1.
XML
–
In computing, Extensible Markup Language is a markup language that defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. The W3Cs XML1.0 Specification and several other related specifications—all of them free open standards—define XML, the design goals of XML emphasize simplicity, generality, and usability across the Internet. It is a data format with strong support via Unicode for different human languages. Although the design of XML focuses on documents, the language is used for the representation of arbitrary data structures such as those used in web services. Several schema systems exist to aid in the definition of XML-based languages, hundreds of document formats using XML syntax have been developed, including RSS, Atom, SOAP, SVG, and XHTML. XML-based formats have become the default for many office-productivity tools, including Microsoft Office, OpenOffice. org and LibreOffice, XML has also provided the base language for communication protocols such as XMPP. Applications for the Microsoft. NET Framework use XML files for configuration, apple has an implementation of a registry based on XML. XML has come into use for the interchange of data over the Internet. IETF RFC7303 gives rules for the construction of Internet Media Types for use when sending XML and it also defines the media types application/xml and text/xml, which say only that the data is in XML, and nothing about its semantics. The use of text/xml has been criticized as a source of encoding problems. RFC7303 also recommends that XML-based languages be given media types ending in +xml, further guidelines for the use of XML in a networked context appear in RFC3470, also known as IETF BCP70, a document covering many aspects of designing and deploying an XML-based language. The material in this section is based on the XML Specification and this is not an exhaustive list of all the constructs that appear in XML, it provides an introduction to the key constructs most often encountered in day-to-day use. Character An XML document is a string of characters, almost every legal Unicode character may appear in an XML document. Processor and application The processor analyzes the markup and passes structured information to an application, the specification places requirements on what an XML processor must do and not do, but the application is outside its scope. The processor is often referred to colloquially as an XML parser, Markup and content The characters making up an XML document are divided into markup and content, which may be distinguished by the application of simple syntactic rules. Generally, strings that constitute markup either begin with the character < and end with a >, or they begin with the character &, strings of characters that are not markup are content. However, in a CDATA section, the delimiters <. > are classified as markup, in addition, whitespace before and after the outermost element is classified as markup. Tag A tag is a construct that begins with <
2.
Johann Sebastian Bach
–
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer and musician of the Baroque period. Bachs compositions include the Brandenburg Concertos, the Goldberg Variations, the Mass in B minor and his music is revered for its technical command, artistic beauty, and intellectual depth. He is now regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time. Bach was born in Eisenach, in the duchy of Saxe-Eisenach and his father Johann Ambrosius Bach was the director of the town musicians, and all of his uncles were professional musicians. His father probably taught him to play the violin and harpsichord, apparently at his own initiative, Bach attended St. Michaels School in Lüneburg for two years. He received the title of Royal Court Composer from Augustus III in 1736, Bachs health and vision declined in 1749, and he died on 28 July 1750. Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach, the capital of the duchy of Saxe-Eisenach, in present-day Germany and he was the son of Johann Ambrosius Bach, the director of the town musicians, and Maria Elisabeth Lämmerhirt. He was the eighth and youngest child of Johann Ambrosius, who taught him violin. His uncles were all musicians, whose posts included church organists, court chamber musicians. One uncle, Johann Christoph Bach, introduced him to the organ, Bachs mother died in 1694, and his father died eight months later. The 10-year-old Bach moved in with his eldest brother, Johann Christoph Bach, there he studied, performed, and copied music, including his own brothers, despite being forbidden to do so because scores were so valuable and private and blank ledger paper of that type was costly. He received valuable teaching from his brother, who instructed him on the clavichord, also during this time he was taught theology, Latin, Greek, French and Italian at the local gymnasium. By 3 April 1700 Bach and his schoolfriend Georg Erdmann–who was two years Bachs elder–were enrolled in the prestigious St. Michaels School in Lüneburg, some two weeks travel north of Ohrdruf and their journey was probably undertaken mostly on foot. His two years there were critical in exposing Bach to a range of European culture. In addition to singing in the choir, he played the Schools three-manual organ and he came into contact with sons of aristocrats from northern Germany, sent to the highly selective school to prepare for careers in other disciplines. While in Lüneburg, Bach had access to St. Johns Church and possibly used the famous organ from 1553. His role there is unclear, but it probably included menial, non-musical duties, despite strong family connections and a musically enthusiastic employer, tension built up between Bach and the authorities after several years in the post. Bach was dissatisfied with the standard of singers in the choir and he called one of them a Zippel Fagottist
3.
Music
–
Music is an art form and cultural activity whose medium is sound organized in time. The common elements of music are pitch, rhythm, dynamics, different styles or types of music may emphasize, de-emphasize or omit some of these elements. The word derives from Greek μουσική, Ancient Greek and Indian philosophers defined music as tones ordered horizontally as melodies and vertically as harmonies. Common sayings such as the harmony of the spheres and it is music to my ears point to the notion that music is often ordered and pleasant to listen to. However, 20th-century composer John Cage thought that any sound can be music, saying, for example, There is no noise, the creation, performance, significance, and even the definition of music vary according to culture and social context. There are many types of music, including music, traditional music, art music, music written for religious ceremonies. For example, it can be hard to draw the line between some early 1980s hard rock and heavy metal, within the arts, music may be classified as a performing art, a fine art or as an auditory art. People may make music as a hobby, like a teen playing cello in a youth orchestra, the word derives from Greek μουσική. According to the Online Etymological Dictionary, the music is derived from mid-13c. Musike, from Old French musique and directly from Latin musica the art of music and this is derived from the. Greek mousike of the Muses, from fem. of mousikos pertaining to the Muses, from Mousa Muse. In classical Greece, any art in which the Muses presided, Music is composed and performed for many purposes, ranging from aesthetic pleasure, religious or ceremonial purposes, or as an entertainment product for the marketplace. With the advent of recording, records of popular songs. Some music lovers create mix tapes of their songs, which serve as a self-portrait. An environment consisting solely of what is most ardently loved, amateur musicians can compose or perform music for their own pleasure, and derive their income elsewhere. Professional musicians sometimes work as freelancers or session musicians, seeking contracts and engagements in a variety of settings, There are often many links between amateur and professional musicians. Beginning amateur musicians take lessons with professional musicians, in community settings, advanced amateur musicians perform with professional musicians in a variety of ensembles such as community concert bands and community orchestras. However, there are many cases where a live performance in front of an audience is also recorded and distributed. Live concert recordings are popular in classical music and in popular music forms such as rock, where illegally taped live concerts are prized by music lovers
4.
Instrument (music)
–
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
5.
Singing
–
Singing is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, and augments regular speech by the use of sustained tonality, rhythm, and a variety of vocal techniques. A person who sings is called a singer or vocalist, Singers perform music that can be sung with or without accompaniment by musical instruments. Singing is often done in an ensemble of musicians, such as a choir of singers or a band of instrumentalists, Singers may perform as soloists, or accompanied by anything from a single instrument up to a symphony orchestra or big band. Singing can be formal or informal, arranged or improvised and it may be done as a form of religious devotion, as a hobby, as a source of pleasure, comfort, or ritual, as part of music education, or as a profession. Excellence in singing requires time, dedication, instruction, and regular practice, if practice is done on a regular basis then the sounds can become more clear and strong. Professional singers usually build their careers around one specific genre, such as classical or rock. They typically take voice training provided by teachers or vocal coaches throughout their careers. Though these four mechanisms function independently, they are coordinated in the establishment of a vocal technique and are made to interact upon one another. During passive breathing, air is inhaled with the diaphragm while exhalation occurs without any effort, exhalation may be aided by the abdominal, internal intercostal and lower pelvis/pelvic muscles. Inhalation is aided by use of external intercostals, scalenes and sternocleidomastoid muscles, the pitch is altered with the vocal cords. With the lips closed, this is called humming, humans have vocal folds which can loosen, tighten, or change their thickness, and over which breath can be transferred at varying pressures. The shape of the chest and neck, the position of the tongue, any one of these actions results in a change in pitch, volume, timbre, or tone of the sound produced. Sound also resonates within different parts of the body and an individuals size, Singers can also learn to project sound in certain ways so that it resonates better within their vocal tract. This is known as vocal resonation, another major influence on vocal sound and production is the function of the larynx which people can manipulate in different ways to produce different sounds. These different kinds of function are described as different kinds of vocal registers. The primary method for singers to accomplish this is through the use of the Singers Formant and it has also been shown that a more powerful voice may be achieved with a fatter and fluid-like vocal fold mucosa. The more pliable the mucosa, the more efficient the transfer of energy from the airflow to the vocal folds, Vocal registration refers to the system of vocal registers within the voice. A register in the voice is a series of tones, produced in the same vibratory pattern of the vocal folds
6.
Human voice
–
The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal folds for talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, etc. The human voice frequency is specifically a part of sound production in which the vocal folds are the primary sound source. Generally speaking, the mechanism for generating the human voice can be subdivided into three parts, the lungs, the vocal folds within the larynx, and the articulators, the lung must produce adequate airflow and air pressure to vibrate vocal folds. The vocal folds are a vibrating valve that chops up the airflow from the lungs into audible pulses that form the sound source. The muscles of the larynx adjust the length and tension of the folds to ‘fine-tune’ pitch. The articulators articulate and filter the sound emanating from the larynx, the vocal folds, in combination with the articulators, are capable of producing highly intricate arrays of sound. The tone of voice may be modulated to suggest emotions such as anger, surprise, singers use the human voice as an instrument for creating music. Adult men and women typically have different sizes of vocal fold, adult male voices are usually lower-pitched and have larger folds. The male vocal folds, are between 17 mm and 25 mm in length, the female vocal folds are between 12.5 mm and 17.5 mm in length. The folds are within the larynx and they are attached at the back to the arytenoids cartilages, and at the front to the thyroid cartilage. They have no outer edge as they blend into the side of the tube while their inner edges or margins are free to vibrate. They have a three layer construction of an epithelium, vocal ligament, then muscle, which can shorten and they are flat triangular bands and are pearly white in color. Above both sides of the cord is the vestibular fold or false vocal cord, which has a small sac between its two folds. The difference in vocal folds size between men and women means that they have differently pitched voices, additionally, genetics also causes variances amongst the same sex, with mens and womens singing voices being categorized into types. For example, among men, there are bass, baritone, tenor and countertenor, there are additional categories for operatic voices, see voice type. This is not the source of difference between male and female voice. Men, generally speaking, have a vocal tract, which essentially gives the resultant voice a lower-sounding timbre. This is mostly independent of the folds themselves
7.
