A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence. ~Leopold Stokowski
Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. ~Berthold Auerbach
All deep things are song. It seems somehow the very central essence of us, song; as if all the rest were but wrappages and hulls! ~Thomas Carlyle
If the King loves music, it is well with the land. ~Mencius
Without music life would be a mistake. ~Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons. You will find it is to the soul what a water bath is to the body. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes
If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music. ~Gustav Mahler
Why waste money on psychotherapy when you can listen to the B Minor Mass? ~Michael Torke
And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares that infest the day
Shall fold their tents like the Arabs
And as silently steal away.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Day Is Done
He who sings scares away his woes. ~Cervantes
Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness. ~Maya Angelou, Gather Together in My Name
Were it not for music, we might in these days say, the Beautiful is dead. ~Benjamin Disraeli
Music is what feelings sound like. ~Author Unknown
There's music in the sighing of a reed;
There's music in the gushing of a rill;
There's music in all things, if men had ears:
Their earth is but an echo of the spheres.
~Lord Byron
Musical compositions, it should be remembered, do not inhabit certain countries, certain museums, like paintings and statues. The Mozart Quintet is not shut up in Salzburg: I have it in my pocket. ~Henri Rabaud
Music is the poetry of the air. ~Richter
If I were to begin life again, I would devote it to music. It is the only cheap and unpunished rapture upon earth. Sydney Smith
There is nothing in the world so much like prayer as music is. ~William P. Merrill
If in the after life there is not music, we will have to import it. ~Doménico Cieri Estrada
Men profess to be lovers of music, but for the most part they give no evidence in their opinions and lives that they have heard it. ~Henry David Thoreau
Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life. ~Ludwig van Beethoven
I have my own particular sorrows, loves, delights; and you have yours. But sorrow, gladness, yearning, hope, love, belong to all of us, in all times and in all places. Music is the only means whereby we feel these emotions in their universality. ~H.A. Overstreet
My idea is that there is music in the air, music all around us; the world is full of it, and you simply take as much as you require. ~Edward Elgar
Alas for those that never sing,
But die with all their music in them!
~Oliver Wendell Holmes
Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. ~Charlie Parker
Life can't be all bad when for ten dollars you can buy all the Beethoven sonatas and listen to them for ten years. ~William F. Buckley, Jr.
Music cleanses the understanding; inspires it, and lifts it into a realm which it would not reach if it were left to itself. ~Henry Ward Beecher
Play the music, not the instrument. ~Author Unknown
Music is the wine which inspires one to new generative processes, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind and makes them spiritually drunken. ~Ludwig van Beethoven
Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence. ~Robert Fripp
[An intellectual] is someone who can listen to the "William Tell Overture" without thinking of the Lone Ranger. ~John Chesson
Music's the medicine of the mind. ~John A. Logan
You are the music while the music lasts. ~T.S. Eliot
Music is the universal language of mankind. ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Outre-Mer
Music rots when it gets too far from the dance. Poetry atrophies when it gets too far from music. ~Ezra Pound
He who hears music, feels his solitude peopled at once. ~Robert Browning
You can't possibly hear the last movement of Beethoven's Seventh and go slow. ~Oscar Levant, explaining his way out of a speeding ticket
The Irish gave the bagpipes to the Scots as a joke, but the Scots haven't got the joke yet. ~Oliver Herford
What we provide is an atmosphere... of orchestrated pulse which works on people in a subliminal way. Under its influence I've seen shy debs and severe dowagers kick off their shoes and raise some wholesome hell. ~Meyer Davis, about his orchestra
Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent. ~Victor Hugo
...where music dwells
Lingering - and wandering on as loth to die...
~William Wordsworth, "Within King's College Chapel, Cambridge"
*MUSIC*
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Minggu, 27 Februari 2011
Sabtu, 26 Februari 2011
Still About Music
WRITING ABOUT MUSIC
Writing about music is much like writing about (say) painting, in that we take as our objective (a) introducing a performance and (b) sharing our insight into the artfulness of that performance, in language that is as direct and as concrete as we can make it.
For us, "writing about music" includes (a) reviewing a concert or a CD or (b) writing liner notes, programme notes, an interview, or a tribute to a composer or a performer.
Understandably, writing about music is not as easy as writing about the verbal arts. Any given performance can please one listener and displease another. In this case, the challenge lies in translating the sounds of one language (the notes) into the sounds of another (the words).
Any discussion of the most famous music critics of this century would have to include such critics as George Bernard Shaw (UK), who (many would say) set the standard; Aaron Copland, Whitney Balliet, Leonard Bernstein, and Virgil Thompson (USA); and John Everett-Green (Canada).
Below, I offer some hints on how to help the reader appreciate the complexities of the performance you plan to write about. Once again, I focus on (a) getting ready to write and (b) writing the piece. I offers these suggestions as guidelines only, not rules that should be followed in all musical events.
Listening
It stands to reason that, for the reviewer as well as the musician, the ability to listen is fundamental. We all listen to music according to our individual capacities. Many of us have acquired some bad habits--like listening to music as a background to other activities. In this way, according to Eric Satie, we turn music into wall-paper or furniture. To begin with, we should distinguish hearing from listening.
By hearing, we mean being aware of the disturbances in the air known as sounds. You may be sitting in a room, studying for an exam say, while the sounds coming from the radio wash over you. We might say that you are listening, but in a passive way. Imagine someone entering the room and striking a note on your piano: suddenly, the atmosphere changes. Startled, you listen in a different way.
By listening, we mean perceiving and understanding what happens in the music. In this case, you are listening in an active sort of way.
In What to Listen for in Music (1957), Aaron Copland claims that we listen to music on three planes:
a. the sensuous plane
As Copland points out, the appeal of music at this level is self-evident. The sound element in music is a powerful as well as a mysterious agent. The surprising thing (he adds) is that many people who consider themselves qualified music lovers listen at this level only; they go to concerts in order to lose themselves; they use music as a consolation or as an escape.
However, there is such a thing as becoming sensitive to the different kinds of "sound stuff" as used by composers, for different composers use sound stuff in different ways. We realize that a composer's use of the sound elements forms an integral part of his or her style and that in listening we have to take this matter into consideration.
b. the expressive plane
Copland argues that all music conveys meaning behind the notes and that the meaning behind the notes constitutes what the piece says, what the piece is about. Of course, we cannot put this meaning into so many words. At different moments, he observes, music expresses serenity or exuberance, regret or triumph, fury or delight. Music expresses these moods, and many others, in a variety of subtle shadings and differences. It may even express a state of meaning for which there exists no adequate phrase in any language. In any case, musicians like to say that it has only a purely musical meaning.
For this reason, it can be argued that it is easier to "understand" Tchaikovsky (say) than Beethoven. It is easier to pin a meaning-word on a Tchaikovsky piece than on a Beethoven piece. Often, it is quite difficult to put your finger on just what Beethoven is saying. Any musician will tell you that this is why Beethoven is a great composer.
c. the sheerly musical plane
At this level, the listener attends to matters of form and structure. In order to follow the line of a composer's thought, the listener attends to such matters as melody, rhythm, harmony, and tone color in a conscious fashion.
An analogy might help here. Think about what happens when we go to the theater. In the theater, we are aware of the players, the setting, the costumes, the movements, and so on. All these elements give one a sense that the theater is a pleasant place to be. They constitute the sensuous plane in our theatrical reactions.
We would experience the expressive plane in terms of the feelings we get from what is happening on the stage. We are moved to pity, excitement, and so on.
Experiencing the plot, following its development say, would be equivalent to experiencing music at the sheerly musical level. The playwright develops a character in just the same way a composer creates and develops a theme. As we become more and more aware of the way the artist handles his or her materials, the more we become intelligent listeners.
To sum up, then, when listening to music on the sensuous plane, we focus on
a. the medium, i.e., what generates the sound: voice, instrument, ensemble, and so on.
b. the quality of sound produced, in terms of tone, uniformity, special effects, and so on.
c. the dynamics or the intensity of the sound, in terms of loudness, uniformity, and change.
When listening to music on the expressive plane, we try to determine how the music interprets--and clarifies--our feelings. Sounds evokes feelings:
a. a busy passage can suggest unease or nervousness.
b. a slow passage in a minor key, such as a funeral march, can suggest gloom.
When listening to music on the sheerly musical plane, we try to focus on
a. the movement of the piece, i.e., concentrate on its rhythm, meter, and tempo,
b. the pitch, i.e., in terms of its order and melody, and
c. the structure of the piece, i.e., its logic, design, and texture.
This means listening for the "planned design" that binds an entire composition. As Copland puts it, in shaping his or her material, the composer generates "the long line," which provides listeners with a sense of direction. A composer might employ the principles of repetition and non-repetition to give a long piece and a short piece respectively the feeling of "balance."
The composer also "shapes" his or her musical materials by "partitioning" the work, presenting in in a number of movements (say). Fundamental forms include the fugue, the concerto grosso, the sonata, and the symphony, to some a few traditional forms.
Writing
The hints or guidelines offered below supplement the observations I made above. They are based on a talk Harold C. Schonberg gave to music students at the University of Calgary. Schonberg, many years the senior music critic for The New York Times, also offers tips on writing about music in such works as Facing the Music (1981).
Identify the musical substance, as it were. Are we talking about a new rendition of an old composition? This means focusing on the music itself, whether new or old. Identify the composition and the players. Put the performance into context.
Try to capture the qestalt of the performance, whether live or recorded. It might help to wrap your lead around it. Consider the following example: Whitney Balliett, the celebrated critic, captures the sound and the feeling of a performance given by Art Taylor, the drummer, in the following passage, which taken from New York Notes: A Journal of Jazz in the Seventies (1977):
[Art] Taylor, as is his custom, played just one number, but it lasted forty minutes. It was full of his usual devices--the slamming chords, the agitated staccato passages, the breathtaking arpeggios, the blizzard density--but it had two new qualities: lyricism and gentleness. Again and again, after Taylor had launched one of his tidal waves, his hands going up and down like driving rods, he slipped into a clear lagoon where shadows of melody glided just below the surface (p. 26).
