacMaster. She has appeared on more than 50 albums, Haas teaches privately and at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. She now lives in Montreal, Quebec, with her husband, Falquet is a member of the Quebecois folk group, Genticorum
34.
Kontra
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A kontra is a Hungarian, Romanian, Slovak and Romani instrument common in Transylvania. The kontra is constructed much like the classical viola, with two major differences, first, there are only three strings instead of four. Second, the bridge is flattened, allowing a musician to play all three strings at once, due to the flattened bridge, a kontra is not as capable of playing melody lines as a viola. Rather, the method of play is to play double stops and three-note chords. The kontra has a role within dance band music. Its range lies between that of the fiddle or Vioara cu goarnă on the high-end and the bass on the low-end. Many Romanian and Hungarian bands also feature the cimbalom or citera, clarinet, accordion, viola Vioara cu goarnă Music of Hungary Music of Romania Music of Slovakia
35.
Cimbalom
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The cimbalom is a concert hammered dulcimer, a type of chordophone composed of a large, trapezoidal box with metal strings stretched across its top. It is also popular in Greece, the cimbalom is played by striking two beaters against the strings. The steel treble strings are arranged in groups of 4 and are tuned in unison, the bass strings which are over-spun with copper, are arranged in groups of 3 and are also tuned in unison. The Hornbostel-Sachs musical instrument classification system registers the cimbalom with the number 314. 122-4,5, moreover, the instrument name “cimbalom” also denotes earlier, smaller versions of the cimbalom, and folk cimbaloms, of different tone groupings, string arrangements, and box types. In English, the spelling is the most common, followed by the variants, derived from Austria-Hungary’s languages, cimbál, cymbalom, cymbalum, țambal, tsymbaly. The first representation of a simple struck chordophone which we categorize as a hammered dulcimer can be found in the Assyrian bas-relief in Kyindjuk dated back to 3500 BC, the peoples of the Mediterranean all had versions of this instrument under different names, as did many peoples in Asia. The fourth edition of the first textbook for the concert cimbalom by Géza Allaga, use of the instrument spread by the end of the 19th century and took the place of the cobza in Romanian and Moldovan folk ensembles. In Wallachia it is used almost as a percussion instrument, in Transylvania and Banat, the style of playing is more tonal, heavy with arpeggios. Folk hammered dulcimers are usually referred to by their regional names and these instruments can differ from each other in size, tuning, number of strings and method of holding and moving the hammers or beaters. They are smaller and more portable than the concert cimbalom, in performance they were often carried by a single musician, typically using a strap around the players neck and leaning one edge of the instrument against the waist. Like the concert cimbalom, the folk hammered dulcimer / small cimbalom is played by striking the strings with two beaters, however, these are generally much shorter than the beaters used with the concert cimbalom, and often without soft coverings over the area which strikes the string. These instruments also lacked damper mechanisms, therefore, the hand, fingers, tunings are often partially chromatic or even diatonic rather than the fully chromatic tuning of the concert cimbalom, and they can vary regionally. Construction of these instruments is closely related to the particular style of music played on them than is the case with the concert cimbalom. The Schunda cimbalom was equipped with a frame for more stability. It included many more string courses for extended range and incorporated a damper pedal which allowed for more dynamic control, Four detachable legs were added to support this much larger instrument. The concert cimbalom continues to be played primarily with beaters although other playing techniques are used, concert instruments from Schunda onward are fully chromatic. The Schunda tuning system established a standard range of four octaves plus a major 3rd. The concert cimbalom eventually found its way to areas of the Austro-Hungarian empire, such as Romania and Ukraine
36.