Classical music
–
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
8.
Sheet music
–
Sheet music is a handwritten or printed form of music notation that uses modern musical symbols to indicate the pitches, rhythms and/or chords of a song or instrumental musical piece. The first printed sheet music made with a press was made in 1473. Sheet music is the form in which Western classical music is notated so that it can be learned and performed by solo singers or instrumentalists or musical ensembles. Many forms of traditional and popular Western music are commonly learned by singers and musicians by ear, Score is a common alternative term for sheet music, and there are several types of scores, as discussed below. Sheet music from the 20th and 21st century typically indicates the title of the song or composition on a page or cover, or on the top of the first page. If the song or piece is from a movie, Broadway musical, or opera, if the songwriter or composer is known, her or his name is typically indicated along with the title. Black market sheet music, such as illegal jazz fake books may or may not indicate the songwriter or composer, the type of musical notation varies a great deal by genre or style of music. In most classical music, the melody and accompaniment parts are notated on the lines of a staff using round note heads, the lyrics, if present, are written near the melody notes. However, music from the Baroque music era or earlier eras may have neither a tempo marking nor a dynamic indication. The singers and musicians of that era were expected to know what tempo and loudness to play or sing a song or piece due to their musical experience. In the contemporary music era, and in some cases before, composers often used their native language for tempo indications. These conventions of music notation, and in particular the use of English tempo instructions, are also used for sheet music versions of 20th. Popular music songs often indicate both the tempo and genre, slow blues or uptempo rock, pop songs often contain chord names above the staff using letter names, so that an acoustic guitarist or piano player can improvise a chordal accompaniment. In other styles of music, different musical notation methods may be used, in jazz, while most professional performers can read classical-style notation, many jazz tunes are notated using chord charts, which indicate the chord progression of a song and its form. Like popular music songs, jazz tunes often indicate both the tempo and genre, slow blues or fast bop, professional country music session musicians typically use music notated in the Nashville Number System, which indicates the chord progression using numbers. Chord charts using letter names, numbers, or Roman numerals are widely used for notating music by blues, R&B, rock music. Many guitar players and electric bass players learn songs and note tunes using tablature, tab is widely used rock music and heavy metal guitarists. Singers in many music styles learn a song using only a lyrics sheet
9.
Country music
–
Country music is a genre of United States popular music that originated in the southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from the genre of United States, such as folk music. Blues modes have been used throughout its recorded history. The term country music is used today to many styles and subgenres. In 2009 country music was the most listened to rush hour radio genre during the evening commute, immigrants to the Southern Appalachian Mountains of North America brought the music and instruments of Europe and Africa along with them for nearly 300 years. Country music was introduced to the world as a Southern phenomenon, Bristol, Tennessee, has been formally recognized by the U. S. Congress as the Birthplace of Country Music, based on the historic Bristol recording sessions of 1927. Since 2014, the city has been home to the Birthplace of Country Music Museum, historians have also noted the influence of the less-known Johnson City sessions of 1928 and 1929, and the Knoxville sessions of 1929 and 1930. Prior to these, pioneer settlers, in the Great Smoky Mountains region, had developed a musical heritage. The first generation emerged in the early 1920s, with Atlantas music scene playing a role in launching countrys earliest recording artists. Okeh Records began issuing hillbilly music records by Fiddlin John Carson as early as 1923, followed by Columbia Records in 1924, many hillbilly musicians, such as Cliff Carlisle, recorded blues songs throughout the 1920s. The most important was the Grand Ole Opry, aired starting in 1925 by WSM in Nashville, during the 1930s and 1940s, cowboy songs, or Western music, which had been recorded since the 1920s, were popularized by films made in Hollywood. Bob Wills was another musician from the Lower Great Plains who had become very popular as the leader of a hot string band. His mix of country and jazz, which started out as dance hall music, Wills was one of the first country musicians known to have added an electric guitar to his band, in 1938. Country musicians began recording boogie in 1939, shortly after it had played at Carnegie Hall. Gospel music remained a component of country music. It became known as honky tonk, and had its roots in Western swing and the music of Mexico. By the early 1950s a blend of Western swing, country boogie, rockabilly was most popular with country fans in the 1950s, and 1956 could be called the year of rockabilly in country music. Beginning in the mid-1950s, and reaching its peak during the early 1960s, the late 1960s in American music produced a unique blend as a result of traditionalist backlash within separate genres
10.
Modern musical symbols
–
Clefs define the pitch range, or tessitura, of the staff on which it is placed. A clef is usually the leftmost symbol on a staff, additional clefs may appear in the middle of a staff to indicate a change in register for instruments with a wide range. In early music, clefs could be placed on any of several lines on a staff, musical note and rest values are not absolutely defined, but are proportional in duration to all other note and rest values. The whole note is the value, and the other notes are named in comparison. Durations shorter than the 64th are rare but not unknown, 128th notes are used by many composers, including Mozart and Beethoven, 256th notes occur in works by Vivaldi, Mozart and Beethoven. The name of very short notes can be formed as 2n + 2th note, accidentals modify the pitch of the notes that follow them on the same staff position within a measure, unless cancelled by an additional accidental. Key signatures define the prevailing key of the music that follows, if no key signature appears, the key is assumed to be C major/A minor, but can also signify a neutral key, employing individual accidentals as required for each note. The key signature examples shown here are described as they would appear on a treble staff, a common notation for quarter tones involves writing the fraction 1⁄4 next to an arrow pointing up or down. Time signatures define the meter of the music, music is marked off in uniform sections called bars or measures, and time signatures establish the number of beats in each. This does not necessarily indicate which beats to emphasize, however, time signatures tend to suggest prevailing groupings of beats or pulses. Dynamics are indicators of the intensity or volume of a musical line. Other commonly used dynamics build upon these values, for example, pianississimo meaning so softly as to be almost inaudible, and fortississimo, meaning extremely loud. In some European countries, use of the loudest dynamics has been strongly discouraged as endangering the hearing of the performers, a small s in front of the dynamic notations means subito, and means that the dynamic is to change to the new notation rapidly. Subito is commonly used with sforzandos, but can appear with all other dynamic notations, another value that rarely appears is niente or n, which means nothing. This may be used at the end of a diminuendo to indicate fade out to nothing, articulations specify how to perform individual notes within a phrase or passage. They can be fine-tuned by combining more than one symbol over or under a note. They may also appear in conjunction with phrasing marks listed above, ornaments modify the pitch pattern of individual notes. 8va and 15ma are sometimes abbreviated further to 8 and 15, when they appear below the staff, the word bassa is sometimes added
11.
Clay tablet
–
In the Ancient Near East, clay tablets were used as a writing medium, especially for writing in cuneiform, throughout the Bronze Age and well into the Iron Age. Cuneiform characters were imprinted on a wet clay tablet with a stylus often made of reed, once written upon, many tablets were dried in the sun or air, remaining fragile. Later, these clay tablets could be soaked in water. Other tablets, once written, were fired in hot kilns making them hard, collections of these clay documents made up the very first archives. They were at the root of first libraries, tens of thousands of written tablets, including many fragments, have been found in the Middle East. In the Minoan/Mycenaean civilizations, writing has not been observed for any use other than accounting, tablets serving as labels, with the impression of the side of a wicker basket on the back, and tablets showing yearly summaries, suggest a sophisticated accounting system. In this cultural region the tablets were never fired deliberately, as the clay was recycled on an annual basis, however, some of the tablets were fired as a result of uncontrolled fires in the buildings where they were stored. The rest are still tablets of unfired clay, and extremely fragile, some scholars are investigating the possibility of firing them now. Writing was not as we see it today, in that way, recorded accounts of amounts of goods involved in a transaction could be made. The clay tablet was thus being used by scribes to take down the events of what was happening during his time, Sumerians used what are known as pictograms. Pictograms are symbols that express a concept, a logogram. Early writing also began in Ancient Egypt using hieroglyphs, early hieroglyphs and some of the modern Chinese characters are other examples of pictographs. The Sumerians later shifted their writing to Cuneiform, defined as Wedge writing in Latin, clay tablets took the forms of myths, fables, essays, hymns, proverbs, epic poetry, laws, plants, and animals. What these clay tablets allowed was for individuals to record who, an example of these great stories was The Story of Gilgamesh. This story would tell of the flood that destroyed Sumer. Remedies and recipes that would have been unknown were then possible because of the clay tablet, some of the recipes were stew, which was made with goat, garlic, onions and sour milk. Communication grew faster as now there was a way to get messages across just like mail, important and private clay tablets were coated with an extra layer of clay, that no one else would read it. This means of communicating was used for over 3000 years in fifteen different languages, Sumerians, Babylonians and Eblaites all had their own clay tablet libraries
12.
