Twelve-tone Equal Temperament
12 equal temperament (12-ET) is the musical system that divides the octave into 12 parts, all of which are equally tempered (equally spaced) on a logarithmic scale, with a ratio equal to the 12th root of 2 (\sqrt 2/math> ≈ 1.05946). That resulting smallest interval, the width of an octave, is called a semitone or half step. Twelve-tone equal temperament is the most widespread system in music today. It has been the predominant tuning system of Western music, starting with classical music, since the 18th century, and Europe almost exclusively used approximations of it for millennia before that. It has also been used in other cultures. In modern times, 12-ET is usually tuned relative to a standard pitch of 440 Hz, called A440, meaning one note, A4 (the A in the 4th octave of a typical 88-key piano), is tuned to 440 hertz and all other notes are defined as some multiple of semitones apart from it, either higher or lower in frequency. The standard pitch has not always been ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Lutenist
A lute ( or ) is any plucked string instrument with a neck and a deep round back enclosing a hollow cavity, usually with a sound hole or opening in the body. It may be either fretted or unfretted. More specifically, the term "lute" commonly refers to an instrument from the family of European lutes which were themselves influenced by Indian short-necked lutes in Gandhara which became the predecessor of the Islamic, the Sino-Japanese and the European lute families. The term also refers generally to any necked string instrument having the strings running in a plane parallel to the sound table (in the Hornbostel–Sachs system). The strings are attached to pegs or posts at the end of the neck, which have some type of turning mechanism to enable the player to tighten the tension on the string or loosen the tension before playing (which respectively raise or lower the pitch of a string), so that each string is tuned to a specific pitch (or note). The lute is plucked or strummed ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ricercar
A ricercar ( , ) or ricercare ( , ) is a type of late Renaissance and mostly early Baroque instrumental composition. The term ''ricercar'' derives from the Italian verb , which means "to search out; to seek"; many ricercars serve a preludial function to "search out" the key or mode of a following piece. A ricercar may explore the permutations of a given motif, and in that regard may follow the piece used as illustration. The term is also used to designate an etude or study that explores a technical device in playing an instrument, or singing. In its most common contemporary usage, it refers to an early kind of fugue, particularly one of a serious character in which the subject uses long note values. However, the term has a considerably more varied historical usage. Among the best-known ricercars are the two for harpsichord contained in Bach's '' The Musical Offering'' and Domenico Gabrielli's set of seven for solo cello. The latter set contains what are considered to be some ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Fronimo Dialogo
The Fronimo Dialogo di Vincentio Galilei (Vincenzo Galilei) is an instructional book on playing, composing and intabulating vocal music for the lute. The first edition was printed by Girolamo Scotto in Venice Venice ( ; ; , formerly ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 islands that are separated by expanses of open water and by canals; portions of the city are li ... with the full title ''FRONIMO DIALOGO / DI VINCENTIO GALILEI FIORENTINO, / NEL QUALE SI CONTENGONO LE VERE, / et necessarie regole del Intavolare la Musica nel Liuto''. While the title page bears the date 1568, the final page confusingly bears the date 1569. Apparently, although the manuscript was completed by Galilei in the Autumn of 1568, the official letter of privilege allowing the publication of the book was received only in December, and the printing actually took place in 1569. In addition, still in 1569, Girolamo Scott ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Galileo Galilei
Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642), commonly referred to as Galileo Galilei ( , , ) or mononymously as Galileo, was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a polymath. He was born in the city of Pisa, then part of the Duchy of Florence. Galileo has been called the father of observational astronomy, modern-era classical physics, the scientific method, and modern science. Galileo studied speed and velocity, gravity and free fall, the principle of relativity, inertia, projectile motion and also worked in applied science and technology, describing the properties of the pendulum and "hydrostatic balances". He was one of the earliest Renaissance developers of the thermoscope and the inventor of various sector (instrument), military compasses. With an improved telescope he built, he observed the stars of the Milky Way, the phases of Venus, the Galilean moons, four largest satellites of Jupiter, Saturn's r ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Vincenzo Galilei
Vincenzo Galilei (3 April 1520 – 2 July 1591) was an Italian lutenist, composer, and music theory, music theorist. His children included the astronomer and physicist Galileo Galilei and the lute virtuoso and composer Michelagnolo Galilei. Vincenzo was a figure in the musical life of the late Renaissance and contributed significantly to the musical revolution that demarcates the beginning of the Baroque music, Baroque era. In his study of pitch and string tension, Galilei produced perhaps the first non-linear mathematical description of a natural phenomenon known to history. Some credit him with directing the activity of his son away from pure, abstract mathematics and towards experimentation using mathematical quantitative description of the results, a direction of importance for the history of physics and natural science. Biography He was born in 1520 in Santa Maria a Monte, near Pisa, Republic of Florence, and began studying the lute at an early age. His mother was from San ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Aristoxenus
Aristoxenus of Tarentum (; born 375, fl. 335 BC) was a Ancient Greece, Greek Peripatetic school, Peripatetic philosopher, and a pupil of Aristotle. Most of his writings, which dealt with philosophy, ethics and music, have been lost, but one musical treatise, ''Elements of Harmony'' (Greek: ; Latin: ''Elementa harmonica''), survives incomplete, as well as some fragments concerning rhythm and Metre (music), meter. The ''Elements'' is the chief source of our knowledge of Music of ancient Greece, ancient Greek music. Life Aristoxenus was born at Taranto, Tarentum (in modern-day Apulia, southern Italy) in Magna Graecia, and was the son of a learned musician named Spintharus (otherwise Mnesias). He learned music from his father, and having then been instructed by Lamprus of Erythrae and Xenophilus (philosopher), Xenophilus the Pythagorean, he finally became a pupil of Aristotle, whom he appears to have rivaled in the variety of his studies. According to the ''Suda'', he heaped insults ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Victor-Charles Mahillon
Victor-Charles Mahillon (March 10, 1841 in Brussels – June 17, 1924 in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, France) was a Belgian musician, instrument builder and writer on musical topics. He was the founder and first curator of the Musée instrumental du Conservatoire Royal de Musique, known today as the Musical Instrument Museum. He built, collected, and described more than 1500 musical instruments. Biography Early life and family Born in a family of instrument makers and music publishers, son of Charles Mahillon (1813-1887), and brother of Joseph-Jean Mahillon (1848-1923, Adolphe Désiré Mahillon (1851-1906) and Ferdinand-Charles-Eugène Mahillon (1855-1948). His uncle Barthelemi and his son Fernand-Charles-Henri had the same profession. Partly self-taught, Mahillon studied Musical Acoustics and Organology and started working at his father's factory of musical instruments in 1865. In 1869, he started the musical journal ''L'Echo musical'', which ran until 1886. Brussels Roya ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Hermann Von Helmholtz
Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz (; ; 31 August 1821 – 8 September 1894; "von" since 1883) was a German physicist and physician who made significant contributions in several scientific fields, particularly hydrodynamic stability. The Helmholtz Association, the largest German association of research institutions, was named in his honour. In the fields of physiology and psychology, Helmholtz is known for his mathematics concerning the eye, theories of vision, ideas on the visual perception of space, colour vision research, the sensation of tone, perceptions of sound, and empiricism in the physiology of perception. In physics, he is known for his theories on the conservation of energy and on the electrical double layer, work in electrodynamics, chemical thermodynamics, and on a mechanical foundation of thermodynamics. Although credit is shared with Julius von Mayer, James Joule, and Daniel Bernoulli—among others—for the energy conservation principles that e ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |