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Magadis
The magadis () was an ancient Greek musical instrument, possibly a Greek harp or Lyre. It is usually believed to be a stringed instrument similar to a psaltery or harp, though some earlier sources like the translated fragments of Posidonius discuss arguments that it may have been a woodwind. Modern scholars have mostly accepted the string instrument classification while noting that the evidence from ancient texts "falls well short of proving it." Scholars believe the word may be Lydian in origin. Background Archaic writers like Alkman and Anakreon mention both ''magadis'' and ''pektis''. According to Aristoxenos ''magadis'' and ''pektis'' were the same instrument; if this is correct ''magadis'' would have been associated with dancing or serenades as the ''pektis'' was, however, direct literary evidence about the ''magadis'' and its role in society is lacking. Euphorion wrote that the magadis was an ancient instrument, but that in latter times it was altered, and had the nam ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ancient Greek Harps
The psalterion (Greek ψαλτήριον) is a stringed, plucked instrument, an ancient Greek harp. Psalterion was a general word for harps in the latter part of the 4th century B.C. It meant "plucking instrument". In addition to their most important stringed instrument, the seven-stringed lyre, the Greeks also used multi-stringed, finger-plucked instruments: harps. The general name for these was the psalterion. Ancient vase paintings often depict – almost always in the hands of women – various types of harps. Names found in written sources include pektis, trigonos, magadis, sambuca, epigonion. These names could denote instruments of this type. Unlike the lyres, the harp was rarely used in Greece. It was seen as an "outside instrument" from the Orient. It also touched on Greek social mores, being used mainly by women, both upper-class women as well as hetaerae entertainers. There was a group of women known as ''psaltriai'', female pluckers of the instrument who could be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Psaltery
:''See Rotte (psaltery) for medieval harp psaltery & Ancient Greek harps for earlier psalterion'' A psaltery () (or sawtry, an archaic form) is a fretboard-less box zither (a simple chordophone) and is considered the archetype of the zither and dulcimer. Plucked keyboard instruments such as the harpsichord were also inspired by it. Its resonance box is usually trapezoidal, rectangular or in the form of a "pig's head" and often richly decorated. Etymology The psaltery of Ancient Greece ('' epigonion'') was a harp-like stringed instrument. The word ''psaltery'' derives from the Ancient Greek ψαλτήριον (''psaltḗrion''), "stringed instrument, psaltery, harp" and that from the verb ψάλλω (''psállō''), "to touch sharply, to pluck, pull, twitch" and in the case of the strings of musical instruments, "to play a stringed instrument with the fingers, and not with the plectrum." The psaltery was originally made from wood, and relied on natural acoustics for sound prod ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sambuca (instrument)
The sambuca (also ''sambute'', ''sambiut'', ''sambue'', ''sambuque'', or ''sambuke''Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, published 1913 by C. & G. Merriam Co.) was an ancient stringed instrument of Asiatic origin. The term ''sambuca'' is also applied to a number of other instruments. Original The original sambuca is generally supposed to have been a small triangular ancient Greek harp of shrill tone., probably identical with and , the Greek form being or or . Eusebius wrote that the Troglodytae invented the sambuca, while Athenaeus wrote that the writer Semus of Delos said that the first person who used the sambuca was Sibylla, and that the instrument derives its name from a man named Sambyx who invented it. Athenaeus also wrote that Euphorion in his book on the Isthmian Games mentioned that Troglodytae used sambuca with four strings like the Parthians. He also add that the Magadis was an ancient instrument, but that in latter times it was altered, and had the n ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thracians