Papyrus
–
The word papyrus /pəˈpaɪrəs/ refers to a thick precursor to modern paper made from the pith of the papyrus plant, Cyperus papyrus. Papyrus can also refer to a document written on sheets of papyrus joined together side by side and rolled up into a scroll, the plural for such documents is papyri. Papyrus is first known to have used in ancient Egypt. It was also used throughout the Mediterranean region and in Kingdom of Kush, the Ancient Egyptians used papyrus as a writing material, as well as employing it commonly in the construction of other artifacts such as reed boats, mats, rope, sandals, and baskets. Papyrus was first manufactured in Egypt as far back as the fourth millennium BCE, the earliest archaeological evidence of papyrus was excavated in 2012 and 2013 at Wadi al-Jarf, an ancient Egyptian harbor located on the Red Sea coast. The papyrus rolls describe the last years of building the Great Pyramid of Giza, in the first centuries BCE and CE, papyrus scrolls gained a rival as a writing surface in the form of parchment, which was prepared from animal skins. Sheets of parchment were folded to form quires from which book-form codices were fashioned, early Christian writers soon adopted the codex form, and in the Græco-Roman world, it became common to cut sheets from papyrus rolls to form codices. Codices were an improvement on the scroll, as the papyrus was not pliable enough to fold without cracking. Papyrus had the advantage of being cheap and easy to produce. Unless the papyrus was of quality, the writing surface was irregular. Its last appearance in the Merovingian chancery is with a document of 692, the latest certain dates for the use of papyrus are 1057 for a papal decree, under Pope Victor II, and 1087 for an Arabic document. Its use in Egypt continued until it was replaced by more inexpensive paper introduced by Arabs who originally learned of it from the Chinese, by the 12th century, parchment and paper were in use in the Byzantine Empire, but papyrus was still an option. Papyrus was made in several qualities and prices, pliny the Elder and Isidore of Seville described six variations of papyrus which were sold in the Roman market of the day. These were graded by quality based on how fine, firm, white, grades ranged from the superfine Augustan, which was produced in sheets of 13 digits wide, to the least expensive and most coarse, measuring six digits wide. Materials deemed unusable for writing or less than six digits were considered commercial quality and were pasted edge to edge to be used only for wrapping, until the middle of the 19th century, only some isolated documents written on papyrus were known. They did not contain literary works, the first modern discovery of papyri rolls was made at Herculaneum in 1752. Until then, the papyri known had been a few surviving from medieval times. The English word papyrus derives, via Latin, from Greek πάπυρος, Greek has a second word for it, βύβλος
13.
Parchment
–
Parchment is a writing material made from specially prepared untanned skins of animals—primarily sheep, calves, and goats. It has been used as a medium for over two millennia. Vellum is a finer quality parchment made from the skins of kids, lambs and it may be called animal membrane by libraries and museums that wish to avoid distinguishing between parchment and the more restricted term vellum. Today the term parchment is often used in non-technical contexts to refer to any animal skin, particularly goat, sheep or cow, that has been scraped or dried under tension. Vellum in theory refers exclusively to calfskin, and is used to denote a quality of material. The term parchment originally referred only to the skin of sheep and, occasionally, the word parchment evolved from the name of the city of Pergamon which was a thriving center of parchment production during the Hellenistic period. This account, originated in the writings of Pliny the Elder, is dubious because parchment had been in use in Anatolia, in the 2nd century BC a great library was set up in Pergamon that rivaled the famous Library of Alexandria. Writing on prepared animal skins had a history, however. H. Ibscher, and preserved in the Cairo Museum, a roll of the Twelfth Dynasty now in Berlin, the text now in the British Museum. Though the Assyrians and the Babylonians impressed their cuneiform on clay tablets, early Islamic texts are also found on parchment. In the later Middle Ages, especially the 15th century, parchment was largely replaced by paper for most uses except luxury manuscripts, new techniques in paper milling allowed it to be much cheaper than parchment, it was still made of textile rags and of very high quality. With the advent of printing in the fifteenth century, the demands of printers far exceeded the supply of animal skins for parchment. Although most copies of the Gutenberg Bible are on paper, some were printed on parchment,12 of the 48 surviving copies, in 1490, Johannes Trithemius preferred the older methods, because handwriting placed on parchment will be able to endure a thousand years. But how long will printing last, which is dependent on paper and it lasts for two hundred years that is a long time. In fact high quality paper from this period has survived 500 years or more very well, the heyday of parchment use was during the medieval period, but there has been a growing revival of its use among artists since the late 20th century. Although parchment never stopped being used it had ceased to be a choice for artists supports by the end of 15th century Renaissance. This was partly due to its expense and partly due to its working properties. When the water in paint media touches parchments surface, the collagen melts slightly, forming a bed for the paint
14.
Manuscript paper
–
Manuscript paper is paper preprinted with staffs ready for musical notation. Manuscript paper is available for drum notation and guitar tabulature. The treble clef is used for band instruments including the saxophone, sitar, trumpet, clarinet. The bass clef is used for instruments such as the bass trombone, bass guitar. For the piano both clefs are used, the Manuscript Page — downloadable manuscript paper Sheet music
15.
Printing press
–
A printing press is a device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a print medium, thereby transferring the ink. The printing press was invented in the Holy Roman Empire by the German Johannes Gutenberg around 1440, the printing press spread within several decades to over two hundred cities in a dozen European countries. By 1500, printing presses in operation throughout Western Europe had already produced more than twenty million volumes, in the 16th century, with presses spreading further afield, their output rose tenfold to an estimated 150 to 200 million copies. The operation of a press became so synonymous with the enterprise of printing that it lent its name to a new branch of media. The sharp rise of learning and literacy amongst the middle class led to an increased demand for books which the time-consuming hand-copying method fell far short of accommodating. Technologies preceding the press led to the presss invention included, manufacturing of paper, development of ink, woodblock printing. At the same time, a number of products and technological processes had reached a level of maturity which allowed their potential use for printing purposes. The device was used from very early on in urban contexts as a cloth press for printing patterns. Gutenberg may have also inspired by the paper presses which had spread through the German lands since the late 14th century. Gutenberg adopted the design, thereby mechanizing the printing process. Printing, however, put a demand on the quite different from pressing. Gutenberg adapted the construction so that the power exerted by the platen on the paper was now applied both evenly and with the required sudden elasticity. To speed up the process, he introduced a movable undertable with a plane surface on which the sheets could be swiftly changed. The known examples range from Germany to England to Italy, however, the various techniques employed did not have the refinement and efficiency needed to become widely accepted. Gutenberg greatly improved the process by treating typesetting and printing as two separate work steps, a goldsmith by profession, he created his type pieces from a lead-based alloy which suited printing purposes so well that it is still used today. The mass production of metal letters was achieved by his key invention of a hand mould. Another factor conducive to printing arose from the existing in the format of the codex. Considered the most important advance in the history of the prior to printing itself
16.
Printer (computing)
–
In computing, a printer is a peripheral which makes a persistent human-readable representation of graphics or text on paper or similar physical media. The worlds first computer printer was a 19th-century mechanically driven apparatus invented by Charles Babbage for his difference engine, the plotter was used for those requiring high quality line art like blueprints. Laser printers using PostScript mixed text and graphics, like dot-matrix printers, by 1990, most simple printing tasks like fliers and brochures were now created on personal computers and then laser printed, expensive offset printing systems were being dumped as scrap. The HP Deskjet of 1988 offered the same advantages as laser printer in terms of flexibility, inkjet systems rapidly displaced dot matrix and daisy wheel printers from the market. By the 2000s high-quality printers of this sort had fallen under the price point. Even the desire for printed output for offline reading while on mass transit or aircraft has been displaced by e-book readers, today, traditional printers are being used more for special purposes, like printing photographs or artwork, and are no longer a must-have peripheral. Starting around 2010, 3D printing became an area of intense interest and these devices are in their earliest stages of development and have not yet become commonplace. Personal printers are designed to support individual users, and may be connected to only a single computer. These printers are designed for low-volume, short-turnaround print jobs, requiring minimal setup time to produce a copy of a given document. However, they are generally slow devices ranging from 6 to around 25 pages per minute, however, this is offset by the on-demand convenience. Some printers can print documents stored on cards or from digital cameras. Networked or shared printers are designed for high-volume, high-speed printing and they are usually shared by many users on a network and can print at speeds of 45 to around 100 ppm. The Xerox 9700 could achieve 120 ppm, a virtual printer is a piece of computer software whose user interface and API resembles that of a printer driver, but which is not connected with a physical computer printer. It is called a printer by analogy with a printer which produces a two-dimensional document by a similar process of depositing a layer of ink on paper. The choice of print technology has an effect on the cost of the printer and cost of operation, speed, quality and permanence of documents. Some printer technologies dont work with certain types of physical media, cheques can be printed with liquid ink or on special cheque paper with toner anchorage so that alterations may be detected. The machine-readable lower portion of a cheque must be printed using MICR toner or ink, banks and other clearing houses employ automation equipment that relies on the magnetic flux from these specially printed characters to function properly. The following printing technologies are found in modern printers, A laser printer rapidly produces high quality text
17.
Music engraving
–
Music engraving is the art of drawing music notation at high quality for the purpose of mechanical reproduction. The term music copying is almost equivalent—though music engraving implies a degree of skill and quality. The name of the process originates in plate engraving, a widely used technique dating from the sixteenth century. The term engraving is now used to refer to any high-quality method of drawing music notation, mechanical music engraving began in the middle of the fifteenth century. As musical composition increased in complexity, so too did the required to produce accurate musical scores. Unlike literary printing, which mainly contains printed words, music engraving communicates several different types of information simultaneously, to be clear to musicians, it is imperative that engraving techniques allow absolute precision. Notes of chords, dynamic markings, and other line up with vertical accuracy. If text is included, each syllable matches vertically with its assigned melody, horizontally, subdivisions of beats are marked not only by their flags and beams, but also by the relative space between them on the page. The logistics of creating such precise copies posed several problems for early music engravers, Similar to book printing, music printing began in the fifteenth century with the use of moveable type. The central problem posed to early music engravers using moveable type was the integration of notes, staves. Often, staff lines were drawn prior to printing, or added to the printed music afterward. Although plate engraving had been used since the fifteenth century for creating visual art and maps. In this method, an image of a complete page of music was engraved onto a metal plate. Ink was then applied to the grooves, and the print was transferred onto paper. Metal plates could be stored and reused, which made this method an attractive option for music engravers, copper was the initial metal of choice for early plates, but by the eighteenth century pewter became the standard material due to its malleability and lower cost. At first, plates were engraved freely by hand, nevertheless, the technique has survived to the present day, and is still occasionally used by select publishers such as G. Henle Verlag in Germany. Historically, a musician was required to draw his own staff lines onto blank paper, eventually, staff paper was manufactured pre-printed with staves as a labor-saving technique. The musician could then write music directly onto the lines in pencil or ink, also at this time, a music copyist was often employed to hand-copy individual parts from a composers full score
18.
