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Embellishments
In music, ornaments or embellishments are musical flourishes—typically, added notes—that are not essential to carry the overall line of the melody (or harmony), but serve instead to decorate or "ornament" that line (or harmony), provide added interest and variety, and give the performer the opportunity to add expressiveness to a song or piece. Many ornaments are performed as "fast notes" around a central, main note. There are many types of ornaments, ranging from the addition of a single, short grace note before a main note to the performance of a virtuosic and flamboyant trill. The amount of ornamentation in a piece of music can vary from quite extensive (it was often extensive in the Baroque period, from 1600 to 1750) to relatively little or even none. The word ''agrément'' is used specifically to indicate the French Baroque style of ornamentation. Improvised vs. written In the Baroque period, it was common for performers to improvise ornamentation on a given melodic li ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Musical Improvisation
Musical improvisation (also known as musical extemporization) is the creative activity of immediate ("in the moment") musical composition, which combines performance with communication of emotions and instrumental technique as well as spontaneous response to other musicians. Sometimes musical ideas in improvisation are spontaneous, but may be based on chord changes in classical music and many other kinds of music. One definition is a "performance given extempore without planning or preparation". Another definition is to "play or sing (music) extemporaneously, by inventing variations on a melody or creating new melodies, rhythms and harmonies". ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' defines it as "the extemporaneous composition or free performance of a musical passage, usually in a manner conforming to certain stylistic norms but unfettered by the prescriptive features of a specific musical text." Improvisation is often done within (or based on) a pre-existing harmonic framework or chord p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Variation (music)
In music, variation is a formal technique where material is repeated in an altered form. The changes may involve melody, rhythm, harmony, counterpoint, timbre, orchestration or any combination of these. Variation techniques Mozart's Twelve Variations on "Ah vous dirai-je, Maman" (1785), known in the English-speaking world as " Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" exemplifies a number of common variation techniques. Here are the first eight bars of the theme: Melodic variation Mozart's first variation decorates and elaborates the plain melodic line: Rhythmic variation The fifth variation breaks up the steady pulse and creates syncopated off-beats: Harmonic variation The seventh variation introduces powerful new chords, which replace the simple harmonies originally implied by the theme with a prolongational series of descending fifths: Minor mode In the elaborate eighth variation, Mozart changes from the major to the parallel minor mode, while combining three techniques: count ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ornament (music)
In music, ornaments or embellishments are musical flourishes—typically, added notes—that are not essential to carry the overall line of the melody (or harmony), but serve instead to decorate or "ornament" that line (or harmony), provide added interest and variety, and give the performer the opportunity to add expressiveness to a song or piece. Many ornaments are performed as "fast notes" around a central, main note. There are many types of ornaments, ranging from the addition of a single, short grace note before a main note to the performance of a virtuosic and flamboyant trill. The amount of ornamentation in a piece of music can vary from quite extensive (it was often extensive in the Baroque period, from 1600 to 1750) to relatively little or even none. The word ''agrément'' is used specifically to indicate the French Baroque style of ornamentation. Improvised vs. written In the Baroque period, it was common for performers to improvise ornamentation on a given melodic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Trill (music)
The trill (or shake, as it was known from the 16th until the early 20th century) is a musical ornament consisting of a rapid alternation between two adjacent notes, usually a semitone or tone apart, which can be identified with the context of the trillTaylor, Eric. ''The AB Guide to Music Theory: Part I'', p. 92. (compare mordent and tremolo). It is sometimes referred to by the German Triller, the Italian trillo, the French trille or the Spanish trino. A cadential trill is a trill associated with each cadence. A trill provides rhythmic interest, melodic interest, and—through dissonance—harmonic interest. Sometimes it is expected that the trill will end with a turn (by sounding the note below rather than the note above the principal note, immediately before the last sounding of the principal note), or some other variation. Such variations are often marked with a few appoggiaturas following the note bearing the trill indication. Notation In most modern musical notatio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Division (music)
