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Virginal
The virginals is a keyboard instrument of the harpsichord family. It was popular in Europe during the late Renaissance and early Baroque periods. Description A virginals is a smaller and simpler, rectangular or polygonal, form of harpsichord. It has only one string per note, running more or less parallel to the keyboard, on the long side of the case. Many, if not most, of the instruments were constructed without legs, and would be placed on a table for playing. Later models were built with their own stands. Mechanism The mechanism of the virginals is identical to the harpsichord's, in that its wire strings are plucked by a set of plectra, mounted in jacks. Its case, however, is rectangular or polygonal, and the single choir of strings—one per note—runs roughly parallel to the keyboard. The strings are plucked either near one end, as with the harpsichord, or in the case of the muselar, nearer the middle, producing a more flute-like tone that's reduced in upper harmonics. ...
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Harpsichord
A harpsichord is a musical instrument played by means of a musical keyboard, keyboard. Depressing a key raises its back end within the instrument, which in turn raises a mechanism with a small plectrum made from quill or plastic that plucks one or more strings. The strings are under tension on a Sound board (music), soundboard, which is mounted in a wooden case; the soundboard amplifies the vibrations from the strings so that the listeners can hear it. Like a pipe organ, a harpsichord may have more than one keyboard Manual (music), manual and even a #Pedal harpsichord, pedal board. Harpsichords may also have Organ stop, stop levers which add or remove additional octaves. Some harpsichords may have a buff stop, which brings a strip of buff leather or other material in contact with the strings, muting their sound to simulate the sound of a plucked lute. The term denotes the whole family of similar plucked-keyboard instruments, including the smaller virginals, virginals#Muselars, m ...
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William Byrd
William Byrd (; 4 July 1623) was an English Renaissance composer. Considered among the greatest composers of the Renaissance, he had a profound influence on composers both from his native country and on the Continental Europe, Continent. He is often considered along with John Dunstaple and Henry Purcell as one of England's most important composers of early music. Byrd wrote in many of the forms current in England at the time, including various types of sacred and secular polyphony, keyboard (the so-called Virginalist school), and Consort of instruments, consort music. He produced sacred music for Church of England, Anglican services, but during the 1570s became a Roman Catholic, and wrote Catholic sacred music later in his life. Life Birth and background Richard Byrd of Ingatestone, Essex, the paternal grandfather of Thomas Byrd, probably moved to City of London, London in the 15th century. Thereafter succeeding generations of the Byrd family are described as gentlemen. Wil ...
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Hans Ruckers
The Ruckers family (variants: Ruckaert, Ruckaerts, Rucqueer, Rueckers, Ruekaerts, Ruijkers, Rukkers, Rycardt) were harpsichord and virginal makers from the Southern Netherlands based in Antwerp in the 16th and 17th century. Their influence stretched well into the 18th century, and to the harpsichord revival of the 20th. The Ruckers family contributed immeasurably to the harpsichord's technical development, pioneering the addition of a second manual; the quality of their instruments is such that the name of Ruckers is as important to early keyboard instruments as that of Stradivarius is to the violin family. In the 18th century, Ruckers instruments were often modified by French makers in a process known as ''ravalement'', to allow for an extended range and other additions. The Ruckers family The family probably originated in Germany. The earliest known member, Hans Ruckers, was from Weissenburg, according to documents from 1530 in the Antwerp city archives, and the similarly ...
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Short Octave
The short octave was a method of assigning notes to keys in early keyboard instruments (harpsichord, clavichord, organ), for the purpose of giving the instrument an extended range in the bass register. A closely related system, the broken octave, added more notes by using split keys: the front part and the back part of the (visible) key controlled separate levers and hence separate notes. Short octave First type One variant of the short octave system was employed in the instrument shown above. Here, the lowest note on the keyboard was nominally E, but the pitch to which it was tuned was actually C. Nominal F was tuned to D, and nominal G was tuned to E. Thus, starting at the lowest note on the keyboard and playing these keys: :E F G F G A B C the player would hear the musical scale of C major in the bass: :C D E F G A B C The actual note assignments can be seen in the following diagram, which shows the lowest eight keys of an early keyboard: : The rationale behind this ...
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Renaissance Music
Renaissance music is traditionally understood to cover European music of the 15th and 16th centuries, later than the Renaissance era as it is understood in other disciplines. Rather than starting from the early 14th-century ''ars nova'', the music of the Trecento, Trecento music was treated by musicology as a coda to medieval music and the new era dated from the rise of triad (music), triadic harmony and the spread of the ''contenance angloise'' style from the British Isles to the Burgundian School. A convenient watershed for its end is the adoption of basso continuo at the beginning of the Baroque music, Baroque period. The period may be roughly subdivided, with an early period corresponding to the career of Guillaume Du Fay (–1474) and the cultivation of cantilena style, a middle dominated by Franco-Flemish School and the four-part textures favored by Johannes Ockeghem (1410s or '20s–1497) and Josquin des Prez (late 1450s–1521), and culminating during the Counter-Reformat ...