Photocopier
–
A photocopier is a machine that makes paper copies of documents and other visual images quickly and cheaply. Heat, pressure or a combination of both is used to fuse the toner onto the paper. Earlier versions included the Gestetner stencil duplicator, invented by David Gestetner in 1881, xerographic office photocopying was introduced by Xerox in 1959, and it gradually replaced copies made by Verifax, Photostat, carbon paper, mimeograph machines, and other duplicating machines. Photocopying is widely used in the business, education, and government sectors, in the 2010s, there is a convergence in some high-end machines between the roles of a photocopier, a fax machine, a scanner, and a computer network-connected printer into a multi-function printer. As of 2015, some machines can copy and print in color. Chester Carlson, the inventor of photocopying, was originally a patent attorney, as well as a part-time researcher and his job at the patent office in New York required him to make a large number of copies of important papers. Carlson, who was arthritic, found this to be a painful and this motivated him to conduct experiments with photo conductivity. Carlson used his kitchen for his experiments, and, in 1938. He made the first photocopy using a plate covered with sulfur. The words 10-22-38 Astoria were written on a slide, which was placed on top of more sulfur. After the slide was removed, an image of the words remained. Carlson tried to sell his invention to some companies, but failed because the process was still underdeveloped, between 1939 and 1944, Carlson was turned down by over 20 companies, including IBM and General Electric—neither of which believed there was a significant market for copiers. In 1944, the Battelle Memorial Institute, a organization in Columbus, Ohio. Over the next five years, the institute conducted experiments to improve the process of electrophotography, in 1947, Haloid Corporation approached Battelle to obtain a license to develop and market a copying machine based on this technology. Haloid felt that the word electrophotography was too complicated and did not have good recall value, Haloid called the new copier machines Xerox Machines and, in 1948, the word Xerox was trademarked. Haloid eventually changed its name to Xerox Corporation, in 1949, Xerox Corporation introduced the first xerographic copier called the Model A. Xerox became so successful that, in North America, photocopying came to be known as xeroxing. Xerox has actively fought to prevent Xerox from becoming a genericized trademark, some languages include hybrid terms, such as the widely used Polish term kserokopia, even though relatively few photocopiers are of the Xerox brand
19.
Melody
–
A melody, also tune, voice, or line, is a linear succession of musical tones that the listener perceives as a single entity. In its most literal sense, a melody is a combination of pitch and rhythm, while more figuratively and it may be considered the foreground to the background accompaniment. A line or part need not be a foreground melody, melodies often consist of one or more musical phrases or motifs, and are usually repeated throughout a composition in various forms. Melodies may also be described by their melodic motion or the pitches or the intervals between pitches, pitch range, tension and release, continuity and coherence, cadence, the true goal of music—its proper enterprise—is melody. All the parts of harmony have as their purpose only beautiful melody. Therefore, the question of which is the significant, melody or harmony, is futile. Beyond doubt, the means is subordinate to the end, given the many and varied elements and styles of melody many extant explanations confine us to specific stylistic models, and they are too exclusive. Paul Narveson claimed in 1984 that more than three-quarters of melodic topics had not been explored thoroughly, melodies in the 20th century utilized a greater variety of pitch resources than ha been the custom in any other historical period of Western music. While the diatonic scale was used, the chromatic scale became widely employed. Composers also allotted a structural role to the dimensions that previously had been almost exclusively reserved for pitch. Kliewer states, The essential elements of any melody are duration, pitch, and quality, texture, for example, Jazz musicians use the term lead or head to refer to the main melody, which is used as a starting point for improvisation. Rock music, melodic music, and other forms of popular music, indian classical music relies heavily on melody and rhythm, and not so much on harmony, as the music contains no chord changes. Balinese gamelan music often uses complicated variations and alterations of a melody played simultaneously. In western classical music, composers often introduce an initial melody, or theme, classical music often has several melodic layers, called polyphony, such as those in a fugue, a type of counterpoint. Often, melodies are constructed from motifs or short melodic fragments, richard Wagner popularized the concept of a leitmotif, a motif or melody associated with a certain idea, person or place. Appropriation Hocket Parsons code, a notation used to identify a piece of music through melodic motion—the motion of the pitch up. Harvard Dictionary of Music, 2nd ed. p. 517–19, the Art of Melody, p. xix–xxx. A Textbook of Melody, A course in functional melodic analysis, a History Of Melody, Barrie and Rockliff, London
20.
Rhythm
–
Rhythm generally means a movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions. In the performance arts, rhythm is the timing of events on a scale, of musical sounds and silences that occur over time, of the steps of a dance, or the meter of spoken language. In some performing arts, such as hip hop music, the delivery of the lyrics is one of the most important elements of the style. Rhythm may also refer to visual presentation, as timed movement through space, in recent years, rhythm and meter have become an important area of research among music scholars. Recent work in these areas includes books by Maury Yeston, Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff, Jonathan Kramer, Christopher Hasty, Godfried Toussaint, William Rothstein, and Joel Lester. In Thinking and Destiny, Harold W. Percival defined rhythm as the character and meaning of thought expressed through the measure or movement in sound or form, or by written signs or words. In his television series How Music Works, Howard Goodall presents theories that human rhythm recalls the regularity with which we walk, other research suggests that it does not relate to the heartbeat directly, but rather the speed of emotional affect, which also influences heartbeat. Yet other researchers suggest that certain features of human music are widespread. The perception and abstraction of rhythmic measure is the foundation of human instinctive musical participation, Joseph Jordania recently suggested that the sense of rhythm was developed in the early stages of hominid evolution by the forces of natural selection. Plenty of animals walk rhythmically and hear the sounds of the heartbeat in the womb, some types of parrots can know rhythm. There is not a report of an animal being trained to tap, peck. For this reason, the fast-transient sounds of percussion instruments lend themselves to the definition of rhythm, Musical cultures that rely upon such instruments may develop multi-layered polyrhythm and simultaneous rhythms in more than one time signature, called polymeter. Such are the cross-rhythms of Sub-Saharan Africa and the interlocking kotekan rhythms of the gamelan, for information on rhythm in Indian music see Tala. For other Asian approaches to rhythm see Rhythm in Persian music, Rhythm in Arabian music and Usul—Rhythm in Turkish music and this consists of a series of identical yet distinct periodic short-duration stimuli perceived as points in time. It is currently most often designated as a crotchet or quarter note in western notation, faster levels are division levels, and slower levels are multiple levels. Rhythms of recurrence arise from the interaction of two levels of motion, the faster providing the pulse and the slower organizing the beats into repetitive groups. Once a metric hierarchy has been established, we, as listeners, a durational pattern that synchronises with a pulse or pulses on the underlying metric level may be called a rhythmic unit. A rhythmic gesture is any pattern that, in contrast to the rhythmic unit
21.
Medieval music
–
Medieval music consists of songs and instrumental pieces from about 400 A. D. to 1400. Medieval music was an era of Western music, including music used for the church. Medieval music includes vocal music, such as Gregorian chant and choral music, solely instrumental music. Gregorian chant was sung by monks during Catholic Mass, the Mass is a reenactment of Christs Last Supper, intended to provide a spiritual connection between man and God. Part of this connection was established through music and this era begins with the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century and ends sometime in the early fifteenth century. Establishing the end of the era and the beginning of the Renaissance music era is difficult. The date range in this article is the one adopted by musicologists. S. Bach and Classical music period composers from the 1700s such as W. A. Mozart, the most obvious of these is the development of a comprehensive music notational system which enabled composers to write out their song melodies and instrumental pieces on parchment or paper. Prior to the development of musical notation, songs and pieces had to be learned by ear and this greatly limited how many people could be taught new music and how wide music could spread to other regions or countries. The development of music made it easier to disseminate songs and musical pieces to a larger number of people. Many instruments used to perform medieval music still exist in the 21st century, the flute was made of wood in the medieval era] rather than silver or other metal, and could be made as a side-blown or end-blown instrument. While modern orchestral flutes are made of metal and have complex key mechanisms and airtight pads. The recorder was made of wood during the Medieval era, and despite the fact that in the 2000s, it may be made of synthetic materials, it has more or less retained its past form. The gemshorn is similar to the recorder as it has holes on its front. One of the predecessors, the pan flute, was popular in medieval times. This instruments pipes were made of wood, and were graduated in length to produce different pitches, Medieval music used many plucked string instruments like the lute, a fretted instrument with a pear-shaped hollow body which is the predecessor to the modern guitar. Other plucked stringed instruments included the mandore, gittern, citole, the bowed lyra of the Byzantine Empire was the first recorded European bowed string instrument. Like the modern violin, a performer produced sound by moving a bow with tensioned hair over tensioned strings, the hurdy-gurdy was a mechanical violin using a rosined wooden wheel attached to a crank to bow its strings
22.
