The bassoon is a musical instrument in the woodwind family, which plays in the tenor and bass ranges. It is composed of six pieces, and is usually made of wood. It is known for its distinctive tone color, wide range, versatility, and virtuosity. It is a non-transposing instrument and typically its music is written in the bass and tenor clefs, and sometimes in the treble. There are two forms of modern bassoon: the Buffet and Heckel systems. It is typically played while sitting using a seat strap, but can be played while standing if the player has a harness to hold the instrument. Sound is produced by rolling both lips over the reed and blowing direct air pressure to cause the reed to vibrate. Its fingering system can be quite complex when compared to those of other instruments. Appearing in its modern form in the 19th century, the bassoon figures prominently in orchestral, concert band, and chamber music literature, and is occasionally heard in pop, rock, and jazz settings as well. One who plays a bassoon is called a bassoonist.
The Classical Period was an era of classical music between roughly 1750 and 1820.
Figured bass is musical notation in which numerals and symbols appear above or below a bass note. The numerals and symbols indicate intervals, chords, and non-chord tones that a musician playing piano, harpsichord, organ, or lute should play in relation to the bass note. Figured bass is closely associated with basso continuo: a historically improvised accompaniment used in almost all genres of music in the Baroque period of Classical music, though rarely in modern music. Figured bass is also known as thoroughbass.
The recorder is a family of woodwind musical instruments in the group known as internal duct flutes: flutes with a whistle mouthpiece, also known as fipple flutes, although this is an archaic term. A recorder can be distinguished from other duct flutes by the presence of a thumb-hole for the upper hand and seven finger-holes: three for the upper hand and four for the lower. It is the most prominent duct flute in the western classical tradition.
A transposing instrument is a musical instrument for which music notation is not written at concert pitch. For example, playing a written middle C on a transposing instrument produces a pitch other than middle C; that sounding pitch identifies the interval of transposition when describing the instrument. Playing a written C on clarinet or soprano saxophone produces a concert B♭, so these are referred to as B♭ instruments. Providing transposed music for these instruments is a convention of musical notation. The instruments do not transpose the music; rather, their music is written at a transposed pitch. Where chords are indicated for improvisation they are also written in the appropriate transposed form.
In music, tremolo, or tremolando, is a trembling effect. There are multiple types of tremolo: a rapid repetition of a note, an alternation between two different notes, or a variation in volume.
The Goldberg Variations, BWV 988, is a musical composition for keyboard by Johann Sebastian Bach, consisting of an aria and a set of 30 variations. First published in 1741, it is named after Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, who may also have been the first performer of the work.
In music, ornaments or embellishments are musical flourishes—typically, added notes—that are not essential to carry the overall line of the melody, but serve instead to decorate or "ornament" that line, provide added interest and variety, and give the performer the opportunity to add expressiveness to a song or piece. Many ornaments are performed as "fast notes" around a central, main note.
A grace note is a kind of music notation denoting several kinds of musical ornaments. It is usually printed smaller to indicate that it is melodically and harmonically nonessential. When occurring by itself, a single grace note indicates either an acciaccatura when notated with an oblique stroke through the stem, or an appoggiatura when notated without. When they occur in groups, grace notes can be interpreted to indicate any of several different classes of ornamentation, depending on interpretation. For percussion, such as drums, a related concept are ghost notes — supportive snare-hits at a lower volume.
Basso continuo parts, almost universal in the Baroque era (1600–1750), provided the harmonic structure of the music by supplying a bassline and a chord progression. The phrase is often shortened to continuo, and the instrumentalists playing the continuo part are called the continuo group.
The Western concert flute is a family of transverse (side-blown) woodwind instruments made of metal or wood. It is the most common variant of the flute. A musician who plays the flute is called a “flautist” in British English, and a “flutist” in American English.
In music, notes inégales is a performance practice, mainly from the Baroque and Classical music eras, in which some notes with equal written time values are performed with unequal durations, usually as alternating long and short. The practice was especially prevalent in France in the 17th and 18th centuries, with appearances in other European countries at the same time. It reappeared as the standard performance practice in the 20th century in jazz. The phrase notes inégales means "unequal notes" in French.
A multiphonic is an extended technique on a monophonic musical instrument in which several notes are produced at once. This includes wind, reed, and brass instruments, as well as the human voice. Multiphonic-like sounds on string instruments, both bowed and hammered, have also been called multiphonics, for lack of better terminology and scarcity of research.
The oboe da caccia, also sometimes referred to as an oboe da silva, is a double reed woodwind instrument in the oboe family, pitched a fifth below the oboe and used primarily in the Baroque period of European classical music. It has a curved tube, and in the case of instruments by Eichentopf, a brass bell, unusual for an oboe.
In music, a mordent is an ornament indicating that the note is to be played with a single rapid alternation with the note above or below. Like trills, they can be chromatically modified by a small flat, sharp or natural accidental. The term entered English musical terminology at the beginning of the 19th century, from the German Mordent and its Italian etymon, mordente, both used in the 18th century to describe this musical figure. The word ultimately is derived from Latin mordere 'to bite'.
Bariolage is a musical technique used with bowed string instruments that involves rapidly playing alternated notes on adjacent strings, one of which is generally left open, thereby exploiting the different timbres of each string. Bariolage may involve quick alternation between a static note and changing notes that form a melody either above or below the static note. The static note is usually an open string note, which creates a highly resonant sound. In bluegrass fiddling the technique is known as "cross-fingering".
The soprano recorder in C, also known as the descant, is the third-smallest instrument of the modern recorder family and is usually played as the highest voice in four-part ensembles. Since its finger spacing is relatively small, it is often used in music education for children first learning to play an instrument.
In music, fingering, or on stringed instruments sometimes also called stopping, is the choice of which fingers and hand positions to use when playing certain musical instruments. Fingering typically changes throughout a piece; the challenge of choosing good fingering for a piece is to make the hand movements as comfortable as possible without changing hand position too often. A fingering can be the result of the working process of the composer, who puts it into the manuscript, an editor, who adds it into the printed score, or the performer, who puts his or her own fingering in the score or in performance.
Fingering...also stopping...(1) A system of symbols for the fingers of the hand used to associate specific notes with specific fingers....(2)Control of finger movements and position to achieve physiological efficiency, acoustical accuracy [frequency and amplitude] and musical articulation.
The slide is a musical ornament often found in baroque musical works, but used during many different periods. It instructs the performer to begin two or three scale steps below the marked note and "slide" upward—that is, move stepwise diatonically between the initial and final notes. Though less frequently found, the slide can also be performed in a descending fashion.
