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Swiss Music
Switzerland has long had a distinct cultural identity, despite its diversity of German, French, Italian, Romansh and other ethnicities. Religious and folk music dominated the country until the 17th century, with growth in production of other kinds of music occurring slowly. Classical music Switzerland has produced many esteemed classical composers over the centuries, such as Rennaissance composer Ludwig Senfl, Joachim Raff, Arthur Honegger (who has featured on the Swiss franc note), and Ernest Bloch. Folk music Due to a lack of detailed records, little is known about Swiss folk music prior to the 19th century. Some 16th-century lute tablatures have been reconstructed into authentic instrumental arrangements; however, the first major source of information comes from 19th-century collections of folk songs, and work done by musicologist Hanny Christen. One of the oldest varieties of folk music was the Swiss song Kühreihen, an agricultural Alpine song in the Lydian mode. Tradi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rebec
The rebec (sometimes rebecha, rebeckha, and other spellings, pronounced or ) is a bowed stringed instrument of the Medieval era and the early Renaissance. In its most common form, it has a narrow boat-shaped body and one to five strings. Origins Popular from the 13th to 16th centuries, the introduction of the rebec into Western Europe coincided with the Arabic conquest of the Iberian Peninsula. There is, however, evidence of the existence of bowed instruments in the 9th century in Eastern Europe. The Persian geographer of the 9th century Ibn Khurradadhbih cited the bowed Byzantine lira (or ''lūrā'') as a typical bowed instrument of the Byzantines and equivalent to the pear-shaped Arab ''rebab''. The rebec was adopted as a key instrument in Arab classical music and in Morocco it was used in the tradition of Arabo-Andalusian music, which had been kept alive by descendants of Muslims who left Spain as refugees following the Reconquista. The rebec also became a favorite instrum ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Double Bass
The double bass (), also known as the upright bass, the acoustic bass, the bull fiddle, or simply the bass, is the largest and lowest-pitched string instrument, chordophone in the modern orchestra, symphony orchestra (excluding rare additions such as the octobass). It has four or five strings, and its construction is in between that of the gamba and the violin family. The bass is a standard member of the orchestra's string section, along with violins, violas, and cellos,''The Orchestra: A User's Manual'' , Andrew Hugill with the Philharmonia Orchestra as well as the concert band, and is featured in Double bass concerto, concertos, solo, and chamber music in European classical music, Western classical music.Alfred Planyavsky [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Violin
The violin, sometimes referred to as a fiddle, is a wooden chordophone, and is the smallest, and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in regular use in the violin family. Smaller violin-type instruments exist, including the violino piccolo and the pochette (musical instrument), pochette, but these are virtually unused. Most violins have a hollow wooden body, and commonly have four strings (music), strings (sometimes five-string violin, five), usually tuned in perfect fifths with notes G3, D4, A4, E5, and are most commonly played by drawing a bow (music), bow across the strings. The violin can also be played by plucking the strings with the fingers (pizzicato) and, in specialized cases, by striking the strings with the wooden side of the bow (col legno). Violins are important instruments in a wide variety of musical genres. They are most prominent in the Western classical music, Western classical tradition, both in ensembles (from chamber music to orchestras) and as solo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vienna
Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. Its larger metropolitan area has a population of nearly 2.9 million, representing nearly one-third of the country's population. Vienna is the Culture of Austria, cultural, Economy of Austria, economic, and Politics of Austria, political center of the country, the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, fifth-largest city by population in the European Union, and the most-populous of the List of cities and towns on the river Danube, cities on the river Danube. The city lies on the eastern edge of the Vienna Woods (''Wienerwald''), the northeasternmost foothills of the Alps, that separate Vienna from the more western parts of Austria, at the transition to the Pannonian Basin. It sits on the Danube, and is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Accordion
Accordions (from 19th-century German language, German ', from '—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a Reed (mouthpiece), reed in a frame). The essential characteristic of the accordion is to combine in one instrument a melody section, also called the descant, diskant, usually on the right-hand keyboard, with an accompaniment or Basso continuo functionality on the left-hand. The musician normally plays the melody on buttons or keys on the right-hand side (referred to as the Musical keyboard, keyboard or sometimes the manual (music), ''manual''), and the accompaniment on Bass (sound), bass or pre-set Chord (music), chord buttons on the left-hand side. A person who plays the accordion is called an accordionist. The accordion belongs to the free-reed aerophone family. Other instruments in this family include the concertina, harmonica, and bandoneon. Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polka