Renaissance music
–
Renaissance music is vocal and instrumental music written and performed in Europe during the Renaissance era. From this changing society emerged a common, unifying musical language, in particular the style of the Franco-Flemish school. The invention of the press in 1440 made it cheaper and easier to distribute music and musical theory texts on a wider geographic scale. Prior to the invention of printing, songs and music that were written down and music theory texts had to be hand-copied, demand for music as entertainment and as a leisure activity for educated amateurs increased with the emergence of a bourgeois class. These musicians were sought throughout Europe, particularly in Italy, where churches and aristocratic courts hired them as composers, performers. This reversed the situation from a hundred years earlier, opera, a dramatic staged genre in which singers are accompanied by instruments, arose at this time in Florence. Opera was developed as an attempt to resurrect the music of ancient Greece. Music was increasingly freed from constraints, and more variety was permitted in range, rhythm, harmony, form. In the Renaissance, music became a vehicle for personal expression, composers found ways to make vocal music more expressive of the texts they were setting. Secular music absorbed techniques from sacred music, and vice versa, popular secular forms such as the chanson and madrigal spread throughout Europe. Courts employed virtuoso performers, both singers and instrumentalists, Music also became more self-sufficient with its availability in printed form, existing for its own sake. Precursor versions of familiar modern instruments developed into new forms during the Renaissance. These instruments were modified to responding to the evolution of musical ideas, Early forms of modern woodwind and brass instruments like the bassoon and trombone also appeared, extending the range of sonic color and increasing the sound of instrumental ensembles. From the Renaissance era, notated secular and sacred music survives in quantity, including vocal and instrumental works, an enormous diversity of musical styles and genres flourished during the Renaissance. These can be heard on recordings made in the 20th and 21st century, including masses, motets, madrigals, chansons, accompanied songs, instrumental dances, beginning in the late 20th century, numerous early music ensembles were formed. One of the most pronounced features of early Renaissance European art music was the reliance on the interval of the third. Polyphony – the use of multiple, independent melodic lines, performed simultaneously – became increasingly elaborate throughout the 14th century, the beginning of the 15th century showed simplification, with the composers often striving for smoothness in the melodic parts. The modal characteristics of Renaissance music began to break down towards the end of the period with the use of root motions of fifths or fourths
23.
Baroque music
–
Baroque music is a style of Western art music composed from approximately 1600 to 1750. This era followed the Renaissance music era, and was followed in turn by the Classical era, Baroque music forms a major portion of the classical music canon, being widely studied, performed, and listened to. The Baroque period saw the creation of tonality, an approach to writing music in which a song or piece is written in a particular key, during the Baroque era, professional musicians were expected to be accomplished improvisers of both solo melodic lines and accompaniment parts. A characteristic Baroque form was the dance suite, while the pieces in a dance suite were inspired by actual dance music, dance suites were designed for listening, not for accompanying dancers. During the period, composers and performers used more elaborate ornamentation, made changes in musical notation. Many musical terms and concepts from this era, such as toccata, fugue, dense, complex polyphonic music, in which multiple independent melody lines were performed simultaneously, was an important part of many Baroque choral and instrumental works. The word baroque comes from the Portuguese word barroco, meaning misshapen pearl, the term Baroque is generally used by music historians to describe a broad range of styles from a wide geographic region, mostly in Europe, composed over a period of approximately 150 years. The systematic application by historians of the baroque to music of this period is a relatively recent development. In 1919, Curt Sachs became the first to apply the five characteristics of Heinrich Wölfflins theory of the Baroque systematically to music, all of these efforts resulted in appreciable disagreement about time boundaries of the period, especially concerning when it began. In English the term acquired currency only in the 1940s, in the writings of Bukofzer, nevertheless, the term has become widely used and accepted for this broad range of music. It may be helpful to distinguish the Baroque from both the preceding and following periods of musical history, the Baroque period is divided into three major phases, early, middle, and late. Although they overlap in time, they are dated from 1580 to 1630, from 1630 to 1680. In reference to music, they based their ideals on a perception of Classical musical drama that valued discourse, the early realizations of these ideas, including Jacopo Peris Dafne and LEuridice, marked the beginning of opera, which were a catalyst for Baroque music. Concerning music theory, the widespread use of figured bass represents the developing importance of harmony as the linear underpinnings of polyphony. Harmony is the end result of counterpoint, and figured bass is a representation of those harmonies commonly employed in musical performance. With figured bass, numbers, accidentals or symbols were placed above the bassline that was read by keyboard instrument players such as players or pipe organists. The numbers, accidentals or symbols indicated to the player what intervals she should play above each bass note. The keyboard player would improvise a chord voicing for each bass note and this led to the idea that certain sequences of chords, rather than just notes, could provide a sense of closure at the end of a piece—one of the fundamental ideas that became known as tonality
24.
Figured bass
–
Basso continuo parts, almost universal in the Baroque era, provided the harmonic structure of the music. The phrase is shortened to continuo, and the instrumentalists playing the continuo part are called the continuo group. The titles of many Baroque works make mention of the section, such as J. S. Bachs Concerto for Two Violins, Strings. The makeup of the group is often left to the discretion of the performers. At least one instrument capable of playing chords must be included, such as a harpsichord, organ, lute, theorbo, guitar, regal, or harp. In addition, any number of instruments play in the bass register may be included, such as cello, double bass, bass viol. The most common combination, at least in modern performances, is harpsichord and cello for instrumental works and secular works, such as operas. Harps, lutes, and other instruments are more typical of early 17th-century music. The keyboard player realizes a continuo part by playing, in addition to the bass line, notes above it to complete chords. The figured bass notation, described below, is a guide, but performers are expected to use their musical judgment. Experienced players sometimes incorporate motives found in the instrumental parts into their improvised chordal accompaniment. Modern editions of music usually supply a realized keyboard part, fully written out in staff notation for a player. With the rise in historically informed performance, however, the number of performers who are able to improvise their parts from the figures, as Baroque players would have done, has increased. Basso continuo, though a structural and identifying element of the Baroque period, continued to be used in many works, mostly sacred choral works. An example is C. P. E. Bachs Concerto in D minor for flute, strings and basso continuo. Examples of its use in the 19th century are rarer, but they do exist, masses by Anton Bruckner, Beethoven, the phrase tasto solo indicates that only the bass line is to be played for a short period, usually until the next figure is encountered. This instructs the chord-playing instrumentalist not to play any improvised chords for a period, composers were inconsistent in the usages described below. Especially in the 17th century, the numbers were omitted whenever the composer thought the chord was obvious, early composers such as Claudio Monteverdi often specified the octave by the use of compound intervals such as 10,11, and 15
25.
Chord progression
–
A chord progression or harmonic progression is a succession of musical chords. Chord progressions are the foundation of harmony in Western musical tradition, in tonal music, chord progressions have the function of establishing or contradicting a tonality. Chord progressions are usually expressed by Roman numerals, a chord may be built upon any note of a musical scale, therefore a seven-note scale allows seven basic chords, each degree of the scale becoming the root of its own chord. A chord built upon the note A is an A chord of some type The harmonic function of any particular chord depends on the context of the chord progression in which it is found. The diatonic harmonization of any major results in three major triads. They are based on the first, fourth, and fifth scale degrees and these three triads include, and therefore can harmonize, every note of that scale. The same scale also provides three relative minor chords, one related to each of the three major chords, separate from these six common chords there is one degree of the scale, the seventh, that results in a diminished chord. In addition, extra notes may be added to any chord, if these notes are also selected from the original scale the harmony remains diatonic. If new chromatic intervals are introduced then a change of scale or modulation occurs and this in turn may lead to a resolution back to the original key, so that the entire sequence of chords helps create an extended musical form. In western classical notation, chords built on the scale are numbered with Roman numerals, other forms of chord notation have been devised, from figured bass to the chord chart. These usually allow or even require an amount of improvisation. Diatonic scales such as the major and minor scales lend themselves well to the construction of common chords because they contain a large number of perfect fifths. Such scales predominate in those regions where harmony is an part of music, as, for example. Alternation between two chords may be thought of as the most basic chord progression, many well-known pieces are built harmonically upon the mere repetition of two chords of the same scale. The Isley Brothers Shout uses I - vi throughout, three-chord tunes, though, are more common, since a melody may then dwell on any note of the scale. They are often presented as successions of four chords, in order to produce a binary harmonic rhythm, often the chords may be selected to fit a pre-conceived melody, but just as often it is the progression itself that gives rise to the melody. (Common in Elizabethan music, this also underpins the American college song Goodnight Ladies, is the exclusive progression used in Kwela, similar progressions abound in African popular music. They may be varied by the addition of sevenths to any chord or by substitution of the minor of the IV chord to give, for example
26.
Songwriter
–
A songwriter is an individual who writes the lyrics, melodies and chord progressions for songs, typically for a popular music genre such as rock or country music. A songwriter can also be called a composer, although the term tends to be used mainly for individuals from the classical music genre. The pressure from the industry to produce popular hits means that songwriting is often an activity for which the tasks are distributed between a number of people. For example, a songwriter who excels at writing lyrics might be paired with a songwriter with a gift for creating original melodies, pop songs may be written by group members from the band or by staff writers – songwriters directly employed by music publishers. Some songwriters serve as their own publishers, while others have outside publishers. The old-style apprenticeship approach to learning how to write songs is being supplemented by university degrees and college diplomas, a knowledge of modern music technology, songwriting elements and business skills are necessary requirements to make a songwriting career in the 2010s. Several music colleges offer songwriting diplomas and degrees with music business modules, the legal power to grant these permissions may be bought, sold or transferred. This is governed by international copyright law, song pitching can be done on a songwriters behalf by their publisher or independently using tip sheets like RowFax, the MusicRow publication and SongQuarters. Skills associated with song-writing include entrepreneurism and creativity, songwriters who sign an exclusive songwriting agreement with a publisher are called staff writers. In the Nashville country music scene, there is a staff writer culture where contracted writers work normal 9-to-5 hours at the publishing office and are paid a regular salary. This salary is in effect the writers draw, an advance on future earnings, the publisher owns the copyright of songs written during the term of the agreement for a designated period, after which the songwriter can reclaim the copyright. In an interview with HitQuarters, songwriter Dave Berg extolled the benefits of the set-up, unlike contracted writers, some staff writers operate as employees for their respective publishers. Under the terms of work for hire agreements, the compositions created are fully owned by the publisher. In Nashville, young writers are often encouraged to avoid these types of contracts. Staff writers are common across the industry, but without the more office-like working arrangements favored in Nashville. All the major publishers employ writers under contract, songwriter Allan Eshuijs described his staff writer contract at Universal Music Publishing as a starter deal. His success under the arrangement eventually allowed him to found his own publishing company, so that he could. keep as much as possible, songwriters are also often skilled musicians. In addition to selling their songs and musical concepts for other artists to sing, songwriters need to create a number of elements for a song
27.