The point here is: Tell your reader about how you find the performance unique, artistically speaking. Perhaps you notice that one element of the performance stands apart. The following observations should help you focus your attention.
Melody evokes emotion. We think of the lieder (art songs) of Franz Schubert (d. 1828); the ballads and the show music of the 1940's and the 1950's, especially that of Frank Sinatra; and much of the music of the 1960's, especially Ann Murray, the Beatles, the Beach Boys, and the Carpenters.
Rhythm excites us physically. This element of musical composition prompts listeners to tap their feet: they want to get up and dance. We think of dance music: the waltz, the tango, and the polka. We also think of "big band" music, especially the drumming of Gene Krupa, who worked with Benny Goodman, the founder of "swing."
Usually, rhythm and melody go hand in hand, with equal importance and accent. Occasionally, melody is subservient to rhythm. A good example is Maurice Ravel's famous work, "Bolero" (1928), which consists of a single orchestral crescendo (lasting 17 minutes). If you listen to it closely, you will notice that it is nothing more than 18 repetitions of the same theme moving with increased volume and slightly increased tempo.
Harmony has been described as the clothing of melody. From the point of view of the l9th century musician, harmony now is in a state of anarchy. Today, we think of (say) folk music, which combines the three elements very nicely, the barber shop quartet, or choral music generally. If you are a fan of the Kronos Quartet, you notice that the players explore rather subtle harmonies.
Schubert's songs exhibit a romantic feeling for nature, together with a wealth of emotions. Song cycles like Die Winterreise or Die schone Muellerin are good examples. Notice that their idyllic opening is soon clouded by bitterness and resignation. The harmonies constitute the most perfect means of expression, with the piano accompaniment asserting itself as equal partner to the singer.
Timbre means "tone-quality" or "tone color," which distinguishes the effect of a flute from that of an oboe, a note sung by a soprano choir-boy from that of the same note sung by a contralto, and so on. We think of the musical saw; the zither, the favorite instrument of the Tyrol and adjacent mountain regions; and the harp-guitar built by Andreas Vollanweider, the Swiss guitarist. We also think of Angelo Badalamenti, who produced the music for Twin Peaks.
Remember, your goal is to tell your reader why the performance is unique. This means getting inside the mind of the performer as it were, explaining why he or she performs the way he or she does. Be sure to report only what your ears hear.
Finally, as music critics, we can only make people think. We cannot change people's taste. For this reason, it is a good idea to concentrate on the performance, i.e., on those features that contribute to the "artfulness" of the music-making. Remember: a performer's job is to project personality. Interpretation is a mingling of the player's personality with that of the composer. We try to say where the one ends and the other begins.
Writing about music is much like writing about (say) painting, in that we take as our objective (a) introducing a performance and (b) sharing our insight into the artfulness of that performance, in language that is as direct and as concrete as we can make it.
For us, "writing about music" includes (a) reviewing a concert or a CD or (b) writing liner notes, programme notes, an interview, or a tribute to a composer or a performer.
Understandably, writing about music is not as easy as writing about the verbal arts. Any given performance can please one listener and displease another. In this case, the challenge lies in translating the sounds of one language (the notes) into the sounds of another (the words).
Any discussion of the most famous music critics of this century would have to include such critics as George Bernard Shaw (UK), who (many would say) set the standard; Aaron Copland, Whitney Balliet, Leonard Bernstein, and Virgil Thompson (USA); and John Everett-Green (Canada).
Below, I offer some hints on how to help the reader appreciate the complexities of the performance you plan to write about. Once again, I focus on (a) getting ready to write and (b) writing the piece. I offers these suggestions as guidelines only, not rules that should be followed in all musical events.
Listening
It stands to reason that, for the reviewer as well as the musician, the ability to listen is fundamental. We all listen to music according to our individual capacities. Many of us have acquired some bad habits--like listening to music as a background to other activities. In this way, according to Eric Satie, we turn music into wall-paper or furniture. To begin with, we should distinguish hearing from listening.
By hearing, we mean being aware of the disturbances in the air known as sounds. You may be sitting in a room, studying for an exam say, while the sounds coming from the radio wash over you. We might say that you are listening, but in a passive way. Imagine someone entering the room and striking a note on your piano: suddenly, the atmosphere changes. Startled, you listen in a different way.
By listening, we mean perceiving and understanding what happens in the music. In this case, you are listening in an active sort of way.
In What to Listen for in Music (1957), Aaron Copland claims that we listen to music on three planes:
a. the sensuous plane
As Copland points out, the appeal of music at this level is self-evident. The sound element in music is a powerful as well as a mysterious agent. The surprising thing (he adds) is that many people who consider themselves qualified music lovers listen at this level only; they go to concerts in order to lose themselves; they use music as a consolation or as an escape.
However, there is such a thing as becoming sensitive to the different kinds of "sound stuff" as used by composers, for different composers use sound stuff in different ways. We realize that a composer's use of the sound elements forms an integral part of his or her style and that in listening we have to take this matter into consideration.
b. the expressive plane
Copland argues that all music conveys meaning behind the notes and that the meaning behind the notes constitutes what the piece says, what the piece is about. Of course, we cannot put this meaning into so many words. At different moments, he observes, music expresses serenity or exuberance, regret or triumph, fury or delight. Music expresses these moods, and many others, in a variety of subtle shadings and differences. It may even express a state of meaning for which there exists no adequate phrase in any language. In any case, musicians like to say that it has only a purely musical meaning.
For this reason, it can be argued that it is easier to "understand" Tchaikovsky (say) than Beethoven. It is easier to pin a meaning-word on a Tchaikovsky piece than on a Beethoven piece. Often, it is quite difficult to put your finger on just what Beethoven is saying. Any musician will tell you that this is why Beethoven is a great composer.
c. the sheerly musical plane
At this level, the listener attends to matters of form and structure. In order to follow the line of a composer's thought, the listener attends to such matters as melody, rhythm, harmony, and tone color in a conscious fashion.
An analogy might help here. Think about what happens when we go to the theater. In the theater, we are aware of the players, the setting, the costumes, the movements, and so on. All these elements give one a sense that the theater is a pleasant place to be. They constitute the sensuous plane in our theatrical reactions.
We would experience the expressive plane in terms of the feelings we get from what is happening on the stage. We are moved to pity, excitement, and so on.
Experiencing the plot, following its development say, would be equivalent to experiencing music at the sheerly musical level. The playwright develops a character in just the same way a composer creates and develops a theme. As we become more and more aware of the way the artist handles his or her materials, the more we become intelligent listeners.
To sum up, then, when listening to music on the sensuous plane, we focus on
a. the medium, i.e., what generates the sound: voice, instrument, ensemble, and so on.
b. the quality of sound produced, in terms of tone, uniformity, special effects, and so on.
c. the dynamics or the intensity of the sound, in terms of loudness, uniformity, and change.
When listening to music on the expressive plane, we try to determine how the music interprets--and clarifies--our feelings. Sounds evokes feelings:
a. a busy passage can suggest unease or nervousness.
b. a slow passage in a minor key, such as a funeral march, can suggest gloom.
When listening to music on the sheerly musical plane, we try to focus on
a. the movement of the piece, i.e., concentrate on its rhythm, meter, and tempo,
b. the pitch, i.e., in terms of its order and melody, and
c. the structure of the piece, i.e., its logic, design, and texture.
This means listening for the "planned design" that binds an entire composition. As Copland puts it, in shaping his or her material, the composer generates "the long line," which provides listeners with a sense of direction. A composer might employ the principles of repetition and non-repetition to give a long piece and a short piece respectively the feeling of "balance."
The composer also "shapes" his or her musical materials by "partitioning" the work, presenting in in a number of movements (say). Fundamental forms include the fugue, the concerto grosso, the sonata, and the symphony, to some a few traditional forms.
Writing
The hints or guidelines offered below supplement the observations I made above. They are based on a talk Harold C. Schonberg gave to music students at the University of Calgary. Schonberg, many years the senior music critic for The New York Times, also offers tips on writing about music in such works as Facing the Music (1981).
Identify the musical substance, as it were. Are we talking about a new rendition of an old composition? This means focusing on the music itself, whether new or old. Identify the composition and the players. Put the performance into context.
Try to capture the qestalt of the performance, whether live or recorded. It might help to wrap your lead around it. Consider the following example: Whitney Balliett, the celebrated critic, captures the sound and the feeling of a performance given by Art Taylor, the drummer, in the following passage, which taken from New York Notes: A Journal of Jazz in the Seventies (1977):
[Art] Taylor, as is his custom, played just one number, but it lasted forty minutes. It was full of his usual devices--the slamming chords, the agitated staccato passages, the breathtaking arpeggios, the blizzard density--but it had two new qualities: lyricism and gentleness. Again and again, after Taylor had launched one of his tidal waves, his hands going up and down like driving rods, he slipped into a clear lagoon where shadows of melody glided just below the surface (p. 26).
The point here is: Tell your reader about how you find the performance unique, artistically speaking. Perhaps you notice that one element of the performance stands apart. The following observations should help you focus your attention.
Melody evokes emotion. We think of the lieder (art songs) of Franz Schubert (d. 1828); the ballads and the show music of the 1940's and the 1950's, especially that of Frank Sinatra; and much of the music of the 1960's, especially Ann Murray, the Beatles, the Beach Boys, and the Carpenters.
Rhythm excites us physically. This element of musical composition prompts listeners to tap their feet: they want to get up and dance. We think of dance music: the waltz, the tango, and the polka. We also think of "big band" music, especially the drumming of Gene Krupa, who worked with Benny Goodman, the founder of "swing."
