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J. Murray Barbour
James Murray Barbour (1897–1970) is an American acoustician, musicologist, and composer best known for his work ''Tuning and Temperament: A Historical Survey'' (1951, 2d ed. 1953). As the opening of the work describes, it is based upon his unpublished dissertation from 1932, his interest having been sparked by musicologist Curt Sachs having shown him Marin Mersenne's '' Harmonie Universelle''. , ''Archive.org''. Murray Barbour taught at Ithaca College, New York, 1932–1939, and Michigan State College (later University), 1939–1964. Murray Barbour adapted the Strähle construction for use in approximating equal temperaments. He is also the author of *"Synthetic Musical Scales", ''The Amer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Acoustician
Acoustics is a branch of physics that deals with the study of mechanical waves in gases, liquids, and solids including topics such as vibration, sound, ultrasound and infrasound. A scientist who works in the field of acoustics is an acoustician while someone working in the field of acoustics technology may be called an acoustical engineer. The application of acoustics is present in almost all aspects of modern society with the most obvious being the audio and noise control industries. Hearing is one of the most crucial means of survival in the animal world and speech is one of the most distinctive characteristics of human development and culture. Accordingly, the science of acoustics spreads across many facets of human society—music, medicine, architecture, industrial production, warfare and more. Likewise, animal species such as songbirds and frogs use sound and hearing as a key element of mating rituals or for marking territories. Art, craft, science and technology have prov ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Musicologist
Musicology (from Greek μουσική ''mousikē'' 'music' and -λογια ''-logia'', 'domain of study') is the scholarly analysis and research-based study of music. Musicology departments traditionally belong to the humanities, although some music research is scientific in focus (psychological, sociological, acoustical, neurological, computational). Some geographers and anthropologists have an interest in musicology so the social sciences also have an academic interest. A scholar who participates in musical research is a musicologist. Musicology traditionally is divided in three main branches: historical musicology, systematic musicology and ethnomusicology. Historical musicologists mostly study the history of the western classical music tradition, though the study of music history need not be limited to that. Ethnomusicologists draw from anthropology (particularly field research) to understand how and why people make music. Systematic musicology includes music theory, aesth ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Composer
A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Definition The term is descended from Latin, ''compōnō''; literally "one who puts together". The earliest use of the term in a musical context given by the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' is from Thomas Morley's 1597 ''A Plain and Easy Introduction to Practical Music'', where he says "Some wil be good descanters ..and yet wil be but bad composers". 'Composer' is a loose term that generally refers to any person who writes music. More specifically, it is often used to denote people who are composers by occupation, or those who in the tradition of Western classical music. Writers of exclusively or primarily songs may be called composers, but since the 20th century the terms 'songwriter' or ' singer-songwriter' are more often used, particul ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Curt Sachs
Curt Sachs (; 29 June 1881 – 5 February 1959) was a German musicologist. He was one of the founders of modern organology (the study of musical instruments). Among his contributions was the Hornbostel–Sachs system, which he created with Erich von Hornbostel. Biography Born in Berlin, Sachs studied piano, music theory and composition as a youth in that city. However, his doctorate from Berlin University (where he was later professor of musicology) in 1904 was on the history of art, with his thesis on the sculpture of Verrocchio. He began a career as an art historian, but promptly became more devoted to music, eventually being appointed director of the Staatliche Instrumentensammlung, a large collection of musical instruments. He reorganised and restored much of the collection, and his career as an organologist began. In 1913, Sachs saw the publication of his book ''Real-Lexicon der Musikinstrumente'', probably the most comprehensive survey of musical instruments in 200 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marin Mersenne
Marin Mersenne, OM (also known as Marinus Mersennus or ''le Père'' Mersenne; ; 8 September 1588 – 1 September 1648) was a French polymath whose works touched a wide variety of fields. He is perhaps best known today among mathematicians for Mersenne prime numbers, those which can be written in the form for some integer . He also developed Mersenne's laws, which describe the harmonics of a vibrating string (such as may be found on guitars and pianos), and his seminal work on music theory, '' Harmonie universelle'', for which he is referred to as the "father of acoustics". Mersenne, an ordained Catholic priest, had many contacts in the scientific world and has been called "the center of the world of science and mathematics during the first half of the 1600s" and, because of his ability to make connections between people and ideas, "the post-box of Europe". He was also a member of the Minim religious order and wrote and lectured on theology and philosophy. Life Mersenne w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harmonie Universelle
