Johann Wilde was an 18th-century German violinist and musical instrument inventor. He is best known for inventing the nail violin in 1740. He is also credited with the introduction of the Chinese sheng mouth organ to the Court of St. Petersburg, Russia.
The Encyclopædia Britannica is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia which is now published exclusively as an online encyclopaedia. It was formerly published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., and other publishers. It was written by about 100 full-time editors and more than 4,000 contributors. The 2010 version of the 15th edition, which spans 32 volumes and 32,640 pages, was the last printed edition.
The Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition (1910–11), is a 29-volume reference work, an edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. It was developed during the encyclopaedia's transition from a British to an American publication. Some of its articles were written by the best-known scholars of the time. This edition of the encyclopaedia, containing 40,000 entries, is now in the public domain, and many of its articles have been used as a basis for articles in Wikipedia. However, the outdated nature of some of its content makes its use as a source for modern scholarship problematic. Some articles have special value and interest to modern scholars as cultural artifacts of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
The Kingdom of France was organised into provinces until the National Constituent Assembly adopted a more uniform division into departments (départements) and districts in late 1789. The provinces continued to exist administratively until 21 September 1791.
The vielle is a European bowed stringed instrument used in the Medieval period, similar to a modern violin but with a somewhat longer and deeper body, three to five gut strings, and a leaf-shaped pegbox with frontal tuning pegs, sometimes with a figure-8 shaped body. Whatever external form they had, the box-soundchest consisted of back and belly joined by ribs, which experience has shown to be the construction for bowed instruments. The most common shape given to the earliest vielles in France was an oval, which with its modifications remained in favour until the Italian lira da braccio asserted itself as the better type, leading to the violin.
The pochette is a small stringed instrument of the bowed variety. It is essentially a very small violinlike wood instrument designed to fit in a pocket, hence its common name, the "pochette".
Rodolphe Kreutzer was a French violinist, teacher, conductor, and composer of forty French operas, including La mort d'Abel (1810).
Benjamin Louis Paul Godard was a French violinist and Romantic-era composer of Jewish extraction, best known for his opera Jocelyn. Godard composed eight operas, five symphonies, two piano and two violin concertos, string quartets, sonatas for violin and piano, piano pieces and etudes, and more than a hundred songs. He died at the age of 45 in Cannes (Alpes-Maritimes) of tuberculosis and was buried in the family tomb in Taverny in the French department of Val-d'Oise.
Henryk Wieniawski was a Polish virtuoso violinist, composer and pedagogue who is regarded amongst the greatest violinists in history. His younger brother Józef Wieniawski and nephew Adam Tadeusz Wieniawski were also accomplished musicians.
Charleville-Mézières is a commune in northern France, capital of the Ardennes department in the Grand Est region. Charleville-Mézières is located on the banks of the river Meuse.
Hugh Reginald Haweis was an English cleric and writer. He was the husband of author Mary Eliza Haweis and the father of painter Stephen Haweis.
A rabbet or rebate is a recess or groove cut into the edge of a piece of machinable material, usually wood. When viewed in cross-section, a rabbet is two-sided and open to the edge or end of the surface into which it is cut.
Bowed string instruments are a subcategory of string instruments that are played by a bow rubbing the strings. The bow rubbing the string causes vibration which the instrument emits as sound.
Jean-Delphin Alard was a French violinist, composer, and teacher. He was the son-in-law of Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume, and had Pablo de Sarasate amongst his students.
Hugh Chisholm was a British journalist, and editor of the 10th, 11th and 12th editions of the Encyclopædia Britannica.
The nail violin is a musical instrument which was invented by German violinist Johann Wilde in 1740. The instrument consists of a semicircular wooden soundboard, approximately 1.5 feet (46 cm) by 1 foot (30 cm) in size, with iron or brass nails of different lengths arranged to produce a chromatic scale when bowed.
Phaedo of Elis was a Greek philosopher. A native of Elis, he was captured in war as a boy and sold into slavery. He subsequently came into contact with Socrates at Athens who warmly received him and had him freed. He was present at the death of Socrates, and Plato named one of his dialogues Phaedo.
Marcus Atilius Regulus was a Roman statesman and general who was a consul of the Roman Republic in 267 BC and 256 BC.
The violin, viola, and cello were first made in the early 16th century, in Italy. The earliest evidence for their existence is in paintings by Gaudenzio Ferrari from the 1530s, though Ferrari's instruments had only three strings. The Academie musicale, a treatise written in 1556 by Philibert Jambe de Fer, gives a clear description of the violin family much as we know it today.
A bradawl is a woodworking hand tool with a blade similar to that of a straight screwdriver and a handle made from wood or plastic.
The Byzantine lyra or lira was a medieval bowed string musical instrument in the Byzantine Empire. In its popular form, the lyra was a pear-shaped instrument with three to five strings, held upright and played by stopping the strings from the side with fingernails. The first known depiction of the instrument is on a Byzantine ivory casket, preserved in the Bargello in Florence. Versions of the Byzantine lyra are still played throughout the former lands of the Byzantine Empire: Greece, Crete, Albania, Montenegro, Serbia, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Croatia, Italy and Armenia.