Usually, rhythm and melody go hand in hand, with equal importance and accent. Occasionally, melody is subservient to rhythm. A good example is Maurice Ravel's famous work, "Bolero" (1928), which consists of a single orchestral crescendo (lasting 17 minutes). If you listen to it closely, you will notice that it is nothing more than 18 repetitions of the same theme moving with increased volume and slightly increased tempo.
Harmony has been described as the clothing of melody. From the point of view of the l9th century musician, harmony now is in a state of anarchy. Today, we think of (say) folk music, which combines the three elements very nicely, the barber shop quartet, or choral music generally. If you are a fan of the Kronos Quartet, you notice that the players explore rather subtle harmonies.
Schubert's songs exhibit a romantic feeling for nature, together with a wealth of emotions. Song cycles like Die Winterreise or Die schone Muellerin are good examples. Notice that their idyllic opening is soon clouded by bitterness and resignation. The harmonies constitute the most perfect means of expression, with the piano accompaniment asserting itself as equal partner to the singer.
Timbre means "tone-quality" or "tone color," which distinguishes the effect of a flute from that of an oboe, a note sung by a soprano choir-boy from that of the same note sung by a contralto, and so on. We think of the musical saw; the zither, the favorite instrument of the Tyrol and adjacent mountain regions; and the harp-guitar built by Andreas Vollanweider, the Swiss guitarist. We also think of Angelo Badalamenti, who produced the music for Twin Peaks.
Remember, your goal is to tell your reader why the performance is unique. This means getting inside the mind of the performer as it were, explaining why he or she performs the way he or she does. Be sure to report only what your ears hear.
Finally, as music critics, we can only make people think. We cannot change people's taste. For this reason, it is a good idea to concentrate on the performance, i.e., on those features that contribute to the "artfulness" of the music-making. Remember: a performer's job is to project personality. Interpretation is a mingling of the player's personality with that of the composer. We try to say where the one ends and the other begins.
Kamis, 24 Februari 2011
About Music
Musical instrument
A Schoenstein organ, one of the largest musical instruments.
A musical instrument is a device created or adapted for the purpose of making musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can serve as a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. The history of musical instruments dates back to the beginnings of human culture. The academic study of musical instruments is called organology.
The date and origin of the first device of disputed status as a musical instrument dates back as far as 67,000 years old;[citation needed] artifacts commonly accepted to be early flutes date back as far as about 37,000 years old. However, most historians[who?] believe determining a specific time of musical instrument invention to be impossible due to the subjectivity of the definition.
Musical instruments developed independently in many populated regions of the world. However, contact among civilizations resulted in the rapid spread and adaptation of most instruments in places far from their origin. By the Middle Ages, instruments from Mesopotamia could be found in the Malay Archipelago and Europeans were playing instruments from North Africa. Development in the Americas occurred at a slower pace, but cultures of North, Central, and South America shared musical instruments.
Contents
A musical instrument can be broadly defined as any device created or adapted for the purpose of making musical sounds. Once humans moved from making sounds with their bodies—for example, by clapping—to using objects to create music from sounds, musical instruments were born.[1]
[edit]Archaeology
In pursuit of understanding who developed the first musical instruments and when, researchers have discovered various archaeological evidence of musical instruments in many parts of the world. Some finds are as much as 67,000 years old, but their status as musical instruments is often in dispute. Consensus solidifies about artifacts dated back to around 37,000 years old and later. Only artifacts made from durable materials or using durable methods tend to survive. As such, the specimens found cannot be irrefutably placed as the earliest musical instruments.[2]
Drawing of disputed flute by Bob Fink
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In July 1995, Slovenian archaeologist Ivan Turk discovered a bone carving in the northwest region of Slovenia. The carving, named the Divje Babe flute, features four holes that Canadian musicologist Bob Fink determined could have been used to play four notes of a diatonic scale. Researchers estimate the flute's age to be between 43,400 and 67,000 years, making it the oldest known musical instrument and the only musical instrument associated with the Neanderthal culture.[3] However, some archaeologists question the flute's status as a musical instrument.[4] German archaeologists have found mammoth bone and swan bone flutes dating back to 30,000 to 37,000 years old in the Swabian Alps. The flutes were made in the Upper Paleolithic age, and are more commonly accepted as being the oldest known musical instruments.[5]
Archaeological evidence of musical instruments was discovered in excavations at the Royal Cemetery in the Sumerian city of Ur (see Lyres of Ur). These instruments include nine lyres, two harps, a silver double flute, sistra and cymbals. A set of reed-sounded silver pipes discovered in Ur was the likely predecessor of modern bagpipes.[6] The cylindrical pipes feature three side-holes that allowed players to produce whole tone scales.[7] These excavations, carried out by Leonard Woolley in the 1920s, uncovered non-degradable fragments of instruments and the voids left by the degraded segments which, together, have been used to reconstruct them.[8] The graves to which these instruments were related have been carbon dated to between 2600 and 2500 BCE, providing evidence that these instruments were being used in Sumeria by this time.[9]
A cuneiform tablet from Nippur in Mesopotamia dated to 2000 BCE indicates the names of strings on the lyre and represents the earliest known example of music notation.[10]
[edit]History
Wooden slit drums from Vanuatu.
Scholars agree that there are no completely reliable methods of determining the exact chronology of musical instruments across cultures. Comparing and organizing instruments based on their complexity is misleading, since advancements in musical instruments have sometimes reduced complexity. For example, construction of early slit drums involved felling and hollowing out large trees; later slit drums were made by opening bamboo stalks, a much simpler task.[11] It is likewise misleading to arrange the development of musical instruments by workmanship since all cultures advance at different levels and have access to different materials. For example, anthropologists attempting to compare musical instruments made by two cultures that existed at the same time but who differed in organization, culture, and handicraft cannot determine which instruments are more "primitive".[12] Ordering instruments by geography is also partially unreliable, as one cannot determine when and how cultures contacted one another and shared knowledge.
German musicologist Curt Sachs, one of the most prominent musicologists[13] and musical ethnologists[14] in modern times, proposed that a geographical chronology until approximately 1400 is preferable, however, due to its limited subjectivity.[15] Beyond 1400, one can follow the overall development of musical instruments by time period.[15]
The science of marking the order of musical instrument development relies on archaeological artifacts, artistic depictions, and literary references. Since data in one research path can be inconclusive, all three paths provide a better historical picture.[2]
[edit]Primitive and prehistoric
Two Aztec slit drums, called teponaztli. The characteristic "H" slits can be seen on the top of the drum in the foreground
Until the 19th century AD, European written music histories began with mythological accounts of how musical instruments were invented. Such accounts included Jubal, descendant of Cain and "father of all such as handle the harp and the organ", Pan, inventor of the pan pipes, and Mercury, who is said to have made a dried tortoise shell into the first lyre. Modern histories have replaced such mythology with anthropological speculation, occasionally informed by archeological evidence. Scholars agree that there was no definitive "invention" of the musical instrument since the definition of the term "musical instrument" is completely subjective to both the scholar and the would-be inventor. For example, a Homo habilis slapping his body could be the makings of a musical instrument regardless of the being's intent.[16]
Among the first devices external to the human body considered to be instruments are rattles, stampers, and various drums.[17] These earliest instruments evolved due to the human motor impulse to add sound to emotional movements such as dancing.[18] Eventually, some cultures assigned ritual functions to their musical instruments. Those cultures developed more complex percussion instruments and other instruments such as ribbon reeds, flutes, and trumpets. Some of these labels carry far different connotations from those used in modern day; early flutes and trumpets are so-labeled for their basic operation and function rather than any resemblance to modern instruments.[19] Among early cultures for whom drums developed ritual, even sacred importance are the Chukchi people of the Russian Far East, the indigenous people of Melanesia, and many cultures of Africa. In fact, drums were pervasive throughout every African culture.[20] One East African tribe, the Wahinda, believed it was so holy that seeing a drum would be fatal to any person other than the sultan.[21]
Humans eventually developed the concept of using musical instruments for producing a melody. Until this time in the evolutions of musical instruments, melody was common only in singing. Similar to the process of reduplication in language, instrument players first developed repetition and then arrangement. An early form of melody was produced by pounding two stamping tubes of slightly different sizes—one tube would produce a "clear" sound and the other would answer with a "darker" sound. Such instrument pairs also included bullroarers, slit drums, shell trumpets, and skin drums. Cultures who used these instrument pairs associated genders with them; the "father" was the bigger or more energetic instrument, while the "mother" was the smaller or duller instrument. Musical instruments existed in this form for thousands of years before patterns of three or more tones would evolve in the form of the earliest xylophone.[22] Xylophones originated in the mainland and archipelago of Southeast Asia, eventually spreading to Africa, the Americas, and Europe.[23] Along with xylophones, which ranged from simple sets of three "leg bars" to carefully tuned sets of parallel bars, various cultures developed instruments such as the ground harp, ground zither, musical bow, and jaw harp.[24]
[edit]Antiquity