Clarinet
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The clarinet is a musical-instrument family belonging to the group known as the woodwind instruments. It has a mouthpiece, a straight cylindrical tube with an almost cylindrical bore. A person who plays a clarinet is called a clarinetist, the word clarinet may have entered the English language via the French clarinette, or from Provençal clarin, oboe. It would seem however that its roots are to be found amongst some of the various names for trumpets used around the renaissance. Clarion, clarin and the Italian clarino are all derived from the medieval term claro which referred to a form of trumpet. This is probably the origin of the Italian clarinetto, itself a diminutive of clarino, according to Johann Gottfried Walther, writing in 1732, the reason for the name is that it sounded from far off not unlike a trumpet. The English form clarinet is found as early as 1733, while the similarity in sound between the earliest clarinets and the trumpet may hold a clue to its name, other factors may have been involved. The trumpet parts that required this speciality were known by the term clarino, Johann Christoph Denner is generally believed to have invented the clarinet in Germany around the year 1700 by adding a register key to the earlier chalumeau. Over time, additional keywork and airtight pads were added to improve the tone and these days the most popular clarinet is the B♭ clarinet. However, the clarinet in A, just a lower, is commonly used in orchestral music. Since the middle of the 19th century the clarinet has become an essential addition to the orchestra. The clarinet family ranges from the BBB♭ octo-contrabass to the A♭ piccolo clarinet, the clarinet has proved to be an exceptionally flexible instrument, equally at home in the classical repertoire as in concert bands, military bands, marching bands, klezmer, and jazz. The cylindrical bore is primarily responsible for the clarinets distinctive timbre, the tone quality can vary greatly with the musician, the music, the instrument, the mouthpiece, and the reed. The most prominent were the German/Viennese traditions and the French school, the latter was centered on the clarinetists of the Conservatoire de Paris. The proliferation of recorded music has made examples of different styles of clarinet playing available, the modern clarinetist has a diverse palette of acceptable tone qualities to choose from. The A clarinet and B♭ clarinet have nearly the same bore, orchestral players using the A and B♭ instruments in the same concert could use the same mouthpiece for both. The A and the B♭ instruments have nearly identical tonal quality, the tone of the E♭ clarinet is brighter than that of the lower clarinets and can be heard even through loud orchestral or concert band textures. The bass clarinet has a deep, mellow sound, while the alto clarinet is similar in tone to the bass
37.
Folk music of England
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The folk music of England is traditionally based music, which has existed since the later medieval period. It is often contrasted with courtly, classical and later commercial music, Folk music has been preserved and transmitted orally, through print and later through recordings. The term is used to refer to English traditional music and music composed, or delivered, English folk music has produced or contributed to several important musical genres, including sea shanties, jigs, hornpipes and dance music, such as that used for Morris dancing. Cultural interchange and processes of migration mean that English folk music, although in many distinctive, has particularly interacted with the music of Scotland, Ireland. It has also interacted with other traditions, particularly classical and rock music, influencing musical styles and producing musical fusions, such as electric folk, folk punk. There remains a flourishing sub-culture of English folk music, which continues to other genres. In the strictest sense, English folk music has existed since the arrival of the Anglo-Saxon people in Britain after 400 CE, since this type of music was rarely notated, we have little knowledge of its form or content. Some later tunes, like those used for Morris dance, may have their origins in this period, Peter Burke argued that late medieval social elites had their own culture, but were culturally ‘amphibious, able to participate in and affect popular traditions. In the 16th century the changes in the wealth and culture of the upper social orders caused tastes in music to diverge, for other social orders, instruments like the pipe, tabor, bagpipe, shawm, hurdy-gurdy, and crumhorn accompanied traditional music and community dance. The fiddle, well established in England by the 1660s, was unusual in being a key element in both the art music developed in the baroque, and in popular song and dance. With the Industrial Revolution the themes of the music of the labouring classes began to change from rural, technological change made new instruments available and led to the development of silver and brass bands, particularly in industrial centres in the north. From the late 19th century there were a series of movements attempted to collect, record, preserve and later to perform, English folk music. These are usually separated into two folk revivals, in 1932 the Folk-Song Society and the English Folk Dance Society merged to become the English Folk Dance and Song Society. The key figures were Ewan MacColl and A. L. Lloyd, the second revival was generally left wing in politics and emphasised the work music of the 19th century and previously neglected forms like erotic folk songs. Topic Records, founded in 1939, provided a source of folk recordings. The revival resulted in the foundation of a network of clubs in major towns. Major traditional performers included the Copper Family, The Watersons, the Ian Campbell Folk Group, electric folk is the name given to the kind of folk rock pioneered in England from the late 1960s, by the band Fairport Convention. It uses traditional music, and compositions in a style, played on a combination of rock
38.
