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The pantalon (or pantaleon) was a very large type of hammered dulcimer, invented by Pantaleon Hebenstreit in the early 18th century and briefly popular in France and Germany.
The pantalon was a very large dulcimer with a double sounding board, approximately 6 ft (2 m) long, with about 200 strings of both gut and metal, some double- or triple-strung. It had no dampers, so the strings vibrated sympathetically, giving a rich resonating tone that was quite novel at the time and made a noticeable stir; the lack of dampers, however, made articulation difficult.
Few instruments were constructed and very few survive. [1] Hebenstreit and his two best pupils Maximilian Hellmann and Johann Baptist Gumpenhuber were essentially the only virtuoso players of the instrument. However, it was well known in French and German musical circles of the early 18th century, and Hebenstreit gained fame and fortune playing it.
Hebenstreit named the instrument after himself. Glowing reviews of its qualities appear in the writings of a number of prominent commentators of the day, such as Johann Kuhnau. The instrument died out with Hebenstreit's retirement, but the idea of allowing sympathetic resonance from undamped strings was adopted into mechanisms that would disengage the dampers in various ways on early keyboard instruments such as the clavichord, called "pantalon stops".
Compositions made for Hellmann include three by Caldara, eight by Johann Georg Reutter and an aria by Johann Joseph Fux in the Festa teatrale Giunone placata (1725). [2]
The piano is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when pressed on the keys. Most modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys: 52 white keys for the notes of the C major scale and 36 shorter black keys raised above the white keys and set further back, for sharps and flats. This means that the piano can play 88 different pitches, spanning a range of a bit over seven octaves. The black keys are for the "accidentals", which are needed to play in all twelve keys.
Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi, better known by his pseudonym of Pietro Metastasio, was an Italian poet and librettist, considered the most important writer of opera seria libretti.
Georg Christoph Wagenseil was an Austrian composer.
A fortepiano[ˌfɔrteˈpjaːno], sometimes referred to as a pianoforte, is an early piano. In principle, the word "fortepiano" can designate any piano dating from the invention of the instrument by Bartolomeo Cristofori in 1698 up to the early 19th century. Most typically, however, it is used to refer to the mid-18th to early-19th century instruments, for which composers of the Classical era, especially Haydn, Mozart, and the younger Beethoven and Hummel, wrote their piano music.
Antonio Caldara was an Italian Baroque composer.
The year 1725 in music involved some significant events.
In music, a serenade is a musical composition or performance delivered in honour of someone or something. Serenades are typically calm, light pieces of music. The term comes from the Italian word serenata, which itself derives from the Latin serenus. Sense influenced by Italian sera "evening," from Latin sera, fem. of serus "late."
Johann Joseph Fux was an Austrian composer, music theorist and pedagogue of the late Baroque era. His most enduring work is not a musical composition but his treatise on counterpoint, Gradus ad Parnassum, which has become the single most influential book on the Palestrinian style of Renaissance polyphony.
The tangent piano is a very rare keyboard instrument that resembles a harpsichord and early pianos in design. It normally features five octaves of keys and the strings are acted upon by narrow wooden or metal slips when the keys are depressed.
Johann Adam Joseph Karl Georg Reutter, during his life known as Georg Reutter the Younger was an Austrian composer. According to David Wyn Jones, in his prime he was "the single most influential musician in Vienna".
Johann (Georg) Andreas Stein was an outstanding German maker of keyboard instruments, a central figure in the history of the piano. He was primarily responsible for the design of the so-called German hammer action. Pianos with this hammer action, or its more developed form known as the Viennese action, may be said to be appropriate for the performance of the piano music of Haydn, Mozart, and the early Beethoven.
Gottfried Silbermann was a German builder of keyboard instruments. He built harpsichords, clavichords, organs, and fortepianos; his modern reputation rests mainly on the latter two.
Piano pedals are foot-operated levers at the base of a piano that change the instrument's sound in various ways. Modern pianos usually have three pedals, from left to right, the soft pedal, the sostenuto pedal, and the sustaining pedal. Some pianos omit the sostenuto pedal, or have a middle pedal with a different purpose such as a muting function also known as silent piano.
Christoph Förster was a German composer of the baroque period.
Americus Backers, sometimes described as the father of the English grand pianoforte style, brought the hammer striking action for keyboard instruments from his master Gottfried Silbermann's workshop in Freiburg to England in the mid-18th century. Unlike the eleven other ex-apprentices of Silbermann who followed him to England and built square pianos with his action, Backers developed Silbermann's action into a reliable, powerful and responsive form that he built into a grand harpsichord case and added two tonal effects – una corda and damper lift – activated by pedals built into the dedicated trestle stand, again his original innovation. This new instrument altered the landscape of English music, causing composers and musicians to consign the plucked string harpsichord and its music to history. It is upon Americus's design that the modern grand pianoforte we know today is based.
Baroque music refers to the period or dominant style of Western classical music composed from about 1600 to 1750. The Baroque style followed the Renaissance period, and was followed in turn by the Classical period after a short transition. The Baroque period is divided into three major phases: early, middle, and late. Overlapping in time, they are conventionally dated from 1580 to 1650, from 1630 to 1700, and from 1680 to 1750. Baroque music forms a major portion of the "classical music" canon, and is widely studied, performed, and listened to. The term "baroque" comes from the Portuguese word barroco, meaning "misshapen pearl". The works of George Frideric Handel, Antonio Vivaldi and Johann Sebastian Bach are considered the pinnacle of the Baroque period. Other key composers of the Baroque era include Claudio Monteverdi, Domenico Scarlatti, Alessandro Scarlatti, Alessandro Stradella, Tomaso Albinoni, Johann Pachelbel, Henry Purcell, Georg Philipp Telemann, Jean-Baptiste Lully, Jean-Philippe Rameau, Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Arcangelo Corelli, François Couperin, Johann Hermann Schein, Heinrich Schütz, Samuel Scheidt, Dieterich Buxtehude, and others.
Luca Antonio Predieri was an Italian composer and violinist. A member of a prominent family of musicians, Predieri was born in Bologna and was active there from 1704. In 1737 he moved to Vienna, eventually becoming Kapellmeister to the imperial Habsburg court in 1741, a post he held for ten years. In 1765 he returned to his native city where he died two years later at the age of 78. A prolific opera composer, he was also known for his sacred music and oratorios. Although his operas were largely forgotten by the end of his own lifetime and most of their scores lost, individual arias as well some of his sacred music are still performed and recorded.
Pantaleon Hebenstreit was a German dance teacher, musician and composer.
Giovanni Ambrogio Migliavacca was an Italian poet and librettist. A student and protégé of Metastasio, he was primarily active in the court theaters of Dresden and Vienna. His most successful work was the libretto for the opera Solimano, first set by Johann Adolph Hasse in 1753 and subsequently set by 18 other composers in the course of the next 50 years.
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