Images of musical instruments begin to appear in Mesopotamian artifacts in 2800 BC or earlier. Beginning around 2000 BC, Sumerian and Babylonian cultures began delineating two distinct classes of musical instruments due to division of labor and the evolving class system. Popular instruments, simple and playable by anyone, evolved differently from professional instruments whose development focused on effectiveness and skill.[25] Despite this development, very few musical instruments have been recovered in Mesopotamia. Scholars must rely on artifacts and cuneiform texts written in Sumerian or Akkadian to reconstruct the early history of musical instruments in Mesopotamia. Even the process of assigning names to these instruments is challenging since there is no clear distinction among various instruments and the words used to describe them.[26] Although Sumerian and Babylonian artists mainly depicted ceremonial instruments, historians have been able to distinguish six idiophones used in early Mesopotamia: concussion clubs, clappers, sistra, bells, cymbals, and rattles.[27] Sistra are depicted prominently in a great relief of Amenhotep III,[28] and are of particular interest because similar designs have been found in far-reaching places such as Tbilisi, Georgia and among the Native American Yaqui tribe.[29] The people of Mesopotamia preferred stringed instruments to any other, as evidenced by their proliferation in Mesopotamian figurines, plaques, and seals. Innumerable varieties of harps are depicted, as well as lyres and lutes, the forerunner of modern stringed instruments such as the violin.[30]
Ancient Egyptian tomb painting depicting lute players, 18th Dynasty (c. 1350 BC)
Musical instruments used by the Egyptian culture before 2700 BC bore striking similarity to those of Mesopotamia, leading historians to conclude that the civilizations must have been in contact with one another. Sachs notes that Egypt did not possess any instruments that the Sumerian culture did not also possess.[31] However, by 2700 BC the cultural contacts seem to have dissipated; the lyre, a prominent ceremonial instrument in Sumer, did not appear in Egypt for another 800 years.[31] Clappers and concussion sticks appear on Egyptian vases as early as 3000 BC. The civilization also made use of sistra, vertical flutes, double clarinets, arched and angular harps, and various drums.[32] Little history is available in the period between 2700 BC and 1500 BC, as Egypt (and indeed, Babylon) entered a long violent period of war and destruction. This period saw the Kassites destroy the Babylonian empire in Mesopotamia and the Hyksos destroy the Middle Kingdom of Egypt. When the Pharaohs of Egypt conquered Southwest Asia in around 1500 BC, the cultural ties to Mesopotamia were renewed and Egypt's musical instruments also reflected heavy influence from Asiatic cultures.[31] Under their new cultural influences, the people of the New Kingdom began using oboes, trumpets, lyres, lutes, castanets, and cymbals.[33]
In contrast with Mesopotamia and Egypt, professional musicians did not exist in Israel between 2000 and 1000 BC. While the history of musical instruments in Mesopotamia and Egypt relies on artistic representations, the culture in Israel produced few such representations. Scholars must therefore rely on information gleaned from the Bible and the Talmud.[34] The Hebrew texts mention two prominent instruments associated with Jubal, ugabs and kinnors. These may be translated as pan pipes and lyres, respectively.[35] Other instruments of the period included tofs, or frame drums, small bells or jingles called pa'amon, shofars, and the trumpet-like hasosra.[36] The introduction of a monarchy in Israel during the 11th century BC produced the first professional musicians and with them a drastic increase in the number and variety of musical instruments.[37] However, identifying and classifying the instruments remains a challenge due to the lack of artistic interpretations. For example, stringed instruments of uncertain design called nevals and asors existed, but neither archaeology nor etymology can clearly define them.[38] In her book A Survey of Musical Instruments, American musicologist Sibyl Marcuse proposes that the nevel must be similar to vertical harp due to its relation to "nabla", the Phoenician term for "harp".[39]
In Greece, Rome, and Etruria, the use and development of musical instruments stood in stark contrast to those cultures' achievements in architecture and sculpture. The instruments of the time were simple and virtually all of them were imported from other cultures.[40] Lyres were the principal instrument, as musicians used them to honor the gods.[41] Greeks played a variety of wind instruments they classified as aulos (reeds) or syrinx (flutes); Greek writing from that time reflects a serious study of reed production and playing technique.[7] Romans played reed instruments named tibia featuring side-holes that could be opened or closed, allowing for greater flexibility in playing modes.[42] Other instruments in common use in the region included vertical harps derived from those of the Orient, lutes of Egyptian design, various pipes and organs, and clappers, which were played primarily by women.[43]
Evidence of musical instruments in use by early civilizations of India is almost completely lacking, making it impossible to reliably attribute instruments to the Munda and Dravidian language-speaking cultures that first settled the area. Rather, the history of musical instruments in the area begins with the Indus Valley Civilization that emerged around 3000 BC. Various rattles and whistles found among excavated artifacts are the only physical evidence of musical instruments.[44] A clay statuette indicates the use of drums, and examination of the Indus script has also revealed representations of vertical arched harps identical in design to those depicted in Sumerian artifacts. This discovery is among many indications that the Indus Valley and Sumerian cultures maintained cultural contact. Subsequent developments in musical instruments in India occurred with the Rigveda, or religious hymns. These songs used various drums, shell trumpets, harps, and flutes.[45] Other prominent instruments in use during the early centuries AD were the snake charmer's double clarinet, bagpipes, barrel drums, cross flutes, and short lutes. In all, India had no unique musical instruments until the Middle Ages.[46]
A Chinese wooden fish, used in Buddhist recitations
Musical instruments such as zithers appear in Chinese literature written around 1100 BC and earlier.[47] Early Chinese philosophers such as Confucius (551–479 BC), Mencius (372–289 BC), and Laozi shaped the development of musical instruments in China, adopting an attitude toward music similar to that of the Greeks. The Chinese believed that music was an essential part of character and community, and developed a unique system of classifying their musical instruments according to their material makeup.[48] Idiophones were extremely important in Chinese music, hence the majority of early instruments were idiophones. Poetry of the Shang Dynasty mentions bells, chimes, drums, and globular flutes carved from bone, the latter of which has been excavated and preserved by archaeologists.[49] The Zhou Dynasty introduced percussion instruments such as clappers, troughs, wooden fish, and yu. Wind instruments such as flute, pan-pipes, pitch-pipes, and mouth organs also appeared in this time period.[50] The short lute, a pear-shaped form of a western instrument that spread through many cultures, came into use in China during the Han Dynasty.[51]
Although civilizations in Central America attained a relatively high level of sophistication by the eleventh century AD, they lagged behind other civilizations in the development of musical instruments. For example, they had no stringed instruments; all of their instruments were idiophones, drums, and wind instruments such as flutes and trumpets. Of these, only the flute was capable of producing a melody.[52] In contrast, pre-Columbian South American civilizations in areas such as modern-day Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Chile were less advanced culturally but more advanced musically. South American cultures of the time used pan-pipes as well as varieties of flutes, idiophones, drums, and shell or wood trumpets.[53]
[edit]Middle Ages
During the period of time loosely referred to as the Middle Ages, China developed a tradition of integrating musical influence obtained by either conquering foreign countries or by being conquered. The first record of this type of influence is in 384 AD, when China established an East Turkestanic orchestra in its imperial court after a conquest in Turkestan. Influences from India, Mongolia, and other countries followed. In fact, Chinese tradition attributes most musical instruments of the time to those countries.[54] Cymbals and gongs gained popularity, along with more advanced trumpets, clarinets, oboes, flutes, drums, and lutes.[55] Some of the first bowed zithers appeared in China in the 9th or 10th century, influenced by Mongolian culture.[56]
India experienced similar development to China in the Middle Ages; however, stringed instruments developed differently to accommodate different styles of music. While stringed instruments of China were designed to produce precise tones capable of matching the tones of chimes, stringed instruments of India were considerably more flexible. This flexibility suited the slides and tremolos of Hindu music. Rhythm was of paramount importance in Indian music of the time, as evidenced by the frequent depiction of drums in reliefs dating to the Middle Ages. The emphasis on rhythm is an aspect native to Indian music.[57] Historians divide the development of musical instruments in Middle Age India between pre-Islamic and Islamic periods due to the different influence each period provided.[58] In pre-Islamic times, idiophones such hand bells, cymbals, and peculiar instruments resembling gongs came into wide use in Hindu music. The gong-like instrument was a bronze disk that was struck with a hammer instead of a mallet. Tubular drums, stick zithers named veena, short fiddles, double and triple flutes, coiled trumpets, and curved India horns emerged in this time period.[59] Islamic influences brought new types of drums, perfectly circular or octagonal as opposed to the irregular pre-Islamic drums.[60] Persian influence brought oboes and sitars, although Persian sitars had three strings and Indian version had from four to seven.[61]
An Indonesian metallophone
Southeast Asia was responsible for a series of innovations in musical instruments, particularly once their period of Indian influence ended in around 920 AD.[62] Balinese and Javanese music made prominent use of xylophones and metallophones, bronze versions of the former.[63] The most prominent and important musical instrument of Southeast Asia was the gong. While the gong likely originated in the geographical area between Tibet and Burma, it was part of every category of human activity in Southeast Asian areas such as Java and the Malay Archipelago.[64]
The areas of Mesopotamia and the Arabian Peninsula experiences rapid growth and sharing of musical instruments once they were united by Islamic culture in the seventh century.[65] Frame drums and cylindrical drums of various depths were immensely important in all genres of music.[66] Conical oboes were involved in the music that accompanied wedding and circumcision ceremonies. Persian miniatures provide information on the development of kettle drums in Mesopotamia that spread as far as Java.[67] Various lutes, zithers, dulcimers, and harps spread as far as Madagascar to the south and modern-day Sulawesi to the east.[68]
