The clarinet is a single-reed musical instrument in the woodwind family, with a nearly cylindrical bore and a flared bell.
A reed is a thin strip of material that vibrates to produce a sound on a musical instrument. Most woodwind instrument reeds are made from Arundo donax or synthetic material. Tuned reeds are made of metal or synthetics. Musical instruments are classified according to the type and number of reeds.
The shawm is a conical bore, double-reed woodwind instrument made in Europe from the 12th century to the present day. It achieved its peak of popularity during the medieval and Renaissance periods, after which it was gradually eclipsed by the oboe family of descendant instruments in classical music. It is likely to have come to Western Europe from the Eastern Mediterranean around the time of the Crusades. Double-reed instruments similar to the shawm were long present in Southern Europe and the East, for instance the ancient Greek, and later Byzantine aulos, the closely related sorna and zurna, and the Armenian duduk.
The tárogató is a woodwind instrument commonly used in Hungarian folk music. The modern tárogató was intended to be a recreation of the original tárogató, but the two instruments are thought to have little in common.
The shehnai, often translated into English as clarinet is a musical instrument, originating from the Indian subcontinent. It is made of wood, with a double reed at one end and a metal or wooden flared bell at the other end. Its sound is thought to create and maintain a sense of auspiciousness and sanctity and as a result, is one of the nine instruments found in the royal court. The shehnai is similar to South India's nadaswaram.
The zurna is a double reed wind instrument played in the Central Asia, West Asia, the Caucasus, Southeast Europe and parts of North Africa. It is also used in Sri Lanka. It is usually accompanied by a davul in Armenian, Anatolian and Assyrian folk music.
The duduk or tsiranapogh, is a double reed woodwind instrument made of apricot wood originating from Armenia. Variations of the Armenian duduk appear throughout the Caucasus and the Middle East, including Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kurdistan, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Iran. Duduk, Balaban, and Mey are almost identical, except for historical and geographical differences.
The dulcian is a Renaissance woodwind instrument, with a double reed and a folded conical bore. Equivalent terms include English: curtal, German: Dulzian, French: douçaine, Dutch: dulciaan, Italian: dulciana, Spanish: bajón, and Portuguese: baixão.
A double reed is a type of reed used to produce sound in various wind instruments. In contrast with a single reed instrument, where the instrument is played by channeling air against one piece of cane which vibrates against the mouthpiece and creates a sound, a double reed features two pieces of cane vibrating against each other. This means, for instruments with the double reed fully exposed, that the air flow can be controlled by the embouchure from the top, bottom and sides of the reed. The term double reeds can also refer collectively to the class of instruments which use double reeds.
Suona, also called dida, laba or haidi, is a traditional double-reeded Chinese musical instrument. The Suona's basic design originated in ancient Iran, then called "Sorna". Suona appeared in China around the 3rd century. It had a distinctively loud and high-pitched sound, and was used frequently in Chinese traditional music ensembles, particularly in those that perform outdoors. It was an important instrument in the folk music of northern China, particularly in provinces of Shandong and Henan, where it has long been used for festival and military purposes. It is still being used, in combination with sheng mouth organs, gongs, drums, and sometimes other instruments in weddings and funeral processions. Such wind and percussion ensembles are called chuida or guchui. Stephen Jones has written extensively on its use in ritual music of Shanxi. It was also common in the ritual music of Southeast China. In Taiwan, it was an essential element of ritual music that accompanied Daoist performances of both auspicious and inauspicious rites, i.e., those for both the living and the dead. One of the most famous pieces that uses suona as the leading instrument is called "Bai Niao Chao Feng", or "Hundred Birds Worship the Phoenix". The movie Song of the Phoenix casts the rise and fall of the popularity of suona in modern Chinese musical history.
During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603), English art and high culture reached a pinnacle known as the height of the English Renaissance. Elizabethan music experienced a shift in popularity from sacred to secular music and the rise of instrumental music. Professional musicians were employed by the Church of England, the nobility, and the rising middle-class.
A quadruple reed is a type of reed by means of which the sound is originated in various wind instruments. The term "quadruple reed" comes from the fact that there are four pieces of dried palm leaf vibrating against each other, in pairs. A quadruple reed, such as the Thai pinai, operates in a similar way as the double reed and produces a timbre similar to the oboe. The Arabic pii chawaa is "sometimes described as having a double reed, though this is actually folded yet again, creating four layers of reed and thus requiring considerable lung power to play".
The piffero or piffaro is a double-reed musical instrument of the oboe family with a conical bore . It is used to play music in the tradition of the Quattro Province, an area of mountains and valleys in the north-west Italian Apennines which includes parts of the four provinces of Alessandria, Genoa, Piacenza and Pavia. It is also played throughout Southern Italy with different fingering styles dictated by local tradition.
tablature.jpg|thumb|upright=1.75|An example: Dieterich Buxtehude's O dulcis Jesu in full score using tablature]] Keyboard tablature is a form of musical notation for keyboard instruments. Widely used in some parts of Europe from the 15th century, it co-existed with, and was eventually replaced by modern staff notation in the 18th century. The defining characteristic of the best known type, German organ tablature, is the use of letters to indicate pitch as well as beams for rhythm. Spain and Portugal used a slightly different cipher tablature, called cifra.
Jeronimo Bassano was an Italian musician in the Republic of Venice who is notable as the patriarch of a family of musicians: five of his sons, Anthony, Alvise, Jasper, John (Giovanni), and Baptista Bassano, moved from Venice to England to serve in the court of King Henry VIII. They performed as a recorder consort. Jacomo Bassano was his only son to keep his primary residence in Venice. Jeronimo Bassano never moved, and he was listed in Venice as a "Maestro of the trumpets and shawms." He is believed to be the maternal grandfather of composer Giovanni Bassano.
The gyaling, literally "Chinese flute", is a traditional woodwind instrument used in Tibet. As its name indicates, it is the Chinese double reed Suona horn used mainly in Tibetan monasteries during puja and is associated with peaceful deities and the idea of devotion.
The soprano sarrusophone is a high-pitched member of the sarrusophone family of keyed metal conical bore double reed instruments. It is pitched in B♭ with approximately the same range as the soprano saxophone. The timbre is similar to that of the oboe, although louder and less refined, more like a shawm. Although used in wind bands in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it is today extremely rare, as few original specimens survive. They were made in the late 19th and early 20th century principally by their inventor and Parisian instrument maker Pierre-Louis Gautrot, and his successor Couesnon & Co.. Instruments are also known from manufacturers Evette & Schaeffer, Distin & Co. of London, and Orsi of Milan. New instruments can still be made individually to order from Orsi.
Bass violin is the modern term for various 16th- and 17th-century bass instruments of the violin family. They were the direct ancestor of the modern cello. Bass violins were usually somewhat larger than the modern cello, but tuned to the same nominal pitches or sometimes one step lower. Contemporaneous names for these instruments include "basso de viola da braccio," "basso da braccio," or the generic term "violone," which simply meant "large fiddle." The instrument differed from the violone of the viol, or "viola da gamba" family in that like the other violins it had at first three, and later usually four strings, as opposed to five, six, or seven strings, it was tuned in fifths, and it had no frets. With its F-holes and stylized C-bouts it also more closely resembled the viola da braccio.
Chirimía is a Spanish term for a type of woodwind instrument similar to an oboe. The chirimía is a member of the shawm family of double-reed instruments, introduced to North, Central and South America in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by the Spanish clergy.
Anthony Cuthbert Baines (1912–1997) was an English organologist who produced a wide variety of works on the history of musical instruments, and was a founding member of the Galpin Society.