''Harmonie universelle'' ("Universal Harmony"; complete title: ''Harmonie universelle, contenant la théorie et la pratique de la musique'') is a work by Marin Mersenne, published in Paris in 1636. It represented the sum of musical knowledge during his lifetime. This was a major work since it represented the most complete description of music theory near the middle of the 17th century in France. It covers all aspects including theoretical, practical, stylistic, organological, mathematical, acoustical, and theological. Content The title page specifies the scope of the topics covered by the book including the nature of sounds, movements, consonance, dissonance, genres, modes of composition, voice, singing, and all kinds of harmonic instruments. This monumental treatise is abundant in illustrations (including musical engravings), and in systematic tables. It also remains the only source of certain musical works from Jacques Mauduit, Eustache Du Caurroy, Antoine de Sewn, or Pierre d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Strähle Construction
Strähle's construction is a geometric method for determining the lengths for a series of vibrating strings with uniform diameters and tensions to sound pitches in a specific rational tempered musical tuning. It was first published in the 1743 ''Proceedings of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences'' by Swedish master organ maker Daniel Stråhle (1700–1746). The Academy's secretary Jacob Faggot appended a miscalculated set of pitches to the article, and these figures were reproduced by Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg in ''Versuch über die musikalische Temperatur'' in 1776. Several German textbooks published about 1800 reported that the mistake was first identified by Christlieb Benedikt Funk in 1779, but the construction itself appears to have received little notice until the middle of the twentieth century when tuning theorist J. Murray Barbour presented it as a good method for approximating equal temperament and similar exponentials of small roots, and generalized its underlying math ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Equal Temperament
An equal temperament is a musical temperament or tuning system, which approximates just intervals by dividing an octave (or other interval) into equal steps. This means the ratio of the frequencies of any adjacent pair of notes is the same, which gives an equal perceived step size as pitch is perceived roughly as the logarithm of frequency. In classical music and Western music in general, the most common tuning system since the 18th century has been twelve-tone equal temperament (also known as 12 equal temperament, 12-TET or 12-ET; informally abbreviated to twelve equal), which divides the octave into 12 parts, all of which are equal on a logarithmic scale, with a ratio equal to the 12th root of 2 ( ≈ 1.05946). That resulting smallest interval, the width of an octave, is called a semitone or half step. In Western countries the term ''equal temperament'', without qualification, generally means 12-TET. In modern times, 12-TET is usually tuned relative to a standard pit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Musical Temperament
In musical tuning, a temperament is a tuning system that slightly compromises the pure intervals of just intonation to meet other requirements. Most modern Western musical instruments are tuned in the equal temperament system. Tempering is the process of altering the size of an interval by making it narrower or wider than pure. "Any plan that describes the adjustments to the sizes of some or all of the twelve fifth intervals in the circle of fifths so that they accommodate pure octaves and produce certain sizes of major thirds is called a ''temperament''." Temperament is especially important for keyboard instruments, which typically allow a player to play only the pitches assigned to the various keys, and lack any way to alter pitch of a note in performance. Historically, the use of just intonation, Pythagorean tuning and meantone temperament meant that such instruments could sound "in tune" in one key, or some keys, but would then have more dissonance in other keys. In the wor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Musical Tuning
In music, there are two common meanings for tuning: * Tuning practice, the act of tuning an instrument or voice. * Tuning systems, the various systems of pitches used to tune an instrument, and their theoretical bases. Tuning practice Tuning is the process of adjusting the pitch of one or many tones from musical instruments to establish typical intervals between these tones. Tuning is usually based on a fixed reference, such as A = 440 Hz. The term "''out of tune''" refers to a pitch/tone that is either too high (sharp) or too low ( flat) in relation to a given reference pitch. While an instrument might be in tune relative to its own range of notes, it may not be considered 'in tune' if it does not match the chosen reference pitch. Some instruments become 'out of tune' with temperature, humidity, damage, or simply time, and must be readjusted or repaired. Different methods of sound production require different methods of adjustment: * Tuning to a pitch with one's voi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Music Theorists
Music theory is the study of the practices and possibilities of music. ''The Oxford Companion to Music'' describes three interrelated uses of the term "music theory". The first is the "rudiments", that are needed to understand music notation (key signatures, time signatures, and rhythmic notation); the second is learning scholars' views on music from antiquity to the present; the third is a sub-topic of musicology that "seeks to define processes and general principles in music". The musicological approach to theory differs from music analysis "in that it takes as its starting-point not the individual work or performance but the fundamental materials from which it is built." Music theory is frequently concerned with describing how musicians and composers make music, including tuning systems and composition methods among other topics. Because of the ever-expanding conception of what constitutes music, a more inclusive definition could be the consideration of any sonic phenomena, i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