Despite the influences of Greece and Rome, most musical instruments in Europe during the Middles Ages came from Asia. The lyre is the only musical instrument that may have been invented in Europe until this period.[69] Stringed instruments were prominent in Middle Age Europe. The central and northern regions used mainly lyres, stringed instruments with necks, while the southern region used lutes, which featured a two-armed body and a crossbar.[69] Various harps served Central and Northern Europe as far north as Ireland, where the harp eventually became a national symbol.[70] Lyres propagated through the same areas, as far east as Estonia.[71] European music between 800 and 1100 became more sophisticated, more frequently requiring instruments capable of polyphony. The Persian geographer of the 9th century (Ibn Khordadbeh), mentioned in his lexicographical discussion of music instruments that in the Byzantine Empire typical instruments included the urghun (organ), shilyani (probably a type of harp or lyre), salandj (probably a bagpipe) and the Byzantine lyra (Greek: λύρα ~ lūrā) .[72] Lyra was a medieval pear-shaped bowed string instrument with three to five strings, held upright and is an ancestor of most European bowed instruments, including the violin.[73] The monochord served as a precise measure of the notes of a musical scale, allowing more accurate musical arrangements.[74] Mechanical hurdy-gurdies allowed single musicians to play more complicated arrangements than a fiddle would; both were prominent folk instruments in the Middle Ages.[75][76] Southern Europeans played short and long lutes whose pegs extended to the sides, unlike the rear-facing pegs of Central and Northern European instruments.[77] Idiophones such as bells and clappers served various practical purposes, such as warning of the approach of a leper.[78] The ninth century revealed the first bagpipes, which spread throughout Europe and had many uses from folk instruments to military instruments.[79] The construction of pneumatic organs evolved in Europe starting in fifth century Spain, spreading to England in about 700.[80] The resulting instruments varied in size and use from portable organs worn around the neck to large pipe organs.[81] Literary accounts of organs being played in English Benedictine abbeys toward the end of the tenth century are the first references to organs being connected to churches.[82] Reed players of the Middle Ages were limited to oboes; no evidence of clarinets exists during this period.[83]
[edit]Modern
[edit]Renaissance
Musical instrument development was dominated by the Western Occident from 1400 on—indeed, the most profound changes occurred during the Renaissance period. Instruments took on other purposes than accompanying singing or dance, and performers used them as solo instruments. Keyboards and lutes developed as polyphonic instruments, and composers arranged increasingly complex pieces using more advanced tablature. Composers also began designing pieces of music for specific instruments.[16] In the latter half of the sixteenth century, orchestration came into common practice as a method of writing music for a variety of instruments. Composers now specified orchestration where individual performers once applied their own discretion.[84] The polyphonic style dominated popular music, and the instrument makers responded accordingly.[85]
Beginning in about 1400, the rate of development of musical instruments increased in earnest as compositions demanded more dynamic sounds. People also began writing books about creating, playing, and cataloging musical instruments; the first such book was Sebastian Virdung's 1511 treatise Musica getuscht und angezogen (English: Music Germanized and Abstracted).[84] Virdung's work is noted as being particularly thorough for including descriptions of "irregular" instruments such as hunters' horns and cow bells, though Virdung is critical of the same. Other books followed, including Arnolt Schlick's Spiegel der Orgelmacher und Organisten (English: Mirror of Organ Makers and Organ Players) the same year, a treatise on organ building and organ playing.[86] Of the instructional books and references published in the Renaissance era, one is noted for its detailed description and depiction of all wind and stringed instruments, including their relative sizes. This book, the Syntagma musicum by Michael Praetorius, is now considered an authoritative reference of sixteenth century musical instruments.[87]
In the sixteenth century, musical instrument builders gave most instruments, such as the violin, the "classical shapes" they retain today. An emphasis on aesthetic beauty also developed—listeners were as pleased with the physical appearance of an instrument as they were with its sound. Therefore, builders paid special attention to materials and workmanship, and instruments became collectibles in homes and museums.[88] It was during this period that makers began constructing instruments of the same type in various sizes to meet the demand of consorts, or ensembles playing works written for these groups of instruments.[89] Instrument builders developed other features that endure today. For example, while organs with multiple keyboards and pedals already existed, the first organs with solo stops emerged in the early fifteenth century. These stops were meant to produce a mixture of timbres, a development needed for the complexity of music of the time.[90] Trumpets evolved into their modern form to improve portability, and players used mutes to properly blend into chamber music.[91]
[edit]Baroque
Beginning in the seventeenth century, composers began creating works of a more emotional style. They felt that a monophonic style better suited the emotional music and wrote musical parts for instruments that would complement the singing human voice.[85] As a result, many instruments that were incapable of larger ranges and dynamics, and therefore were seen as unemotional, fell out of favor. One such instrument was the oboe.[92] Bowed instruments such as the violin, viola, baryton, and various lutes dominated popular music.[93] Beginning in around 1750, however, the lute disappeared from musical compositions in favor of the rising popularity of the guitar.[94] As the prevalence of string orchestras rose, wind instruments such as the flute, oboe, and bassoon began to be readmitted to counteract the monotony of hearing only strings.[95]
In the mid-seventeenth century, what was known as a hunter's horn underwent transformation into an "art instrument" consisting of a lengthened tube, a narrower bore, a wider bell, and much wider range. The details of this transformation are unclear, but the modern horn or, more colloquially, French horn, had emerged by 1725.[96] The slide trumpet appeared, a variation which includes a long-throated mouthpiece that slid in and out, allowing the player infinite adjustments in pitch. This variation on the trumpet was unpopular due to the difficulty involved in playing it.[97] Organs underwent tonal changes in the Baroque period, as manufacturers such as Abraham Jordan of London made the stops more expressive and added devices such as expressive pedals. Sachs viewed this trend as a "degeneration" of the general organ sound.[98]
[edit]Romantic
During the Romantic period, lasting from roughly 1750 to 1900, a great deal of musical instruments capable of producing new timbres were developed and introduced into popular music. New instruments such as the clarinet, saxophone, and tuba became fixtures in orchestras. Instruments such as the clarinet also grew into entire "families" of instruments capable of different ranges: small clarinets, normal clarinets, bass clarinets, and so on.[99]
[edit]Classification
Main article: Musical instrument classification
There are many different methods of classifying musical instruments. Various methods examine aspects such as the physical properties of the instrument (material, color, shape, etc.), the use for the instrument, the means by which music is produced with the instrument, the range of the instrument, and the instrument's place in an orchestra or other ensemble. Most methods are specific to a geographic area or cultural group and were developed to serve the unique classification requirements of the group.[100] The problem with these specialized classification schemes is that they tend to break down once they are applied outside of their original area. For example, a system based on instrument use would fail if a culture invented a new use for the same instrument. Scholars recognize Hornbostel-Sachs as the only system that applies to any culture and, more important, provides only possible classification for each instrument.[101][102]
[edit]Ancient systems
An ancient system named the Natya Shastra, written by the sage Bharata Muni and dating from between 200 BC and 200 AD, divides instruments into four main classification groups: instruments where the sound is produced by vibrating strings; percussion instruments with skin heads; instruments where the sound is produced by vibrating columns of air; and "solid", or non-skin, percussion instruments. In 1880, Victor-Charles Mahillon adapted this system and assigned Greek labels to the four classifications: chordophones, membranophones, aerophones, and autophones.[101]
[edit]Hornbostel-Sachs
Erich von Hornbostel and Curt Sachs adopted Mahillon's scheme and published an extensive new scheme for classification in Zeitschrift für Ethnologie in 1914. Hornbostel and Sachs used most of Mahillon's system, but replaced the term autophone with idiophone.[101]
The original Hornbostel-Sachs system classified instruments into four main groups:
Idiophones, which would be an instrument that you could hit, strike, shake or scrape – such as the xylophone and rattle. They produce sound by vibrating themselves; they are sorted into concussion, percussion, shaken, scraped, split, and plucked idiophones.[103]
Membranophones, which would be an instrument that uses a stretched skin, or membrane (key word being "stretched")such as drums or kazoos, produce sound by a vibrating membrane; they are sorted into predrum membranophones, tubular drums, friction idiophones, kettledrums, friction drums, and mirlitons.[104]
Chordophones, which would be an instrument that uses stretched string or cord – such as the piano or cello, produce sound by vibrating strings; they are sorted into zithers, keyboard chordophones, lyres, harps, lutes, and bowed chordophones.[105]
Aerophones, which would be an instrument that you produce a sound by blowing air into – such as the pipe organ or oboe, produce sound by vibrating columns of air; they are sorted into free aerophones, flutes, organs, reedpipes, and lip-vibrated aerophones.[106]
Sachs later added a fifth category, electrophones, such as theremins, which produce sound by electronic means.[107] Within each category are many subgroups. The system has been criticised and revised over the years, but remains widely used by ethnomusicologists and organologists.[108]
[edit]Schaeffner
Andre Schaeffner, a curator at the Musée de l'Homme, disagreed with the Hornbostel-Sachs system and developed his own system in 1932. Schaeffner believed that the physical structure of a musical instrument, rather than its playing method, should determine its classification. His system divided instruments into two categories: instruments with solid, vibrating bodies and instruments containing vibrating air.[109]
[edit]Range
Western instruments are also often classified by their musical range in comparison with other instruments in the same family. These terms are named after singing voice classifications:
Soprano instruments: flute, violin, soprano saxophone, trumpet, clarinet, oboe, piccolo
Alto instruments: alto saxophone, french horn, english horn, viola
Tenor instruments: trombone, tenor saxophone, guitar
Baritone instruments: bassoon, baritone saxophone, bass clarinet, cello
Bass instruments: double bass, bass guitar, bass saxophone, tuba
Some instruments fall into more than one category: for example, the cello may be considered tenor, baritone or bass, depending on how its music fits into the ensemble, and the trombone may be alto, tenor, baritone, or bass and the French horn, bass, baritone, tenor, or alto, depending on which range it is played.
Many instruments have their range as part of their name: soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone, baritone horn, alto flute, bass guitar, etc. Additional adjectives describe instruments above the soprano range or below the bass, for example: sopranino saxophone, contrabass clarinet.
When used in the name of an instrument, these terms are relative, describing the instrument's range in comparison to other instruments of its family and not in comparison to the human voice range or instruments of other families. For example, a bass flute's range is from C3 to F♯6, while a bass clarinet plays about one octave lower.
[edit]Construction
Musical instrument construction is a specialized trade that requires years of training, practice, and sometimes an apprenticeship. Most makers of musical instruments specialize in one genre of instruments; for example, a luthier makes only stringed instruments. Some make only one type of instrument such as a piano. Some builders are focused on a more artistic approach and develop experimental musical instruments, often meant for individual playing styles developed by the builder himself.