The Thracians (; ; ) were an Indo-European languages, Indo-European speaking people who inhabited large parts of Southeast Europe in ancient history.. "The Thracians were an Indo-European people who occupied the area that today is shared between Thrace, north-eastern Greece, Romania, and north-western Turkey. They shared the same language and culture. There may have been as many as a million Thracians, divided among up to 40 tribes." Thracians resided mainly in Southeast Europe in Present (time), modern-day Bulgaria, Romania, North Macedonia, northern Greece and European Turkey, but also in north-western Anatolia, Anatolia (Asia Minor) in Turkey. The exact origin of the Thracians is uncertain, but it is believed that Thracians like other Indo-European speaking groups in Europe descended from a mixture of Proto-Indo-Europeans and Early European Farmers. Around the 5th millennium BC, the inhabitants of the eastern region of the Balkans became organized in different groups of Indi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Xenophon
Xenophon of Athens (; ; 355/354 BC) was a Greek military leader, philosopher, and historian. At the age of 30, he was elected as one of the leaders of the retreating Ancient Greek mercenaries, Greek mercenaries, the Ten Thousand, who had been part of Cyrus the Younger's attempt to seize control of the Achaemenid Empire. As the military historian Theodore Ayrault Dodge wrote, "the centuries since have devised nothing to surpass the genius of this warrior". For at least two millennia, it has been debated whether or not Xenophon was first and foremost a general, historian, or philosopher. For the majority of time in the past two millennia, Xenophon was recognized as a philosopher. Quintilian in Institutio Oratoria, ''The Orator's Education'' discusses the most prominent historians, orators and philosophers as examples of eloquence and recognizes Xenophon's historical work, but ultimately places Xenophon next to Plato as a philosopher. Today, Xenophon is recognized as one of the gr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Musical Tone
Traditionally in Western classical music, Western music, a musical tone is a steady periodic function, periodic sound. A musical tone is characterized by its duration (music), duration, pitch (music), pitch, amplitude, intensity (or loudness), and timbre (or quality). The Musical note, notes used in music can be more complex than musical tones, as they may include aperiodic aspects, such as attack transient (acoustics), transients, vibrato, and envelope modulation. A ''simple tone'', or ''pure tone'', has a Sine wave, sinusoidal waveform. A ''complex tone'' is a combination of two or more pure tones that have a periodic pattern of repetition, unless specified otherwise. The Fourier theorem states that any periodic waveform can be approximated as closely as desired as the sum of a series of sine waves with frequencies in a harmonic series (mathematics), harmonic series and at specific phase (waves), phase relationships to each other. The common denominator frequency, which is al ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Telestes
''Telestes'' is a genus of freshwater ray-finned fishes belonging to the family Leuciscidae, which includes the daces, Eurasian minnows and related species. Many of the species in this genus were formerly usually included in ''Leuciscus''. Species These are the currently recognised species in this genus: * '' Telestes alfiensis'' ( Stephanidis, 1971) * '' Telestes beoticus'' (Stephanidis, 1939) (Paskóviza) * '' Telestes comes'' ( Costa, 1838) * '' Telestes croaticus'' ( Steindachner, 1866) (Croatian pijor) * '' Telestes dabar'' Bogutskaya, Zupančič, Bogut & Naseka, 2012Bogutskaya, N.G., Zupancic, P., Bogut, I. & Naseka, A.M. (2012): Two new freshwater fish species of the genus Telestes (Actinopterygii, Cyprinidae) from karst poljes in Eastern Herzegovina and Dubrovnik littoral (Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia). ''ZooKeys, 180: 53–80.'' (Dabarsko dace) * '' Telestes fontinalis'' ( M. S. Karaman ( sr), 1972) (Spring pijor) * '' Telestes karsticus'' Marčić, Buj, D ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dithyramb
The dithyramb (; , ''dithyrambos'') was an ancient Greek hymn sung and danced in honor of Dionysus, the god of wine and fertility; the term was also used as an epithet of the god. Plato, in '' The Laws'', while discussing various kinds of music mentions "the birth of Dionysos, called, I think, the dithyramb." Plato also remarks in the ''Republic'' that dithyrambs are the clearest example of poetry in which the poet is the only speaker. However, in '' The Apology'' Socrates went to the dithyrambic poets with some of their own most elaborate passages, asking their meaning, but got a response of, "Will you believe me?" which "showed me in an instant that not by wisdom do poets write poetry, but by a sort of genius and inspiration; they are like diviners or soothsayers who also say many fine things, but do not understand the meaning of them." Plutarch contrasted the dithyramb's wild and ecstatic character with the paean. According to Aristotle, the dithyramb was the origin of Atheni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plectrum