Classical period (music)
–
The dates of the Classical period in Western music are generally accepted as being between about the year 1730 and the year 1820. This article is about the period in most of the 18th century to the early 19th century, though overlapping with the Baroque. The Classical period falls between the Baroque and the Romantic periods, Classical music has a lighter, clearer texture than Baroque music and is less complex. It is mainly homophonic, using a melody line over a subordinate chordal accompaniment. It also makes use of style galant which emphasized light elegance in place of the Baroques dignified seriousness, variety and contrast within a piece became more pronounced than before and the orchestra increased in size, range, and power. The harpsichord was replaced as the keyboard instrument by the piano. Instrumental music was considered important by Classical period composers, vocal music, such as songs for a singer and piano, choral works, and opera were also important during this period. Ludwig van Beethoven is regarded either as a Romantic composer or a Classical period composer who was part of the transition to the Romantic era, Franz Schubert is also a transitional figure, as were Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Luigi Cherubini, and Carl Maria von Weber. The period is referred to as the era of Viennese Classic or Classicism, since Gluck, Mozart, Haydn, Salieri. In the middle of the 18th century, Europe began to move toward a new style in architecture, literature, and this style sought to emulate the ideals of Classical antiquity, especially those of Classical Greece. Classical music was still linked to aristocratic Court culture and supported by absolute monarchies. Classical music used formality and emphasis on order and hierarchy, in contrast with the richly layered music of the Baroque era, Classical music moved towards simplicity rather than complexity. In addition, the size of orchestras began to increase. The remarkable development of ideas in natural philosophy had already established itself in the public consciousness, in particular, Newtons physics was taken as a paradigm, structures should be well-founded in axioms and be both well-articulated and orderly. This move meant that chords became a more prevalent feature of music. As a result, the structure of a piece of music became more audible. The new style was encouraged by changes in the economic order. As the 18th century progressed, the nobility became the patrons of instrumental music, while public taste increasingly preferred lighter
28.
Romantic music era
–
Romantic music is an era of Western classical music that began in the late 18th or early 19th century. In the Romantic period, music became more expressive and emotional, expanding to encompass literary, artistic, famous early Romantic composers include Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Bellini, and Berlioz. The late 19th century saw an expansion in the size of the orchestra and in the dynamic range. Also, public concerts became a key part of middle class society, in contrast to earlier periods. Famous composers from the half of the century include Johann Strauss II, Brahms, Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Verdi. A prominent mark of late 19th century music is its nationalistic fervor, as exemplified by such figures as Dvořák, Sibelius, other prominent late-century figures include Saint-Saëns, Fauré, Rachmaninoff and Franck. The Romantic movement was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in the half of the 18th century in Europe. In part, it was a revolt against social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment and a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature. It was embodied most strongly in the arts, music, and literature, but had a major impact on historiography and education. One of the first significant applications of the term to music was in 1789, in the Mémoires by the Frenchman André Grétry, in the first of these essays Hoffmann traced the beginnings of musical Romanticism to the later works of Haydn and Mozart. It was also through the writings of Hoffmann and other German authors that German music was brought to the centre of musical Romanticism, the attributes have also been criticized for being too vague. For example, features of the ghostly and supernatural could apply equally to Mozarts Don Giovanni from 1787, events and changes that happen in society such as ideas, attitudes, discoveries, inventions, and historical events always affect music. For example, the Industrial Revolution was in effect by the late 18th century. This event had a profound effect on music, there were major improvements in the mechanical valves. The new and innovative instruments could be played with greater ease, another development that had an effect on music was the rise of the middle class. Composers before this period lived on the patronage of the aristocracy, many times their audience was small, composed mostly of the upper class and individuals who were knowledgeable about music. The Romantic composers, on the hand, often wrote for public concerts and festivals, with large audiences of paying customers. Composers of the Romantic Era, like Elgar, showed the world that there should be no segregation of musical tastes, during the Romantic period, music often took on a much more nationalistic purpose
29.
Graphic notation (music)
–
Graphic notation is the representation of music through the use of visual symbols outside the realm of traditional music notation. Graphic notation evolved in the 1950s, and it is used in combination with traditional music notation. Composers often rely on graphic notation in experimental music, where standard musical notation can be ineffective, a common aspect of graphic notation is the use of symbols to convey information to the performer about the way the piece is to be performed. After working as Stockhausens assistant, Cornelius Cardew began work on a graphic score. The piece consists of 193 pages of highly abstract scores, the score itself is almost its own separate work of art. In 2008, Theresa Sauer edited a compendium featuring graphic scores by composers from over fifty countries, graphic scores, in which the music is represented using symbols and illustrations, This notation may be, like music on traditional staves, a time-pitch graph system. In the above example, time is represented by reading left-to-right. Line staves showing relative pitch, with the pitches being decided upon performance. Altered Notation can be seen in George Crumbs work where he uses traditional notation, practitioners of graphic notation include, Eye music Oramics Cage, John, and Alison Knowles. In GRAPHITE06, Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques in Australasia and South East Asia, ACM Press, Melbourne, ISBN 978-0-9795546-4-3 David Schidlowsky Musikalische Grafik—Graphic Music, León Schidlowsky. Pictures of Music at Northwestern University Bergstroem-Nielsen, Carl, Experimental improvisation and notation practise 1945-1999, Experimental improvisation and notation practise, addenda 2000-. IanniX, A graphical real-time open-source sequencer for digital art Cuaderno de Yokohama by Llorenç Barber The complete series of 17 graphic scores that Barber created in Yokohama in 2005
30.
Popular music
–
Popular music is music with wide appeal that is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. These forms and styles can be enjoyed and performed by people with little or no musical training and it stands in contrast to both art music and traditional or folk music. Art music was historically disseminated through the performances of music, although since the beginning of the recording industry. Traditional music forms such as blues songs or hymns were passed along orally, or to smaller. The original application of the term is to music of the 1880s Tin Pan Alley period in the United States, although popular music sometimes is known as pop music, the two terms are not interchangeable. Popular music songs and pieces typically have easily singable melodies, in the 2000s, with songs and pieces available as digital sound files, it has become easier for music to spread from one country or region to another. Some popular music forms have become global, while others have an appeal within the culture of their origin. Through the mixture of genres, new popular music forms are created to reflect the ideals of a global culture. The examples of Africa, Indonesia and the Middle East show how Western pop music styles can blend with local traditions to create new hybrid styles. Sales of recordings or sheet music are one measure, middleton and Manuel note that this definition has problems because multiple listens or plays of the same song or piece are not counted. Manuel states that one criticism of music is that it is produced by large media conglomerates and passively consumed by the public. He claims that the listeners in the scenario would not have been able to make the choice of their favorite music, moreover, understandings of popular music have changed with time. A societys popular music reflects the ideals that are prevalent at the time it is performed or published, david Riesman states that the youth audiences of popular music fit into either a majority group or a subculture. The majority group listens to the commercially produced styles while the subcultures find a minority style to transmit their own values and this allows youth to choose what music they identify with, which gives them power as consumers to control the market of popular music. Form in popular music is most often sectional, the most common sections being verse, chorus or refrain, other common forms include thirty-two-bar form, chorus form *, and twelve-bar blues. Popular music songs are rarely composed using different music for each stanza of the lyrics, the verse and chorus are considered the primary elements. Each verse usually has the melody, but the lyrics change for most verses. The chorus usually has a phrase and a key lyrical line which is repeated
31.
Folk music
–
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
32.
Music of Mesopotamia
–
This article treats the music of Ancient Mesopotamia. Cuneiform sources reveal an orderly organized system of diatonic scales, depending on the tuning of stringed instruments in alternating fifths and fourths, whether this reflects all types of music is not known. Instruments of Ancient Mesopotamia include harps, lyres, lutes, reed pipes, many of these were shared with neighbouring cultures. Contemporary East African lyres and West African lutes preserve many features of Mesopotamian instruments, singers probably expressed intense and withdrawn emotion, as if listening to themselves, as shown by the practice of cupping a hand to the ear. Two badly damaged silver pipes have been excavated from a grave at Ur, the pipes were crafted with what appear to be finger holes, and it is believed that they formed a pair of tubes - double-pipes - that had reeds inserted. A number of reconstructions have been proposed, the most recent being a pair of tubes with three finger holes in one tube and four finger holes in the other. Assyrian folk dance Lyres of Ur Music of Iraq Nabnitu Hurrian songs Goss, flutes of Gilgamesh and Ancient Mesopotamia. The Gold Lyre of Ur, c.2650 BC, origins of the Popular Style, The Antecedents of Twentieth-Century Popular Music. Sur la restitution de la musique hourrite, a Hurrian Musical Score from Ugarit, The Discovery of Mesopotamian Music, Sources from the Ancient Near East, vol. The Origin of Music, A Theory of the Universal Development of Music, revue dassyriologie et darchéologie orientale 64, no. The Discovery of an Ancient Mesopotamian Theory of Music, proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 115, 131–49. The Cult Song with Music from Ancient Ugarit, Another Interpretation, reallexikon der Assyriologie und vorderasiatischen Archäologie 8, edited by Dietz Otto Edzard, 463–82. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie, kilmer, Anne Draffkorn, Richard L. Crocker, and Robert R. Brown. Sounds from Silence, Recent Discoveries in Ancient Near Eastern Music, includes LP record, Bit Enki Records BTNK101, reissued as CD. La Musique suméro-accadienne, gamme et notation musicale, New Oxford History of Music Volume I, Ancient and Oriental Music. The Babylonian Musical Notation and the Hurrian Melodic Texts, the Tuning of the Babylonian Harp
33.