[edit]User interfaces
Regardless of how the sound in an instrument is produced, many musical instruments have a keyboard as the user-interface. Keyboard instruments are any instruments that are played with a musical keyboard. Every key generates one or more sounds; most keyboard instruments have extra means (pedals for a piano, stops for an organ) to manipulate these sounds. They may produce sound by wind being fanned (organ) or pumped (accordion),[110][111] vibrating strings either hammered (piano) or plucked (harpsichord),[112][113] by electronic means (synthesizer),[114] or in some other way. Sometimes, instruments that do not usually have a keyboard, such as the glockenspiel, are fitted with one.[115] Though they have no moving parts and are struck by mallets held in the player's hands, they have the same physical arrangement of keys and produce soundwaves in a similar manner.
[edit]
A Schoenstein organ, one of the largest musical instruments.
A musical instrument is a device created or adapted for the purpose of making musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can serve as a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. The history of musical instruments dates back to the beginnings of human culture. The academic study of musical instruments is called organology.
The date and origin of the first device of disputed status as a musical instrument dates back as far as 67,000 years old;[citation needed] artifacts commonly accepted to be early flutes date back as far as about 37,000 years old. However, most historians[who?] believe determining a specific time of musical instrument invention to be impossible due to the subjectivity of the definition.
Musical instruments developed independently in many populated regions of the world. However, contact among civilizations resulted in the rapid spread and adaptation of most instruments in places far from their origin. By the Middle Ages, instruments from Mesopotamia could be found in the Malay Archipelago and Europeans were playing instruments from North Africa. Development in the Americas occurred at a slower pace, but cultures of North, Central, and South America shared musical instruments.
Contents
A musical instrument can be broadly defined as any device created or adapted for the purpose of making musical sounds. Once humans moved from making sounds with their bodies—for example, by clapping—to using objects to create music from sounds, musical instruments were born.[1]
[edit]Archaeology
In pursuit of understanding who developed the first musical instruments and when, researchers have discovered various archaeological evidence of musical instruments in many parts of the world. Some finds are as much as 67,000 years old, but their status as musical instruments is often in dispute. Consensus solidifies about artifacts dated back to around 37,000 years old and later. Only artifacts made from durable materials or using durable methods tend to survive. As such, the specimens found cannot be irrefutably placed as the earliest musical instruments.[2]
Drawing of disputed flute by Bob Fink
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In July 1995, Slovenian archaeologist Ivan Turk discovered a bone carving in the northwest region of Slovenia. The carving, named the Divje Babe flute, features four holes that Canadian musicologist Bob Fink determined could have been used to play four notes of a diatonic scale. Researchers estimate the flute's age to be between 43,400 and 67,000 years, making it the oldest known musical instrument and the only musical instrument associated with the Neanderthal culture.[3] However, some archaeologists question the flute's status as a musical instrument.[4] German archaeologists have found mammoth bone and swan bone flutes dating back to 30,000 to 37,000 years old in the Swabian Alps. The flutes were made in the Upper Paleolithic age, and are more commonly accepted as being the oldest known musical instruments.[5]
Archaeological evidence of musical instruments was discovered in excavations at the Royal Cemetery in the Sumerian city of Ur (see Lyres of Ur). These instruments include nine lyres, two harps, a silver double flute, sistra and cymbals. A set of reed-sounded silver pipes discovered in Ur was the likely predecessor of modern bagpipes.[6] The cylindrical pipes feature three side-holes that allowed players to produce whole tone scales.[7] These excavations, carried out by Leonard Woolley in the 1920s, uncovered non-degradable fragments of instruments and the voids left by the degraded segments which, together, have been used to reconstruct them.[8] The graves to which these instruments were related have been carbon dated to between 2600 and 2500 BCE, providing evidence that these instruments were being used in Sumeria by this time.[9]
A cuneiform tablet from Nippur in Mesopotamia dated to 2000 BCE indicates the names of strings on the lyre and represents the earliest known example of music notation.[10]
[edit]History
Wooden slit drums from Vanuatu.
Scholars agree that there are no completely reliable methods of determining the exact chronology of musical instruments across cultures. Comparing and organizing instruments based on their complexity is misleading, since advancements in musical instruments have sometimes reduced complexity. For example, construction of early slit drums involved felling and hollowing out large trees; later slit drums were made by opening bamboo stalks, a much simpler task.[11] It is likewise misleading to arrange the development of musical instruments by workmanship since all cultures advance at different levels and have access to different materials. For example, anthropologists attempting to compare musical instruments made by two cultures that existed at the same time but who differed in organization, culture, and handicraft cannot determine which instruments are more "primitive".[12] Ordering instruments by geography is also partially unreliable, as one cannot determine when and how cultures contacted one another and shared knowledge.
German musicologist Curt Sachs, one of the most prominent musicologists[13] and musical ethnologists[14] in modern times, proposed that a geographical chronology until approximately 1400 is preferable, however, due to its limited subjectivity.[15] Beyond 1400, one can follow the overall development of musical instruments by time period.[15]
The science of marking the order of musical instrument development relies on archaeological artifacts, artistic depictions, and literary references. Since data in one research path can be inconclusive, all three paths provide a better historical picture.[2]
[edit]Primitive and prehistoric
Two Aztec slit drums, called teponaztli. The characteristic "H" slits can be seen on the top of the drum in the foreground
Until the 19th century AD, European written music histories began with mythological accounts of how musical instruments were invented. Such accounts included Jubal, descendant of Cain and "father of all such as handle the harp and the organ", Pan, inventor of the pan pipes, and Mercury, who is said to have made a dried tortoise shell into the first lyre. Modern histories have replaced such mythology with anthropological speculation, occasionally informed by archeological evidence. Scholars agree that there was no definitive "invention" of the musical instrument since the definition of the term "musical instrument" is completely subjective to both the scholar and the would-be inventor. For example, a Homo habilis slapping his body could be the makings of a musical instrument regardless of the being's intent.[16]
Among the first devices external to the human body considered to be instruments are rattles, stampers, and various drums.[17] These earliest instruments evolved due to the human motor impulse to add sound to emotional movements such as dancing.[18] Eventually, some cultures assigned ritual functions to their musical instruments. Those cultures developed more complex percussion instruments and other instruments such as ribbon reeds, flutes, and trumpets. Some of these labels carry far different connotations from those used in modern day; early flutes and trumpets are so-labeled for their basic operation and function rather than any resemblance to modern instruments.[19] Among early cultures for whom drums developed ritual, even sacred importance are the Chukchi people of the Russian Far East, the indigenous people of Melanesia, and many cultures of Africa. In fact, drums were pervasive throughout every African culture.[20] One East African tribe, the Wahinda, believed it was so holy that seeing a drum would be fatal to any person other than the sultan.[21]
Humans eventually developed the concept of using musical instruments for producing a melody. Until this time in the evolutions of musical instruments, melody was common only in singing. Similar to the process of reduplication in language, instrument players first developed repetition and then arrangement. An early form of melody was produced by pounding two stamping tubes of slightly different sizes—one tube would produce a "clear" sound and the other would answer with a "darker" sound. Such instrument pairs also included bullroarers, slit drums, shell trumpets, and skin drums. Cultures who used these instrument pairs associated genders with them; the "father" was the bigger or more energetic instrument, while the "mother" was the smaller or duller instrument. Musical instruments existed in this form for thousands of years before patterns of three or more tones would evolve in the form of the earliest xylophone.[22] Xylophones originated in the mainland and archipelago of Southeast Asia, eventually spreading to Africa, the Americas, and Europe.[23] Along with xylophones, which ranged from simple sets of three "leg bars" to carefully tuned sets of parallel bars, various cultures developed instruments such as the ground harp, ground zither, musical bow, and jaw harp.[24]
[edit]Antiquity
Images of musical instruments begin to appear in Mesopotamian artifacts in 2800 BC or earlier. Beginning around 2000 BC, Sumerian and Babylonian cultures began delineating two distinct classes of musical instruments due to division of labor and the evolving class system. Popular instruments, simple and playable by anyone, evolved differently from professional instruments whose development focused on effectiveness and skill.[25] Despite this development, very few musical instruments have been recovered in Mesopotamia. Scholars must rely on artifacts and cuneiform texts written in Sumerian or Akkadian to reconstruct the early history of musical instruments in Mesopotamia. Even the process of assigning names to these instruments is challenging since there is no clear distinction among various instruments and the words used to describe them.[26] Although Sumerian and Babylonian artists mainly depicted ceremonial instruments, historians have been able to distinguish six idiophones used in early Mesopotamia: concussion clubs, clappers, sistra, bells, cymbals, and rattles.[27] Sistra are depicted prominently in a great relief of Amenhotep III,[28] and are of particular interest because similar designs have been found in far-reaching places such as Tbilisi, Georgia and among the Native American Yaqui tribe.[29] The people of Mesopotamia preferred stringed instruments to any other, as evidenced by their proliferation in Mesopotamian figurines, plaques, and seals. Innumerable varieties of harps are depicted, as well as lyres and lutes, the forerunner of modern stringed instruments such as the violin.[30]
Ancient Egyptian tomb painting depicting lute players, 18th Dynasty (c. 1350 BC)