Polka is a dance style and genre of dance music in originating in nineteenth-century Bohemia, now part of the Czech Republic. Though generally associated with Czech and Central European culture, polka is popular throughout Europe and the Americas. History Etymology The term ''polka'' referring to the dance is believed to derive from the Czech words "půlka", meaning "half-step". Czech cultural historian Čeněk Zíbrt attributes the term to the Czech word ''půlka'' (half), referring to both the half-tempo and the half-jump step of the dance.Čeněk Zíbrt, "Jak se kdy v Čechách tancovalo: dějiny tance v Čechách, na Moravě, ve Slezsku a na Slovensku z věků nejstarších až do nové doby se zvláštním zřetelem k dějinám tance vůbec", Prague, 189(Google eBook)/ref> This name has been changed to "Polka" as an expression of honour and sympathy for Poland and the Poles after the November Uprising 1830-1831. "Polka" meaning, in both the Czech and Poli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Waltz
The waltz ( , meaning "to roll or revolve") is a ballroom dance, ballroom and folk dance, in triple (3/4 time, time), performed primarily in closed position. Along with the ländler and allemande, the waltz was sometimes referred to by the generic term German Dance in publications during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. History There are many references to a sliding or gliding dance, including ''volte'', that would evolve into the waltz that date from 16th-century Europe, including the representations of the Printmaking, printmaker Sebald Beham, Hans Sebald Beham. The French philosopher Michel de Montaigne wrote of a dance he saw in 1580 in Augsburg, where the dancers held each other so closely that their faces touched. Kunz Haas (of approximately the same period) wrote, "Now they are dancing the godless ''Weller'' or ''Spinner''."Nettl, Paul. "Birth of the Waltz." In ''Dance Index'' vol 5, no. 9. 1946 New York: Dance Index-Ballet Caravan, Inc. pages 208, 211 "The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mazurka
The Mazurka ( Polish: ''mazurek'') is a Polish musical form based on stylised folk dances in triple meter, usually at a lively tempo, with character defined mostly by the prominent mazur's "strong accents unsystematically placed on the second or third beat". The Mazurka, alongside the polka dance, became popular at the ballrooms and salons of Europe in the 19th century, particularly through the notable works by Frédéric Chopin. The mazurka (in Polish ''mazur'', the same word as the mazur) and mazurek (rural dance based on the mazur) are often confused in Western literature as the same musical form. History The folk origins of the ''Mazurk'' are three Polish folk dances which are: * '' mazur'', most characteristic due to its inconsistent rhythmic accents, * slow and melancholic '' kujawiak'', * fast '' oberek''. The ''mazurka'' is always found to have either a triplet, trill, dotted eighth note (quaver) pair, or an ordinary eighth note pair before two quarter notes ( ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Schottisch
The schottische is a partnered country dance that apparently originated in Bohemia. It was popular in Victorian-era ballrooms as a part of the Bohemian folk-dance craze and left its traces in folk music of countries such as Argentina (Spanish Wikipedia and ), Finland (), France, Italy, Norway (""), Portugal and Brazil (, '), Spain (), Sweden, Denmark (), Mexico (), and the United States, among other nations. The schottische is considered by ''The Oxford Companion to Music'' to be a kind of slower polka, with continental-European origin. The schottische basic step is made up of two sidesteps to the left and right, followed by a turn in four steps. In some countries, the sidesteps and turn are replaced by strathspey hopping steps. Schottisches danced in Europe (in the context of balfolk), where they originated, are different from how they are danced in the United States. The European or Continental version (often pronounced "skoteesh"), is typically danced to faster music and is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brass Band
A brass band is a musical ensemble generally consisting primarily of brass instruments, most often with a percussion section. Ensembles that include brass and woodwind instruments can in certain traditions also be termed brass bands (particularly in the context of New Orleans and Japan–style brass bands), but may be more correctly termed military bands, concert bands, or "brass and reed" bands. Styles Balkan Balkan-style Brass Bands (, ''trumpet'') play a distinctive style of music originating in 19th century Balkans. The music's tradition stems from the First Serbian Uprising led by Karageorge, Karađorđe in 1804 when Serbs revolted against the occupying Ottoman Empire, eventually liberating Serbia. The trumpet was used as a military instrument to wake and gather soldiers and announce battles, the trumpet took on the role of entertainment during downtime, as soldiers used it to transpose popular folk songs. It is popular throughout the Balkans, especially Serbia, Albania, N ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Military Of Switzerland
The Swiss Armed Forces (; ; ; ; ) are the military and security force of Switzerland, consisting of land and air service branches. Under the country's militia system, regular soldiers constitute a small part of the military and the rest are conscripts or volunteers aged 19 to 34 (in some cases up to 50). Because of Switzerland's long history of neutrality, the Swiss Armed Forces have not been involved in foreign wars since the early 19th century, but do participate in international peacekeeping missions. Switzerland is part of the NATO Partnership for Peace programme. The regulations of the Swiss militia system stipulate that the soldiers keep their own personal equipment, including all personally assigned weapons, at home or in an armoury; until 2007 this also included ammunition. Compulsory military service applies to all male Swiss citizens, with women serving voluntarily. Males usually receive initial orders at the age of 18 for military conscription eligibility scre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