Hurrian songs
–
One of these tablets, which is nearly complete, contains the Hurrian hymn to Nikkal, making it the oldest surviving substantially complete work of notated music in the world. While the composers names of some of the pieces are known, h.6 is an anonymous work.30,15.49. In Laroches catalogue the hymns are designated h. 2–17, 19–23, 25–6,28,30, along with smaller fragments RS.19.164 g, j, n, o, p, r, t, w, x, y, aa, the complete hymn is h.6 in this list. A revised text of h.6 was published in 1975, one or more of the tablets also contains instructions for tuning the harp. The Hurrian hymn pre-dates several other surviving works of music, e. g. the Seikilos epitaph and the Delphic Hymns, by a millennium. The tablet is in the collection of the National Museum of Damascus, the arrangement of the tablet h.6 places the Hurrian words of the hymn at the top, under which is a double division line. The hymn text is written in a spiral, alternating recto-verso sides of the tablet—a layout not found in Babylonian texts. Below this is found the Akkadian musical instructions, consisting of interval names followed by number signs, differences in transcriptions hinge on interpretation of the meaning of these paired signs, and the relationship to the hymn text. Below the musical there is another dividing line—single this time—underneath which is a colophon in Akkadian reading This a song nitkibli. This name and another name found on one of the other tablets. There is no composer named for the hymn, but four composers names are found for five of the fragmentary pieces, Tapšiẖuni, Puẖiya, Urẖiya. Babylonian theory had no term for the distance of a fifth or a fourth—only for fifths and fourths between specific pairs of strings. As a result, there are fourteen terms in all, describing two groups of six strings, three groups of five, four groups of four, and five different groups of three strings. Astonishingly, there are no known terms corresponding to a single note and these are all fifths or fourths, and have been called by one modern scholar the primary intervals—the other seven being the secondary intervals, thirds and sixths. Some of the terms differ to varying degrees from the Akkadian forms found in the older theoretical text, which is not surprising since they were foreign terms. For example, irbute in the hymn notation corresponds to rebûttum in the text, šaḫri = šērum, zirte = ṣ/zerdum, šaššate = šalšatum. There are also a few rarer, additional words, some of them apparently Hurrian rather than Akkadian, because these interrupt the interval-numeral pattern, they may be modifiers of the preceding or following named interval
34.
Cuneiform script
–
Cuneiform script, one of the earliest systems of writing, was invented by the Sumerians. It is distinguished by its wedge-shaped marks on clay tablets, made by means of a blunt reed for a stylus, the name cuneiform itself simply means wedge shaped. Emerging in Sumer in the fourth millennium BC, cuneiform writing began as a system of pictograms. In the third millennium, the pictorial representations became simplified and more abstract as the number of characters in use grew smaller, the system consists of a combination of logophonetic, consonantal alphabetic and syllabic signs. Cuneiform writing was replaced by the Phoenician alphabet during the Neo-Assyrian Empire. By the second century CE, the script had become extinct, between half a million and two million cuneiform tablets are estimated to have been excavated in modern times, of which only approximately 30,000 –100,000 have been read or published. Most of these have lain in these collections for a century without being translated, studied or published, the cuneiform writing system was in use for more than three millennia, through several stages of development, from the 34th century BC down to the second century CE. Ultimately, it was replaced by alphabetic writing in the course of the Roman era. It had to be deciphered as an unknown writing system in 19th-century Assyriology. Successful completion of its deciphering is dated to 1857, the cuneiform script was developed from pictographic proto-writing in the late 4th millennium BC. Mesopotamias proto-literate period spans roughly the 35th to 32nd centuries, the first documents unequivocally written in Sumerian date to the 31st century at Jemdet Nasr. Originally, pictographs were either drawn on clay tablets in vertical columns with a reed stylus or incised in stone. This early style lacked the characteristic shape of the strokes. Proper names continued to be written in purely logographic fashion. The earliest known Sumerian king whose name appears on contemporary cuneiform tablets is Enmebaragesi of Kish, from about 2900 BC, many pictographs began to lose their original function, and a given sign could have various meanings depending on context. The sign inventory was reduced from some 1,500 signs to some 600 signs, determinative signs were re-introduced to avoid ambiguity. Cuneiform writing proper thus arises from the more primitive system of pictographs at about that time, by adjusting the relative position of the tablet to the stylus, the writer could use a single tool to make a variety of impressions. Cuneiform tablets could be fired in kilns to provide a permanent record, many of the clay tablets found by archaeologists were preserved because they were fired when attacking armies burned the building in which they were kept
35.
Nippur
–
Nippur was among the most ancient of Sumerian cities. It was the seat of the worship of the Sumerian god Enlil. Nippur was located in modern Nuffar in Afak, Al-Qādisiyyah Governorate, Nippur never enjoyed political hegemony in its own right, but its control was crucial, as it was considered capable of conferring the overall kingship on monarchs from other city-states. It was distinctively a sacred city, important from the possession of the shrine of Enlil. According to the Tummal Chronicle, Enmebaragesi, a ruler of Kish, was the first to build up this temple by kish His influence over Nippur has also been detected archaeologically. It also indicates that the practice was revived in Neo-Sumerian times by Ur-Nammu of Ur, on their votive offerings, some of these rulers designate themselves as ensis, or governors. Originally a village of reed huts in the marshes, Nippur was especially prone to devastation by flooding or fire. For some reason, settlement persisted at the spot, and gradually the site rose above the marshes - partly from the accumulation of debris. As the inhabitants began to develop in civilization, they substituted, at least in the case of their shrine, there is evidence of the succession on the site of different peoples, varying somewhat in their degrees of civilization. This people gave way in time to another, markedly inferior in the manufacture of pottery, in one of these earlier strata, of very great antiquity, there was discovered, in connection with the shrine, a conduit built of bricks in the form of an arch. At some point, Sumerian inscriptions began to be written on clay, the shrine at this time stood on a raised platform, and apparently contained a ziggurat. Naram-Sin rebuilt both the temple and the city walls, and in the accumulation of debris now marking the ancient site, his remains are found about half way from the top to the bottom. One of the few instances of Nippur being recorded as having its own ruler comes from a tablet depicting a revolt of several Mesopotamian cities against Naram-Sin, the tablet goes on to relate that Naram-Sin defeated these rebel cities in nine battles, and brought them back under his control. The Weidner tablet suggests that the Akkadian Empire fell as divine retribution, Ur-Nammu gave the temple its final characteristic form. Partly razing the constructions of his predecessors, he erected a terrace of bricks, some 12 m high, near the northwestern edge, towards the western corner, he built a ziggurat of three stages of dry brick, faced with kiln-fired bricks laid in bitumen. On the summit stood, as at Ur and Eridu, a small chamber, access to the stages of the ziggurat, from the court beneath, was by an inclined plane on the south-east side. To the north-east of the ziggurat stood, apparently, the House of Bel, and in the courts below the ziggurat stood various other buildings, shrines, treasure chambers, the whole structure was oriented with the corners toward the cardinal points of the compass. Ur-Nammu also rebuilt the walls of the city on the line of Naram-Sins walls, the restoration of the general features of the temple of this, and the immediately succeeding periods, has been greatly facilitated by the discovery of a sketch map on a fragment of a clay tablet
36.
Sumer
–
Living along the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates, Sumerian farmers were able to grow an abundance of grain and other crops, the surplus of which enabled them to settle in one place. Proto-writing in the dates back to c.3000 BC. The earliest texts come from the cities of Uruk and Jemdet Nasr and date back to 3300 BC, modern historians have suggested that Sumer was first permanently settled between c.5500 and 4000 BC by a West Asian people who spoke the Sumerian language, an agglutinative language isolate. These conjectured, prehistoric people are now called proto-Euphrateans or Ubaidians, some scholars contest the idea of a Proto-Euphratean language or one substrate language. Reliable historical records begin much later, there are none in Sumer of any kind that have dated before Enmebaragesi. Juris Zarins believes the Sumerians lived along the coast of Eastern Arabia, todays Persian Gulf region, Sumerian civilization took form in the Uruk period, continuing into the Jemdet Nasr and Early Dynastic periods. During the 3rd millennium BC, a cultural symbiosis developed between the Sumerians, who spoke a language isolate, and Akkadian-speakers, which included widespread bilingualism. The influence of Sumerian on Akkadian is evident in all areas, from lexical borrowing on a scale, to syntactic, morphological. This has prompted scholars to refer to Sumerian and Akkadian in the 3rd millennium BC as a Sprachbund, Sumer was conquered by the Semitic-speaking kings of the Akkadian Empire around 2270 BC, but Sumerian continued as a sacred language. Native Sumerian rule re-emerged for about a century in the Neo-Sumerian Empire or Third Dynasty of Ur approximately 2100-2000 BC, the term Sumerian is the common name given to the ancient non-Semitic-speaking inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Sumer, by the East Semitic-speaking Akkadians. The Sumerians referred to themselves as ùĝ saĝ gíg ga, phonetically /uŋ saŋ gi ga/, literally meaning the black-headed people, the Akkadian word Shumer may represent the geographical name in dialect, but the phonological development leading to the Akkadian term šumerû is uncertain. Hebrew Shinar, Egyptian Sngr, and Hittite Šanhar, all referring to southern Mesopotamia, in the late 4th millennium BC, Sumer was divided into many independent city-states, which were divided by canals and boundary stones. Each was centered on a dedicated to the particular patron god or goddess of the city. The Sumerian city-states rose to power during the prehistoric Ubaid and Uruk periods, classical Sumer ends with the rise of the Akkadian Empire in the 23rd century BC. Following the Gutian period, there is a brief Sumerian Renaissance in the 21st century BC, the Amorite dynasty of Isin persisted until c.1700 BC, when Mesopotamia was united under Babylonian rule. The Sumerians were eventually absorbed into the Akkadian population, 2500–2334 BC Akkadian Empire period, c. 2218–2047 BC Ur III period, c, 2047–1940 BC The Ubaid period is marked by a distinctive style of fine quality painted pottery which spread throughout Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf. It appears that this culture was derived from the Samarran culture from northern Mesopotamia and it is not known whether or not these were the actual Sumerians who are identified with the later Uruk culture
37.