Musical instruments used by the Egyptian culture before 2700 BC bore striking similarity to those of Mesopotamia, leading historians to conclude that the civilizations must have been in contact with one another. Sachs notes that Egypt did not possess any instruments that the Sumerian culture did not also possess.[31] However, by 2700 BC the cultural contacts seem to have dissipated; the lyre, a prominent ceremonial instrument in Sumer, did not appear in Egypt for another 800 years.[31] Clappers and concussion sticks appear on Egyptian vases as early as 3000 BC. The civilization also made use of sistra, vertical flutes, double clarinets, arched and angular harps, and various drums.[32] Little history is available in the period between 2700 BC and 1500 BC, as Egypt (and indeed, Babylon) entered a long violent period of war and destruction. This period saw the Kassites destroy the Babylonian empire in Mesopotamia and the Hyksos destroy the Middle Kingdom of Egypt. When the Pharaohs of Egypt conquered Southwest Asia in around 1500 BC, the cultural ties to Mesopotamia were renewed and Egypt's musical instruments also reflected heavy influence from Asiatic cultures.[31] Under their new cultural influences, the people of the New Kingdom began using oboes, trumpets, lyres, lutes, castanets, and cymbals.[33]
In contrast with Mesopotamia and Egypt, professional musicians did not exist in Israel between 2000 and 1000 BC. While the history of musical instruments in Mesopotamia and Egypt relies on artistic representations, the culture in Israel produced few such representations. Scholars must therefore rely on information gleaned from the Bible and the Talmud.[34] The Hebrew texts mention two prominent instruments associated with Jubal, ugabs and kinnors. These may be translated as pan pipes and lyres, respectively.[35] Other instruments of the period included tofs, or frame drums, small bells or jingles called pa'amon, shofars, and the trumpet-like hasosra.[36] The introduction of a monarchy in Israel during the 11th century BC produced the first professional musicians and with them a drastic increase in the number and variety of musical instruments.[37] However, identifying and classifying the instruments remains a challenge due to the lack of artistic interpretations. For example, stringed instruments of uncertain design called nevals and asors existed, but neither archaeology nor etymology can clearly define them.[38] In her book A Survey of Musical Instruments, American musicologist Sibyl Marcuse proposes that the nevel must be similar to vertical harp due to its relation to "nabla", the Phoenician term for "harp".[39]
In Greece, Rome, and Etruria, the use and development of musical instruments stood in stark contrast to those cultures' achievements in architecture and sculpture. The instruments of the time were simple and virtually all of them were imported from other cultures.[40] Lyres were the principal instrument, as musicians used them to honor the gods.[41] Greeks played a variety of wind instruments they classified as aulos (reeds) or syrinx (flutes); Greek writing from that time reflects a serious study of reed production and playing technique.[7] Romans played reed instruments named tibia featuring side-holes that could be opened or closed, allowing for greater flexibility in playing modes.[42] Other instruments in common use in the region included vertical harps derived from those of the Orient, lutes of Egyptian design, various pipes and organs, and clappers, which were played primarily by women.[43]
Evidence of musical instruments in use by early civilizations of India is almost completely lacking, making it impossible to reliably attribute instruments to the Munda and Dravidian language-speaking cultures that first settled the area. Rather, the history of musical instruments in the area begins with the Indus Valley Civilization that emerged around 3000 BC. Various rattles and whistles found among excavated artifacts are the only physical evidence of musical instruments.[44] A clay statuette indicates the use of drums, and examination of the Indus script has also revealed representations of vertical arched harps identical in design to those depicted in Sumerian artifacts. This discovery is among many indications that the Indus Valley and Sumerian cultures maintained cultural contact. Subsequent developments in musical instruments in India occurred with the Rigveda, or religious hymns. These songs used various drums, shell trumpets, harps, and flutes.[45] Other prominent instruments in use during the early centuries AD were the snake charmer's double clarinet, bagpipes, barrel drums, cross flutes, and short lutes. In all, India had no unique musical instruments until the Middle Ages.[46]
A Chinese wooden fish, used in Buddhist recitations
Musical instruments such as zithers appear in Chinese literature written around 1100 BC and earlier.[47] Early Chinese philosophers such as Confucius (551–479 BC), Mencius (372–289 BC), and Laozi shaped the development of musical instruments in China, adopting an attitude toward music similar to that of the Greeks. The Chinese believed that music was an essential part of character and community, and developed a unique system of classifying their musical instruments according to their material makeup.[48] Idiophones were extremely important in Chinese music, hence the majority of early instruments were idiophones. Poetry of the Shang Dynasty mentions bells, chimes, drums, and globular flutes carved from bone, the latter of which has been excavated and preserved by archaeologists.[49] The Zhou Dynasty introduced percussion instruments such as clappers, troughs, wooden fish, and yu. Wind instruments such as flute, pan-pipes, pitch-pipes, and mouth organs also appeared in this time period.[50] The short lute, a pear-shaped form of a western instrument that spread through many cultures, came into use in China during the Han Dynasty.[51]
Although civilizations in Central America attained a relatively high level of sophistication by the eleventh century AD, they lagged behind other civilizations in the development of musical instruments. For example, they had no stringed instruments; all of their instruments were idiophones, drums, and wind instruments such as flutes and trumpets. Of these, only the flute was capable of producing a melody.[52] In contrast, pre-Columbian South American civilizations in areas such as modern-day Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Chile were less advanced culturally but more advanced musically. South American cultures of the time used pan-pipes as well as varieties of flutes, idiophones, drums, and shell or wood trumpets.[53]
[edit]Middle Ages
During the period of time loosely referred to as the Middle Ages, China developed a tradition of integrating musical influence obtained by either conquering foreign countries or by being conquered. The first record of this type of influence is in 384 AD, when China established an East Turkestanic orchestra in its imperial court after a conquest in Turkestan. Influences from India, Mongolia, and other countries followed. In fact, Chinese tradition attributes most musical instruments of the time to those countries.[54] Cymbals and gongs gained popularity, along with more advanced trumpets, clarinets, oboes, flutes, drums, and lutes.[55] Some of the first bowed zithers appeared in China in the 9th or 10th century, influenced by Mongolian culture.[56]
India experienced similar development to China in the Middle Ages; however, stringed instruments developed differently to accommodate different styles of music. While stringed instruments of China were designed to produce precise tones capable of matching the tones of chimes, stringed instruments of India were considerably more flexible. This flexibility suited the slides and tremolos of Hindu music. Rhythm was of paramount importance in Indian music of the time, as evidenced by the frequent depiction of drums in reliefs dating to the Middle Ages. The emphasis on rhythm is an aspect native to Indian music.[57] Historians divide the development of musical instruments in Middle Age India between pre-Islamic and Islamic periods due to the different influence each period provided.[58] In pre-Islamic times, idiophones such hand bells, cymbals, and peculiar instruments resembling gongs came into wide use in Hindu music. The gong-like instrument was a bronze disk that was struck with a hammer instead of a mallet. Tubular drums, stick zithers named veena, short fiddles, double and triple flutes, coiled trumpets, and curved India horns emerged in this time period.[59] Islamic influences brought new types of drums, perfectly circular or octagonal as opposed to the irregular pre-Islamic drums.[60] Persian influence brought oboes and sitars, although Persian sitars had three strings and Indian version had from four to seven.[61]
An Indonesian metallophone
Southeast Asia was responsible for a series of innovations in musical instruments, particularly once their period of Indian influence ended in around 920 AD.[62] Balinese and Javanese music made prominent use of xylophones and metallophones, bronze versions of the former.[63] The most prominent and important musical instrument of Southeast Asia was the gong. While the gong likely originated in the geographical area between Tibet and Burma, it was part of every category of human activity in Southeast Asian areas such as Java and the Malay Archipelago.[64]
The areas of Mesopotamia and the Arabian Peninsula experiences rapid growth and sharing of musical instruments once they were united by Islamic culture in the seventh century.[65] Frame drums and cylindrical drums of various depths were immensely important in all genres of music.[66] Conical oboes were involved in the music that accompanied wedding and circumcision ceremonies. Persian miniatures provide information on the development of kettle drums in Mesopotamia that spread as far as Java.[67] Various lutes, zithers, dulcimers, and harps spread as far as Madagascar to the south and modern-day Sulawesi to the east.[68]
Despite the influences of Greece and Rome, most musical instruments in Europe during the Middles Ages came from Asia. The lyre is the only musical instrument that may have been invented in Europe until this period.[69] Stringed instruments were prominent in Middle Age Europe. The central and northern regions used mainly lyres, stringed instruments with necks, while the southern region used lutes, which featured a two-armed body and a crossbar.[69] Various harps served Central and Northern Europe as far north as Ireland, where the harp eventually became a national symbol.[70] Lyres propagated through the same areas, as far east as Estonia.[71] European music between 800 and 1100 became more sophisticated, more frequently requiring instruments capable of polyphony. The Persian geographer of the 9th century (Ibn Khordadbeh), mentioned in his lexicographical discussion of music instruments that in the Byzantine Empire typical instruments included the urghun (organ), shilyani (probably a type of harp or lyre), salandj (probably a bagpipe) and the Byzantine lyra (Greek: λύρα ~ lūrā) .[72] Lyra was a medieval pear-shaped bowed string instrument with three to five strings, held upright and is an ancestor of most European bowed instruments, including the violin.[73] The monochord served as a precise measure of the notes of a musical scale, allowing more accurate musical arrangements.[74] Mechanical hurdy-gurdies allowed single musicians to play more complicated arrangements than a fiddle would; both were prominent folk instruments in the Middle Ages.[75][76] Southern Europeans played short and long lutes whose pegs extended to the sides, unlike the rear-facing pegs of Central and Northern European instruments.[77] Idiophones such as bells and clappers served various practical purposes, such as warning of the approach of a leper.[78] The ninth century revealed the first bagpipes, which spread throughout Europe and had many uses from folk instruments to military instruments.[79] The construction of pneumatic organs evolved in Europe starting in fifth century Spain, spreading to England in about 700.[80] The resulting instruments varied in size and use from portable organs worn around the neck to large pipe organs.[81] Literary accounts of organs being played in English Benedictine abbeys toward the end of the tenth century are the first references to organs being connected to churches.[82] Reed players of the Middle Ages were limited to oboes; no evidence of clarinets exists during this period.[83]
[edit]Modern
[edit]Renaissance
