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The Well Tempered Clavier
''The Well-Tempered Clavier'', BWV 846–893, consists of two sets of preludes and fugues in all 24 major and minor keys for keyboard by Johann Sebastian Bach. In the composer's time, ''clavier'', meaning keyboard, referred to a variety of instruments, most typically the harpsichord or clavichord, but not excluding the organ. The modern German spelling for the collection is ' (WTK; ). Bach gave the title ' to a book of preludes and fugues in all 24 keys, major and minor, dated 1722, composed "for the profit and use of musical youth desirous of learning, and especially for the pastime of those already skilled in this study". Some 20 years later, Bach compiled a second book of the same kind (24 pairs of preludes and fugues), which became known as ''The Well-Tempered Clavier'', Part Two (in German: ''Zweyter Theil'', modern spelling: ''Zweiter Teil''). Modern editions usually refer to both parts as ''The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I'' (WTC I) and ''The Well-Tempered ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Klavierbüchlein Für Wilhelm Friedemann Bach
''Klavierbüchlein für Wilhelm Friedemann Bach'' (Bach's original spelling: ''Clavier-Büchlein vor Wilhelm Friedemann Bach'') is a collection of keyboard music compiled by the German Baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach for his eldest son Wilhelm Friedemann. It is frequently referred to simply as ''Klavierbüchlein''. Johann Sebastian began compiling the collection in 1720. Most of the pieces included are better known as parts of ''The Well-Tempered Clavier'' and the Inventions and Sinfonias. The authorship of most other works is debated: particularly the famous '' Little Preludes'' BWV 924–932 are sometimes attributed to Wilhelm Friedemann Bach. Contents The book begins with a preface that contains an explanation of clefs and a guide to playing ornaments. The pieces of the collection are arranged by complexity, beginning with the most simple works. Of these, Applicatio in C major BWV 994 and Prelude in G minor BWV 930 are particularly notable because they are the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theorbo
The theorbo is a plucked string instrument of the lute family, with an extended neck and a second pegbox. Like a lute, a theorbo has a curved-back sound box (a hollow box) with a wooden top, typically with a sound hole, and a neck extending out from the soundbox. As with the lute, the player plucks or strums the strings with one hand while "fretting" (pressing down) the strings with the other hand; pressing the strings in different places on the neck produces different pitches (notes), thus enabling the performer to play chords, basslines and melodies. It is related to the ''liuto attiorbato'', the French ', the archlute, the German baroque lute, and the '' angélique'' or ''angelica''. A theorbo differs from a regular lute in that the theorbo has a much longer neck which extends beyond the regular fingerboard/neck and a second pegbox at the end of the extended neck. (The pegboxes enable the lute to be tuned by turning the pegs to make the strings sound at higher or lower ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lute
A lute ( or ) is any plucked string instrument with a neck and a deep round back enclosing a hollow cavity, usually with a sound hole or opening in the body. It may be either fretted or unfretted. More specifically, the term "lute" can refer to an instrument from the family of European lutes. The term also refers generally to any string instrument having the strings running in a plane parallel to the sound table (in the Hornbostel–Sachs system). The strings are attached to pegs or posts at the end of the neck, which have some type of turning mechanism to enable the player to tighten the tension on the string or loosen the tension before playing (which respectively raise or lower the pitch of a string), so that each string is tuned to a specific pitch (or note). The lute is plucked or strummed with one hand while the other hand "frets" (presses down) the strings on the neck's fingerboard. By pressing the strings on different places of the fingerboard, the player can shor ... [...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] |
Johann Speth
Johann (''Johannes'') Speth (9 November 1664 – after 1719) was a German organist and composer. He was born in Speinshart, some 150 km from Nuremberg, but spent most of his life in Augsburg, where he worked as cathedral organist for two years. His only surviving music is a 1693 collection, ''Ars Magna Consoni et Dissoni'', which includes toccatas, Magnificat versets and variations in the south German style. Life Speth was born in Speinshart, Bavaria, to teacher Heinrich Speth and his wife Margareta (née Vichtl). Past scholars established that Speth must have received music lessons from the abbot of the Premonstratensian monastery A monastery is a building or complex of buildings comprising the domestic quarters and workplaces of monastics, monks or nuns, whether living in communities or alone (hermits). A monastery generally includes a place reserved for prayer whic ... at Speinshart, one Dominikus Lieblein; however, this has recently been disproven. Nothi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Georg Muffat