In music Music is generally defined as the The arts, art of arranging sound to create some combination of Musical form, form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise Musical expression, expressive content. Exact definition of music, definitions of mu ..., division (also called Diminution#Diminution as embellishmen, diminution or coloration) refers to a type of Ornament (music), ornamentation or Variation (music)#History of variations, variation common in 16th- and 17th-century music in which each Musical note, note of a melody, melodic line is "divided" into several shorter, faster-moving notes, often by a rhythmic repetition (music), repetition of a simple musical device such as the trill (music), trill, turn (music), turn or cambiata on each note in turn, or by the introduction of nonchord tones or arpeggio figures. The word was used in this sense to describe improvised coloratura ornamentation as used by opera singers of the day, but it made a ready way of devising varia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tremolo
In music, ''tremolo'' (), or ''tremolando'' (), is a trembling effect. There are two types of tremolo. The first is a rapid reiteration: * Of a single note, particularly used on bowed string instruments, by rapidly moving the bow back and forth; plucked strings such as on a harp, where it is called '' bisbigliando'' () or "whispering". Tremolo picking, on traditionally plucked string instruments including guitar and mandolin, is the rapid articulation of single notes or a group of notes with a plectrum (pick) or with fingers. Tremolo playing sustains notes that would otherwise rapidly decay (fade to silence). * Between two notes or chords in alternation, an imitation (not to be confused with a trill) of the preceding that is more common on keyboard instruments. Mallet instruments such as the marimba are capable of either method. * A roll on any percussion instrument, whether tuned or untuned. A second type of tremolo is a variation in amplitude: * As produced on organs by tr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heinrich Christoph Koch
Heinrich Christoph Koch (10 October 1749 – 19 March 1816) was a German music theorist, musical lexicographer and composer. In his lifetime, his music dictionary was widely distributed in Germany and Denmark; today his theory of form and syntax is used to analyse music of the 18th and 19th centuries. Life Koch was born in Rudolstadt, in the federal state of Thüringen. In his youth, he was a violinist in the Rudolstadt court orchestra and from 1772 as a chamber musician. He was taught music by his father - a valet to Johann Friedrich von Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, prince of the small state of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt; later he was tutored in violin and composition by Christian Gotthelf Scheinpflug, the prince's band leader. Although his lowly circumstances precluded a university education, the prince - and his successors - encouraged his musical training and sent him to different German cities. He studied for periods in Weimar (with Carl Andreas Göpfert), Leipzig, Dresden, Berlin a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Staff (music)
In Western musical notation, the staff (US and UK)"staff" in the Collins English Dictionary "in British English: also called: stave; plural: staffs or staves""staff" in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary /ref> or stave (UK) (: staffs or staves) is a set of five horizontal lines and four spaces that each represent a different musical pitch or in the case of a |
Diatonic And Chromatic
Diatonic and chromatic are terms in music theory that are most often used to characterize scales, and are also applied to musical instruments, intervals, chords, notes, musical styles, and kinds of harmony. They are very often used as a pair, especially when applied to contrasting features of the common practice music of the period 1600–1900. These terms may mean different things in different contexts. Very often, ''diatonic'' refers to musical elements derived from the modes and transpositions of the "white note scale" C–D–E–F–G–A–B. In some usages it includes all forms of heptatonic scale that are in common use in Western music (the major, and all forms of the minor). ''Chromatic'' most often refers to structures derived from the twelve-note chromatic scale, which consists of all semitones. Historically, however, it had other senses, referring in Ancient Greek music theory to a particular tuning of the tetrachord, and to a rhythmic notational convention ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Tyrrell (musicologist)
John Tyrrell (17 August 1942 – 4 October 2018) was a British people, British musicologist. He published several books on Leoš Janáček, including an authoritative and largely definitive two-volume biography. Early life Tyrrell was born in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe), he studied at the universities of Cape Town, Oxford and Brno. He pursued his Bachelor of Music at the University of Cape Town following which he moved to Oxford University to pursue a doctoral degree under the supervision of Edmund Rubbra Career Tyrrell started his career working in an editorial capacity at The Musical Times. He was a Lecturer in Music at the University of Nottingham (1976), becoming Reader in Opera Studies (1987) and Professor (1996). From 1996 to 2000 he was Executive Editor of the second edition of ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' (2001). From 2000-08, he was Research Professor at Cardiff University. He received numerous awards and honours througho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