Musical instrument development was dominated by the Western Occident from 1400 on—indeed, the most profound changes occurred during the Renaissance period. Instruments took on other purposes than accompanying singing or dance, and performers used them as solo instruments. Keyboards and lutes developed as polyphonic instruments, and composers arranged increasingly complex pieces using more advanced tablature. Composers also began designing pieces of music for specific instruments.[16] In the latter half of the sixteenth century, orchestration came into common practice as a method of writing music for a variety of instruments. Composers now specified orchestration where individual performers once applied their own discretion.[84] The polyphonic style dominated popular music, and the instrument makers responded accordingly.[85]
Beginning in about 1400, the rate of development of musical instruments increased in earnest as compositions demanded more dynamic sounds. People also began writing books about creating, playing, and cataloging musical instruments; the first such book was Sebastian Virdung's 1511 treatise Musica getuscht und angezogen (English: Music Germanized and Abstracted).[84] Virdung's work is noted as being particularly thorough for including descriptions of "irregular" instruments such as hunters' horns and cow bells, though Virdung is critical of the same. Other books followed, including Arnolt Schlick's Spiegel der Orgelmacher und Organisten (English: Mirror of Organ Makers and Organ Players) the same year, a treatise on organ building and organ playing.[86] Of the instructional books and references published in the Renaissance era, one is noted for its detailed description and depiction of all wind and stringed instruments, including their relative sizes. This book, the Syntagma musicum by Michael Praetorius, is now considered an authoritative reference of sixteenth century musical instruments.[87]
In the sixteenth century, musical instrument builders gave most instruments, such as the violin, the "classical shapes" they retain today. An emphasis on aesthetic beauty also developed—listeners were as pleased with the physical appearance of an instrument as they were with its sound. Therefore, builders paid special attention to materials and workmanship, and instruments became collectibles in homes and museums.[88] It was during this period that makers began constructing instruments of the same type in various sizes to meet the demand of consorts, or ensembles playing works written for these groups of instruments.[89] Instrument builders developed other features that endure today. For example, while organs with multiple keyboards and pedals already existed, the first organs with solo stops emerged in the early fifteenth century. These stops were meant to produce a mixture of timbres, a development needed for the complexity of music of the time.[90] Trumpets evolved into their modern form to improve portability, and players used mutes to properly blend into chamber music.[91]
[edit]Baroque
Beginning in the seventeenth century, composers began creating works of a more emotional style. They felt that a monophonic style better suited the emotional music and wrote musical parts for instruments that would complement the singing human voice.[85] As a result, many instruments that were incapable of larger ranges and dynamics, and therefore were seen as unemotional, fell out of favor. One such instrument was the oboe.[92] Bowed instruments such as the violin, viola, baryton, and various lutes dominated popular music.[93] Beginning in around 1750, however, the lute disappeared from musical compositions in favor of the rising popularity of the guitar.[94] As the prevalence of string orchestras rose, wind instruments such as the flute, oboe, and bassoon began to be readmitted to counteract the monotony of hearing only strings.[95]
In the mid-seventeenth century, what was known as a hunter's horn underwent transformation into an "art instrument" consisting of a lengthened tube, a narrower bore, a wider bell, and much wider range. The details of this transformation are unclear, but the modern horn or, more colloquially, French horn, had emerged by 1725.[96] The slide trumpet appeared, a variation which includes a long-throated mouthpiece that slid in and out, allowing the player infinite adjustments in pitch. This variation on the trumpet was unpopular due to the difficulty involved in playing it.[97] Organs underwent tonal changes in the Baroque period, as manufacturers such as Abraham Jordan of London made the stops more expressive and added devices such as expressive pedals. Sachs viewed this trend as a "degeneration" of the general organ sound.[98]
[edit]Romantic
During the Romantic period, lasting from roughly 1750 to 1900, a great deal of musical instruments capable of producing new timbres were developed and introduced into popular music. New instruments such as the clarinet, saxophone, and tuba became fixtures in orchestras. Instruments such as the clarinet also grew into entire "families" of instruments capable of different ranges: small clarinets, normal clarinets, bass clarinets, and so on.[99]
[edit]Classification
Main article: Musical instrument classification
There are many different methods of classifying musical instruments. Various methods examine aspects such as the physical properties of the instrument (material, color, shape, etc.), the use for the instrument, the means by which music is produced with the instrument, the range of the instrument, and the instrument's place in an orchestra or other ensemble. Most methods are specific to a geographic area or cultural group and were developed to serve the unique classification requirements of the group.[100] The problem with these specialized classification schemes is that they tend to break down once they are applied outside of their original area. For example, a system based on instrument use would fail if a culture invented a new use for the same instrument. Scholars recognize Hornbostel-Sachs as the only system that applies to any culture and, more important, provides only possible classification for each instrument.[101][102]
[edit]Ancient systems
An ancient system named the Natya Shastra, written by the sage Bharata Muni and dating from between 200 BC and 200 AD, divides instruments into four main classification groups: instruments where the sound is produced by vibrating strings; percussion instruments with skin heads; instruments where the sound is produced by vibrating columns of air; and "solid", or non-skin, percussion instruments. In 1880, Victor-Charles Mahillon adapted this system and assigned Greek labels to the four classifications: chordophones, membranophones, aerophones, and autophones.[101]
[edit]Hornbostel-Sachs
Erich von Hornbostel and Curt Sachs adopted Mahillon's scheme and published an extensive new scheme for classification in Zeitschrift für Ethnologie in 1914. Hornbostel and Sachs used most of Mahillon's system, but replaced the term autophone with idiophone.[101]
The original Hornbostel-Sachs system classified instruments into four main groups:
Idiophones, which would be an instrument that you could hit, strike, shake or scrape – such as the xylophone and rattle. They produce sound by vibrating themselves; they are sorted into concussion, percussion, shaken, scraped, split, and plucked idiophones.[103]
Membranophones, which would be an instrument that uses a stretched skin, or membrane (key word being "stretched")such as drums or kazoos, produce sound by a vibrating membrane; they are sorted into predrum membranophones, tubular drums, friction idiophones, kettledrums, friction drums, and mirlitons.[104]
Chordophones, which would be an instrument that uses stretched string or cord – such as the piano or cello, produce sound by vibrating strings; they are sorted into zithers, keyboard chordophones, lyres, harps, lutes, and bowed chordophones.[105]
Aerophones, which would be an instrument that you produce a sound by blowing air into – such as the pipe organ or oboe, produce sound by vibrating columns of air; they are sorted into free aerophones, flutes, organs, reedpipes, and lip-vibrated aerophones.[106]
Sachs later added a fifth category, electrophones, such as theremins, which produce sound by electronic means.[107] Within each category are many subgroups. The system has been criticised and revised over the years, but remains widely used by ethnomusicologists and organologists.[108]
[edit]Schaeffner
Andre Schaeffner, a curator at the Musée de l'Homme, disagreed with the Hornbostel-Sachs system and developed his own system in 1932. Schaeffner believed that the physical structure of a musical instrument, rather than its playing method, should determine its classification. His system divided instruments into two categories: instruments with solid, vibrating bodies and instruments containing vibrating air.[109]
[edit]Range
Western instruments are also often classified by their musical range in comparison with other instruments in the same family. These terms are named after singing voice classifications:
Soprano instruments: flute, violin, soprano saxophone, trumpet, clarinet, oboe, piccolo
Alto instruments: alto saxophone, french horn, english horn, viola
Tenor instruments: trombone, tenor saxophone, guitar
Baritone instruments: bassoon, baritone saxophone, bass clarinet, cello
Bass instruments: double bass, bass guitar, bass saxophone, tuba
Some instruments fall into more than one category: for example, the cello may be considered tenor, baritone or bass, depending on how its music fits into the ensemble, and the trombone may be alto, tenor, baritone, or bass and the French horn, bass, baritone, tenor, or alto, depending on which range it is played.
Many instruments have their range as part of their name: soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone, baritone horn, alto flute, bass guitar, etc. Additional adjectives describe instruments above the soprano range or below the bass, for example: sopranino saxophone, contrabass clarinet.
When used in the name of an instrument, these terms are relative, describing the instrument's range in comparison to other instruments of its family and not in comparison to the human voice range or instruments of other families. For example, a bass flute's range is from C3 to F♯6, while a bass clarinet plays about one octave lower.
[edit]Construction
Musical instrument construction is a specialized trade that requires years of training, practice, and sometimes an apprenticeship. Most makers of musical instruments specialize in one genre of instruments; for example, a luthier makes only stringed instruments. Some make only one type of instrument such as a piano. Some builders are focused on a more artistic approach and develop experimental musical instruments, often meant for individual playing styles developed by the builder himself.
[edit]User interfaces
Regardless of how the sound in an instrument is produced, many musical instruments have a keyboard as the user-interface. Keyboard instruments are any instruments that are played with a musical keyboard. Every key generates one or more sounds; most keyboard instruments have extra means (pedals for a piano, stops for an organ) to manipulate these sounds. They may produce sound by wind being fanned (organ) or pumped (accordion),[110][111] vibrating strings either hammered (piano) or plucked (harpsichord),[112][113] by electronic means (synthesizer),[114] or in some other way. Sometimes, instruments that do not usually have a keyboard, such as the glockenspiel, are fitted with one.[115] Though they have no moving parts and are struck by mallets held in the player's hands, they have the same physical arrangement of keys and produce soundwaves in a similar manner.
[edit]
Jumat, 21 Januari 2011
Music Indonesia
beside rich in culture and natural resources, Indonesia rich in Music too . According to me, Indonesia have a very great Musicians to create a song to sing . Sometimes Indonesia steal a song from foreign country, but Indonesia people still can change the lyrics with their creativity . I also love Music, because, Music can calm our feeling when we are sad, hard, and happy . That's Music Indonesia According to me, if you have a suggestion or comment just comment . That's it, thanks before
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