Georg Muffat (1 June 1653 – 23 February 1704) was a Baroque composer and organist. He is best known for the remarkably articulate and informative performance directions printed along with his collections of string pieces ''Florilegium Primum'' and ''Florilegium Secundum'' (First and Second Bouquets) in 1695 and 1698. Life Georg Muffat was born in Megève, Duchy of Savoy (now in France), of André Muffat (of Scottish descent) and Marguerite Orsyand. He studied in Paris between 1663 and 1669, where his teacher is often assumed to have been Jean Baptiste Lully. This assumption is largely based on the statement "For six years ... I avidly pursued this style which was flowering in Paris at the time under the most famous Jean Baptiste Lully." This is ambiguous (in all of the languages in which it was printed) as to whether the style was flourishing under Lully, or that Muffat studied under Lully. In any case, the style which the young Muffat learned was unequivocally Lullian and it ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Johann Pachelbel
Johann Pachelbel (baptised – buried 9 March 1706; also Bachelbel) was a German composer, organist, and teacher who brought the south German organ schools to their peak. He composed a large body of sacred and secularity, secular music, and his contributions to the development of the chorale prelude and fugue have earned him a place among the most important composers of the middle Baroque music, Baroque era. List of compositions by Johann Pachelbel, Pachelbel's music enjoyed enormous popularity during his lifetime; he had many pupils and his music became a model for the composers of south and central Germany. Today, Pachelbel is best known for the Pachelbel's Canon, Canon in D; other well known works include the Chaconne in F minor (Pachelbel), Chaconne in F minor, the Toccata in E minor for organ, and the ''Hexachordum Apollinis'', a set of keyboard Variation (music), variations. He was influenced by southern German composers, such as Johann Jakob Froberger and Johann Caspar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mode (music)
In music theory, the term mode or ''modus'' is used in a number of distinct senses, depending on context. Its most common use may be described as a type of musical scale coupled with a set of characteristic melodic and harmonic behaviors. It is applied to major and minor keys as well as the seven diatonic modes (including the former as Ionian and Aeolian) which are defined by their starting note or tonic. (Olivier Messiaen's modes of limited transposition are strictly a scale type.) Related to the diatonic modes are the eight church modes or Gregorian modes, in which authentic and plagal forms of scales are distinguished by ambitus and tenor or reciting tone. Although both diatonic and gregorian modes borrow terminology from ancient Greece, the Greek ''tonoi'' do not otherwise resemble their mediaeval/modern counterparts. In the Middle Ages the term modus was used to describe both intervals and rhythm. Modal rhythm was an essential feature of the modal notation syst ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alto Recorder
The alto recorder in F, also known as a treble (and, historically, as consort flute and common flute) is a member of the recorder family. Up until the 17th century the alto instrument was normally in G4 instead of F4. The alto is between the soprano and tenor in size, and is correspondingly intermediate in pitch. It has the same general shape as a soprano, but is larger in all dimensions, resulting in a lower pitch for a given fingering. The F alto is a non-transposing instrument, though its basic scale is in F, that is, a fifth lower than the soprano recorder and a fourth higher than the tenor (both with a basic scale in C). So-called F fingerings are therefore used, as with the bassoon or the low register of the clarinet, in contrast to the C fingerings used for most other woodwinds. Its notation is usually at sounding pitch, but sometimes is written an octave lower than it sounds. History Recorders are known to have been made in different sizes since at least the 15th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Basso Continuo
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''. Forces The composition of the continuo group is often left to the discretion of the performers (or, for a large performance, the conductor), and practice varied enormously within the Baroque period. At least one instrument capable of playing chords must be included, such as a harpsichord, organ, lute, theorbo, guitar, regal, or harp. In addition, any number of instruments that play in the bass register may be included, such as cello, double bass, bass viol, or bassoon. In modern performances of chamber works, the most common combination is harpsichord and cello for instrumental works and secular vocal works, such as operas, and organ and cello for sacred music. A double bass may b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Johann Christian Schickhardt
Johann Christian Schickhardt (or Schikardt, c. 1682c. 25 March 1762) was a German composer and woodwind player. Biography Schickhardt was born in Braunschweig (Brunswick) and received his musical education at the Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel court under the patronage of Augustus William, third son and heir of Anthony Ulrich, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. In the first decade of the 18th century, he was employed in the Netherlands and associated with Friedrich of Hesse-Cassel, Henriëtte Amalia van Anhalt-Dessau (daughter of John George II, Prince of Anhalt-Dessau and widow of Henry Casimir II, Prince of Nassau-Dietz) and her son John William Friso, Prince of Orange. In the second decade of the 18th century, Schickhardt lived in Hamburg, where it is speculated by musicologist Andrew D. McCredie that he was a member of the Hamburg Opera in Gänsemarkt as a flutist or oboist. There is evidence suggesting that, in the 1720s, Schickhardt could have been an occasional oboist with the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