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Musical Keyboard
A musical keyboard is the set of adjacent depressible levers or keys on a musical instrument. Keyboards typically contain keys for playing the twelve notes of the Western musical scale, with a combination of larger, longer keys and smaller, shorter keys that repeats at the interval of an octave. Pressing a key on the keyboard makes the instrument produce sounds—either by mechanically striking a string or tine ( acoustic and electric piano, clavichord), plucking a string (harpsichord), causing air to flow through a pipe organ, striking a bell (carillon), or activating an electronic circuit (synthesizer, digital piano, electronic keyboard). Since the most commonly encountered keyboard instrument is the piano, the keyboard layout is often referred to as the piano keyboard or simply piano keys. Description The twelve notes of the Western musical scale are laid out with the lowest note on the left. The longer keys (for the seven "natural" notes of the C major scale: C, D, E, F ...
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Hexagonal
In geometry, a hexagon (from Greek , , meaning "six", and , , meaning "corner, angle") is a six-sided polygon. The total of the internal angles of any simple (non-self-intersecting) hexagon is 720°. Regular hexagon A regular hexagon is defined as a hexagon that is both equilateral and equiangular. In other words, a hexagon is said to be regular if the edges are all equal in length, and each of its internal angle is equal to 120°. The Schläfli symbol denotes this polygon as \ . However, the regular hexagon can also be considered as the cutting off the vertices of an equilateral triangle, which can also be denoted as \mathrm\ . A regular hexagon is bicentric, meaning that it is both cyclic (has a circumscribed circle) and tangential (has an inscribed circle). The common length of the sides equals the radius of the circumscribed circle or circumcircle, which equals \tfrac times the apothem (radius of the inscribed circle). Measurement The longest diagonal ...
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Cypress
Cypress is a common name for various coniferous trees or shrubs from the ''Cupressus'' genus of the '' Cupressaceae'' family, typically found in temperate climates and subtropical regions of Asia, Europe, and North America. The word ''cypress'' is derived from Old French ''cipres'', which was imported from -4; we might wonder whether there's a point at which it's appropriate to talk of the beginnings of French, that is, when it wa ... ''cipres'', which was imported from Latin ''cypressus'', the latinisation of the Greek language">Greek κυπάρισσος (''kyparissos''). The name derives from Cyparissus, a mythological figure who was turned into a tree after killing a stag. Description Cypress trees typically reach heights of up to and exhibit a pyramidal form, particularly in their youth. Many are characterised by their needle-like, evergreen foliage and acorn-like seed cones. Some species develop flattened, spreading heads at maturity, while certain variants may manife ...
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Bridge (instrument)
A bridge is a device that supports the strings (music), strings on a stringed instrument, stringed musical instrument and transmits the vibration of those strings to another structural component of the instrument—typically a Sound board (music), soundboard, such as the top of a guitar or violin—which transfers the sound to the surrounding air. Depending on the instrument, the bridge may be made of carved wood (violin family instruments, acoustic guitars and some jazz guitars), metal (electric guitars such as the Fender Telecaster) or other materials. The bridge supports the strings and holds them over the body of the instrument under tension. Explanation Most stringed instruments produce sound through the application of energy to the strings, which sets them into vibratory motion, creating musical sounds. The strings alone, however, produce only a faint sound because they Particle displacement, displace only a small volume of air as they vibrate. Consequently, the sound of ...
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Flanders
Flanders ( or ; ) is the Dutch language, Dutch-speaking northern portion of Belgium and one of the communities, regions and language areas of Belgium. However, there are several overlapping definitions, including ones related to culture, language, politics, and history, and sometimes involving neighbouring countries. The demonym associated with Flanders is Flemings, Fleming, while the corresponding adjective is Flemish people, Flemish, which can also refer to the collective of Dutch dialects spoken in that area, or more generally the Belgian variant of Standard Dutch. Most Flemings live within the Flemish Region, which is a federal state within Belgium with its own elected government. However, like Belgium itself, the official capital of Flanders is the City of Brussels, which lies within the Brussels, Brussels-Capital Region, not the Flemish Region, and the majority of residents there are French speaking. The powers of the Flemish Government in Brussels are limited mainly ...
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Spinetta Or Italian Virginals
Luis Alberto Spinetta (23 January 1950 – 8 February 2012), nicknamed "El Flaco" (Spanish for "skinny"), was an Argentine singer, guitarist, composer, writer and poet. One of the most influential rock musicians of Argentina, he is widely regarded as one of the founders of Argentine rock, which is considered one of the first incarnations of Spanish-language rock. Born in Buenos Aires, he was the founder of several iconic rock bands including Almendra, Pescado Rabioso, Invisible, Spinetta Jade, and Spinetta y Los Socios del Desierto. In Argentina, January 23rd is celebrated as "Día Nacional del Músico" (National Musician's Day) in honor of Spinetta's birth. Spinetta devoted himself fully to his own music. In his lyrics, there are influences of multiple writers, poets and artists like Arthur Rimbaud, Vincent van Gogh, Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Carlos Castañeda and Antonin Artaud, whom the album '' Artaud'' (1973) is na ...
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