A plectrum is a small flat tool used for plucking or strumming of a stringed instrument. For hand-held instruments such as guitars and mandolins, the plectrum is often called a pick and is held as a separate tool in the player's hand. In harpsichords, the plectra are attached to the jack mechanism. Plectra wielded by hand Guitars and similar instruments A plectrum for electric guitars, acoustic guitars, bass guitars and mandolins is typically a thin piece of plastic or other material most commonly shaped like a pointed teardrop or triangle, though the size, gauge, shape and width may vary considerably. Banjo and guitar players may wear a metal or plastic thumb pick mounted on a ring, and bluegrass banjo players often wear metal or plastic fingerpicks on their fingertips. Many guitarists use fingerpicks as well. Guitar picks are made of a variety of materials, including celluloid, metal, and rarely other exotic materials such as turtle shell, but today delrin (a synthetic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Athenaeus
Athenaeus of Naucratis (, or Nαυκράτιος, ''Athēnaios Naukratitēs'' or ''Naukratios''; ) was an ancient Greek rhetorician and Grammarian (Greco-Roman), grammarian, flourishing about the end of the 2nd and beginning of the 3rd century AD. The ''Suda'' says only that he lived in the times of Marcus Aurelius, but the contempt with which he speaks of Commodus, who died in 192, implies that he survived that emperor. He was a contemporary of Adrantus. Athenaeus himself states that he was the author of a treatise on the ''thratta'', a type of fish mentioned by Archippus (poet), Archippus and other comic poets, and of a history of the Syrian kings. Both works are lost. Of his works, only the fifteen-volume ''Deipnosophistae'' mostly survives. The ''Deipnosophistae'' The ''Deipnosophistae'', which means 'dinner-table philosophers', survives in fifteen books. The first two books, and parts of the third, eleventh and fifteenth, are extant only in epitome, but otherwise the w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
String Instrument
In musical instrument classification, string instruments, or chordophones, are musical instruments that produce sound from vibrating strings when a performer strums, plucks, strikes or sounds the strings in varying manners. Musicians play some string instruments, like Guitar, guitars, by plucking the String (music), strings with their fingers or a plectrum, plectrum (pick), and others by hitting the strings with a light wooden hammer or by rubbing the strings with a bow (music), bow, like Violin, violins. In some keyboard (music), keyboard instruments, such as the harpsichord, the musician presses a key that plucks the string. Other musical instruments generate sound by striking the string. With bowed instruments, the player pulls a rosined horsehair bow across the strings, causing them to vibrate. With a hurdy-gurdy, the musician cranks a wheel whose rosined edge touches the strings. Bowed instruments include the string section instruments of the orchestra in Western classic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kithara
The kithara (), Latinized as cithara, was an ancient Greek musical instrument in the yoke lutes family. It was a seven-stringed professional version of the lyre, which was regarded as a rustic, or folk instrument, appropriate for teaching music to beginners. As opposed to the simpler lyre, the cithara was primarily used by professional musicians, called kitharodes. In modern Greek, the word ''kithara'' has come to mean "guitar", a word which etymologically stems from ''kithara''. Origin and uses The cithara originated from Minoan- Mycenaean swan-neck lyres developed and used during the Aegean Bronze Age. Scholars such as M.L. West, Martha Maas, and Jane M. Snyder have made connections between the cithara and stringed instruments from ancient Anatolia. Whereas the basic lyra was widely used as a teaching instrument in boys’ schools, the cithara was a virtuoso's instrument and generally known as requiring a great deal of skill.: Aristotle calls the cithara an ''organo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