Iraq
–
The capital, and largest city, is Baghdad. The main ethnic groups are Arabs and Kurds, others include Assyrians, Turkmen, Shabakis, Yazidis, Armenians, Mandeans, Circassians, around 95% of the countrys 36 million citizens are Muslims, with Christianity, Yarsan, Yezidism, and Mandeanism also present. The official languages of Iraq are Arabic and Kurdish, two major rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, run south through Iraq and into the Shatt al-Arab near the Persian Gulf. These rivers provide Iraq with significant amounts of fertile land, the region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, historically known as Mesopotamia, is often referred to as the cradle of civilisation. It was here that mankind first began to read, write, create laws, the area has been home to successive civilisations since the 6th millennium BC. Iraq was the centre of the Akkadian, Sumerian, Assyrian and it was also part of the Median, Achaemenid, Hellenistic, Parthian, Sassanid, Roman, Rashidun, Umayyad, Abbasid, Ayyubid, Mongol, Safavid, Afsharid, and Ottoman empires. Iraqs modern borders were mostly demarcated in 1920 by the League of Nations when the Ottoman Empire was divided by the Treaty of Sèvres, Iraq was placed under the authority of the United Kingdom as the British Mandate of Mesopotamia. A monarchy was established in 1921 and the Kingdom of Iraq gained independence from Britain in 1932, in 1958, the monarchy was overthrown and the Iraqi Republic created. Iraq was controlled by the Arab Socialist Baath Party from 1968 until 2003, after an invasion by the United States and its allies in 2003, Saddam Husseins Baath Party was removed from power and multi-party parliamentary elections were held in 2005. The American presence in Iraq ended in 2011, but the Iraqi insurgency continued and intensified as fighters from the Syrian Civil War spilled into the country, the Arabic name العراق al-ʿIrāq has been in use since before the 6th century. There are several suggested origins for the name, one dates to the Sumerian city of Uruk and is thus ultimately of Sumerian origin, as Uruk was the Akkadian name for the Sumerian city of Urug, containing the Sumerian word for city, UR. An Arabic folk etymology for the name is rooted, well-watered. During the medieval period, there was a region called ʿIrāq ʿArabī for Lower Mesopotamia and ʿIrāq ʿajamī, for the region now situated in Central and Western Iran. The term historically included the south of the Hamrin Mountains. The term Sawad was also used in early Islamic times for the region of the plain of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. In English, it is either /ɪˈrɑːk/ or /ɪˈræk/, the American Heritage Dictionary, the pronunciation /aɪˈræk/ is frequently heard in U. S. media. Since approximately 10,000 BC, Iraq was one of centres of a Caucasoid Neolithic culture where agriculture, the following Neolithic period is represented by rectangular houses. At the time of the pre-pottery Neolithic, people used vessels made of stone, gypsum, finds of obsidian tools from Anatolia are evidences of early trade relations
38.
Diatonic scale
–
This pattern ensures that, in a diatonic scale spanning more than one octave, all the half steps are maximally separated from each other. The word diatonic comes from the Greek διατονικός, meaning progressing through tones, the seven pitches of any diatonic scale can be obtained using a chain of six perfect fifths. Musical keyboards are designed to play notes, and hence diatonic scales. A diatonic scale can be described as two tetrachords separated by a whole tone. The term diatonic originally referred to the genus, one of the three genera of the ancient Greeks. In musical set theory, Allen Forte classifies diatonic scales as set form 7–35 and this article does not concern alternative seven-note diatonic scales such as the harmonic minor or the melodic minor. Western music from the Middle Ages until the late 19th century is based on the diatonic scale, there is one claim that the 45, 000-year-old Divje Babe Flute uses a diatonic scale, but there is no proof or consensus it is even a musical instrument. There is evidence that the Sumerians and Babylonians used some version of the diatonic scale and this derives from surviving inscriptions that contain a tuning system and musical composition. Despite the conjectural nature of reconstructions of the known as the Hurrian songs from the surviving score. The scales corresponding to the medieval Church modes were diatonic, one of these, the one starting on B, has no pure fifth above its reference note, it is probably for this reason that it was not used. Of the six remaining scales, two were described as corresponding to two others with a B♭ instead of a B♮, A–B–C–D–E–F–G–A was described as D–E–F–G–A–B♭C–D and C–D–E–F–G–A–B–C as F–G–A–B♭–C–D–E–F, as a result, medieval theory described the Church modes as corresponding to four diatonic scales only. Heinrich Glarean considered that the modal scales including a B♭ had to be the result of a transposition, by the beginning of the Baroque period, the notion of musical key was established, describing additional possible transpositions of the diatonic scale. Major and minor scales came to dominate until at least the start of the 20th century, some Church modes survived into the early 18th century, as well as appearing occasionally in classical and 20th-century music, and later in modal jazz. Glareans six natural scales could be transposed not only to include one flat in the signature, of these six scales, three are major scales, three are minor. To these may be added the seventh diatonic scale, with a fifth above the reference note. Transposing each of seven scales on the twelve degrees of the chromatic scale results in a total of eighty-four diatonic scales. The modern musical keyboard originated as a keyboard with only lower keys. The major scale, for instance, can be represented as T–T–S–T–T–T–S or 2–2–1–2–2–2–1 The major scale or Ionian scale is one of the diatonic scales and it is made up of seven distinct notes, plus an eighth that duplicates the first an octave higher
39.
Lyre
–
The lyre is a string instrument known for its use in Greek classical antiquity and later periods. The lyre is similar in appearance to a small harp but with distinct differences, the word comes via Latin from the Greek, the earliest reference to the word is the Mycenaean Greek ru-ra-ta-e, meaning lyrists and written in the Linear B script. The lyres of Ur, excavated in ancient Mesopotamia, date to 2500 BC, the earliest picture of a lyre with seven strings appears in the famous sarcophagus of Hagia Triada. The sarcophagus was used during the Mycenaean occupation of Crete, the recitations of the Ancient Greeks were accompanied by lyre playing. The lyre of classical antiquity was ordinarily played by being strummed with a plectrum, the fingers of the free hand silenced the unwanted strings in the chord. However, later lyres were played with a bow in Europe, one example from Wales that has been resurrected recently is the crwth. In organology, lyres are defined as yoke lutes, being lutes in which the strings are attached to a yoke which lies in the plane as the sound-table. A classical lyre has a body or sound-chest, which. Extending from this sound-chest are two raised arms, which are hollow, and are curved both outward and forward. They are connected near the top by a crossbar or yoke, an additional crossbar, fixed to the sound-chest, makes the bridge which transmits the vibrations of the strings. They were stretched between the yoke and bridge, or to a tailpiece below the bridge, according to ancient Greek mythology, the young god Hermes stole a herd of sacred cows from Apollo. In order not to be followed, he made shoes for the cows which forced them to walk backwards, Apollo, following the trails, could not follow where the cows were going. Along the way, Hermes slaughtered one of the cows and offered all, from the entrails and a tortoise/turtle shell, he created the Lyre. Apollo, figuring out it was Hermes who had his cows, Apollo was furious, but after hearing the sound of the lyre, his anger faded. Apollo offered to trade the herd of cattle for the lyre, hence, the creation of the lyre is attributed to Hermes. Other sources credit it to Apollo himself, locales in southern Europe, western Asia, or north Africa have been proposed as the historic birthplace of the genus. The instrument is played in north-eastern parts of Africa. Some of the cultures using and developing the lyre were the Aeolian and Ionian Greek colonies on the coasts of Asia bordering the Lydian empire, some mythic masters like Musaeus, and Thamyris were believed to have been born in Thrace, another place of extensive Greek colonization
40.
Delphic Hymns
–
The Delphic Hymns are two musical compositions from Ancient Greece, which survive in substantial fragments. They were long regarded as being dated circa 138 BCE and 128 BCE, respectively, reconstruction of the fragments was facilitated by the fact that the first hymn uses vocal notation, and the second one employs instrumental notation. However, careful reading of this shows that it cannot be the ethnic Athenaîos. The Second Delphic hymn has been dated to precisely 128 BC, the name of the composer has also survived, both in the heading of the hymn and in a separate inscription, Limenios, son of Thoinos, an Athenian. The occasion of the performance of both hymns was the Pythaid, a religious procession of the Athenians towards Delphi held on specific occasions usually after certain omens. Some of the pitches in this version are mere guesses, both hymns are monophonic, but are differentiated by their notation. The First Hymn is in so-called vocal notation and it is in the cretic meter throughout, exact performance practice is unknown, but Limenius is mentioned in a separate Delphic inscription as a master player of the kithara, likely he accompanied a singer or singers. The First Delphic Hymn falls into two parts, a Paean and what might have been called a Hyporchema. The hymn is set in cretics throughout, the Second Hymn is headed Paean and Prosodion to the God. It consists of ten sections in all, the first nine in cretic metre constituting the paean, the verses are related to various events from the life of the Apollo, such as his birth, his advent to Delphi, his support of the war against the Gauls etc. These hymns were thoroughly examined by musicologists and there have been efforts to perform them with replicas of ancient musical instruments. The first time that they were performed was in 1894, one only after their discovery. Hurrian song Oxyrhynchus hymn Seikilos epitaph Arda Mandikian recorded these fragments at Delphi in 1950 Musiques de lAntiquité Grecque, Ensemble Kérylos, directed by Annie Bélis. DEuripide aux premiers chrétiens, musiques de lantiquité grecque et romaine, Ensemble Kérylos, directed by Annie Bélis. Both Hymns are played, the first is performed by a baritone with tympanon, OP and PO Orchestra, conducted by Christodoulos Halaris. Atrium Musicæ de Madrid, Gregorio Paniagua, dir, anderson, Warren, and Thomas J. Mathiesen. Limenius, Grove Music Online, edited by Laura Macy, Bélis, corpus des inscriptions de Delphes, vol. Davison, Archibald T. and Willi Apel, cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press,1949
.jpg)