Music of Northumbria
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Here Northumbria is taken to mean Northumberland, the northernmost county of England, and County Durham. The modern era has seen Northumbrian traditional music artificially pigeon holed into national divisions, the region is particularly noted for its tradition of border ballads, the Northumbrian smallpipe and also a strong fiddle tradition in the region that was already well established in the 1690s. Northumbrian music is characterised by considerable influence from regions, particularly southern Scotland. Irish tunes are also played in the region, as they are elsewhere. More recently, Northumbrian folk music, and particularly the use of the Northumbrian pipes, has one of the liveliest and most widely known forms of folk music in Britain. Northumbria shares with southern Scotland the long history of border ballads and it is also known for local dances, including the rapper dancing and Northumbrian clog dancing. Many dances from the region have the characteristic rant step, although many tunes are shared with other regions of England or other nations, there is often a distinct difference between a Northumbrian version of a tune and versions from elsewhere. For instance a simple Irish tune, The Chorus Jig, with three strains, appears in the Northumbrian tradition as Holey Hapenny, an ornate five-strain variation set. A Scottish strathspey, Struan Robertsons Rant appears, stripped of the Scotch snap, as a tune, Cuckold come out of the Amrey. Tunes in hornpipe rhythm are much appreciated in the region, both for playing and for dancing, particularly clog dancing, the Union or Pastoral pipes, the precursor of the Irish Uilleann pipes, are also known to have been played and made in the region. The earliest known bagpipe manuscript from the UK is a tunebook by William Dixon of Stamfordham in Northumberland and this includes forty tunes with extensive sets of variations. In the early century, makers such as John Dunn and Robert and James Reid added keys to the closed-ended smallpipe. With its greater flexibility, the instrument became more fashionable at this time, many families have been associated with traditional Northumbrian piping. Will Allan and his son James were noted pipers in the eighteenth century, in 1756 Joseph Turnbull was appointed piper to the Countess. The Percy family have continued to maintain a piper to this day, contrary to popular tradition, the Dukes current piper, Richard Butler, has written that there is no record in the Percy Archives recording that James Allan was Piper to the Duchess or Duke. Turnbulls pupil, John Peacock was probably the first Northumbrian piper to play a keyed chanter. Most notably, the Clough family of Newsham produced six generations of pipers, including Tom Clough, who made an important early recording in 1929, the earliest source of music for fiddle from Northumberland is Henry Atkinsons tunebook from the 1690s. This includes tunes current in both the southern English and Scottish music of the time, a later source, unfortunately lost, was John Smiths tunebook from 1750
39.
Shetland
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Shetland /ˈʃɛtlənd/, also called the Shetland Islands, is a subarctic archipelago that lies northeast of the island of Great Britain and forms part of Scotland, United Kingdom. The islands lie some 80 km to the northeast of Orkney and 280 km southeast of the Faroe Islands, the total area is 1,466 km2 and the population totalled 23,210 in 2012. The largest island, known simply as Mainland, has an area of 967 km2, making it the third-largest Scottish island, there are an additional 15 inhabited islands. The archipelago has a climate, a complex geology, a rugged coastline and many low. Humans have lived in Shetland since the Mesolithic period, and the earliest written references to the date back to Roman times. The early historic period was dominated by Scandinavian influences, especially Norway, when Scotland became part of the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707, trade with northern Europe decreased. Fishing has continued to be an important aspect of the economy up to the present day, the discovery of North Sea oil in the 1970s significantly boosted Shetland economy, employment and public sector revenues. The local way of life reflects the Scots and Norse heritage of the isles including the Up Helly Aa fire festival, the islands have produced a variety of writers of prose and poetry, often in Shetland dialect. There are numerous areas set aside to protect the fauna and flora. The Shetland pony and Shetland Sheepdog are two well known Shetland animal breeds, other distinguished local breeds include the Shetland sheep, cow, goose, and duck. The Shetland pig, or grice, has been extinct since approximately 1930, the islands motto, which appears on the Councils coat of arms, is Með lögum skal land byggja. This Icelandic phrase is taken from the Danish 1241 Basic Law, Codex Holmiensis, and is mentioned in Njáls saga. The name of Shetland is derived from the Old Norse words, hjalt, in AD43 and 77 the Roman authors Pomponius Mela and Pliny the Elder referred to the seven islands they call Haemodae and Acmodae respectively, both of which are assumed to be Shetland. Another possible early reference to the islands is Tacitus report in AD98, after describing the discovery and conquest of Orkney. In early Irish literature, Shetland is referred to as Inse Catt—the Isles of Cats, the Cat tribe also occupied parts of the northern Scottish mainland and their name can be found in Caithness, and in the Gaelic name for Sutherland. It is possible that the Pictish cat sound forms part of this Norse name and it then became Hjaltland in the 16th century. As Norn was gradually replaced by English in the form of the Shetland dialect which shares similarities with Scots English. The initial letter is the Middle Scots letter, yogh, the pronunciation of which is almost identical to the original Norn sound, /hj/
Bluegrass fiddler Kenny Baker
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