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Spinettone
The spinettone ("big spinet") was a kind of harpsichord invented in the late 17th century by Bartolomeo Cristofori, who was later the inventor of the piano. Other names for this instrument were spinettone da teatro ("of the theater"), ''spinetta traversa'' ("transverse spinet"). Description The spinettone was a kind of spinet, which means specifically that its strings were placed in pairs along a diagonal relative to the position of the keyboard. The jacks that plucked the strings were placed in opposite-facing pairs within the larger gaps between strings. Most spinets are smaller than regular harpsichords. The spinettone was very long, but narrower than a regular harpsichord. The novelty of Cristofori's spinettone was that unlike any other spinet, it deployed multiple choirs of strings. Its disposition was 1 × 8′, 1 × 4′, which means one set of strings in the normal octave and one set that sounded an octave higher. As with all multichoired harpsichords, this necessitated ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spinet
A spinet is a smaller type of harpsichord or other keyboard instrument, such as a piano or organ. Harpsichords When the term ''spinet'' is used to designate a harpsichord, typically what is meant is the ''bentside spinet'', described in this section. For other uses, see below. The bentside spinet shares most of its characteristics with the full-size instrument, including action, soundboard, and case construction. What primarily distinguishes the spinet is the angle of its strings: whereas in a full-size harpsichord, the strings are at a 90-degree angle to the keyboard (that is, they are parallel to the player's gaze); and in virginals they are parallel to the keyboard, in a spinet the strings are at an angle of about 30 degrees to the keyboard, going toward the right. The case of a bentside spinet is approximately triangular. The side on the right is usually bent concavely (hence the name of the instrument), curving away from the player toward the right rear corner. The lon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bartolomeo Cristofori
Bartolomeo Cristofori di Francesco (; May 4, 1655 – January 27, 1731) was an Italian maker of musical instruments famous for inventing the piano. Life The available source materials on Cristofori's life include his birth and death records, two wills, the bills he submitted to his employers, and a single interview carried out by Scipione Maffei. From the latter, both Maffei's notes and the published journal article are preserved. Cristofori was born in Padua in the Republic of Venice. Nothing is known of his early life. A tale is told that he served as an apprentice to the great violin maker Nicolò Amati, based on the appearance in a 1680 census record of a "Christofaro Bartolomei" living in Amati's house in Cremona. However, as Stewart Pollens points out, this person cannot be Bartolomeo Cristofori, since the census records an age of 13, whereas Cristofori according to his baptismal record would have been 25 at the time. Pollens also gives strong reasons to doubt th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oval Spinet
The oval spinet is a type of harpsichord invented in the late 17th century by Bartolomeo Cristofori, the Italian instrument maker who later achieved fame for inventing the piano. The oval spinet was unusual for its shape, the arrangement of its strings, and for its mechanism for changing registration. The two oval spinets built by Cristofori survive today. One, built in 1690, is kept in the Museo degli strumenti musicali, part of the Galleria del Accademia in Florence. The other, from 1693, is in the Museum für Musikinstrumente of the University of Leipzig. Design String layout In the oval spinet, the strings were placed parallel to the keyboard, the same arrangement as in a virginals. This can be seen in the following schematic false-color diagram of the 1690 oval spinet, showing the outline, keyboard, bridges, and string arrangement. The diagram and those that follow are colorizations of an original by Tony Chinnery. Unlike in a virginals, the longest strings i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ferdinando III De' Medici
Ferdinando de' Medici (9 August 1663 – 31 October 1713) was the eldest son of Cosimo III de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and Marguerite Louise d'Orléans. Ferdinando was heir to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, with the title Grand Prince, from his father's accession in 1670 until his death in 1713. He is remembered today primarily as a patron of music. An excellent musician himself (sometimes called "the Orpheus of princes"), he attracted top musicians to Florence and thus made it an important musical center. Through his patronage of Bartolomeo Cristofori, Ferdinando made possible the invention of the piano. Life Ferdinando was born in the Palazzo Pitti to Cosimo III de' Medici and his wife Marguerite Louise d'Orléans, a granddaughter of Maria de' Medici. When Ferdinando's parents separated in 1675, his mother (who disdained her husband only slightly more than Florence did) returned to Paris, where she was supposed to be confined to a monastery in Montmartre. Ferdinando be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grand Duchy Of Tuscany
The Grand Duchy of Tuscany ( it, Granducato di Toscana; la, Magnus Ducatus Etruriae) was an Italian monarchy that existed, with interruptions, from 1569 to 1859, replacing the Republic of Florence. The grand duchy's capital was Florence. In the 19th century the population of the Grand Duchy was about 1,815,000 inhabitants. Having brought nearly all Tuscany under his control after conquering the Republic of Siena, Cosimo I de' Medici, was elevated by a papal bull of Pope Pius V to Grand Duke of Tuscany on August 27, 1569. The Grand Duchy was ruled by the House of Medici until the extinction of its senior branch in 1737. While not as internationally renowned as the old republic, the grand duchy thrived under the Medici and it bore witness to unprecedented economic and military success under Cosimo I and his sons, until the reign of Ferdinando II, which saw the beginning of the state's long economic decline. It peaked under Cosimo III. Francis Stephen of Lorraine, a cognatic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harpsichord
A harpsichord ( it, clavicembalo; french: clavecin; german: Cembalo; es, clavecín; pt, cravo; nl, klavecimbel; pl, klawesyn) is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. This activates a row of levers that turn a trigger mechanism that plucks one or more strings with a small plectrum made from quill or plastic. The strings are under tension on a soundboard, which is mounted in a wooden case; the soundboard amplifies the vibrations from the strings so that the listeners can hear it. Like a pipe organ, a harpsichord may have more than one keyboard manual, and even a pedal board. Harpsichords may also have stop buttons which add or remove additional octaves. Some harpsichords may have a buff stop, which brings a strip of buff leather or other material in contact with the strings, muting their sound to simulate the sound of a plucked lute. The term denotes the whole family of similar plucked-keyboard instruments, including the smaller virginals, muselar, and spinet. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Giovanni Ferrini
Giovanni may refer to: * Giovanni (name), an Italian male given name and surname * Giovanni (meteorology), a Web interface for users to analyze NASA's gridded data * '' Don Giovanni'', a 1787 opera by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, based on the legend of Don Juan * Giovanni (Pokémon), boss of Team Rocket in the fictional world of Pokémon * Giovanni (World of Darkness), a group of vampires in ''Vampire: The Masquerade/World of Darkness'' roleplay and video game * "Giovanni", a song by Band-Maid from the 2021 album ''Unseen World'' * ''Giovanni's Island'', a 2014 Japanese anime drama film * '' Giovanni's Room'', a 1956 novel by James Baldwin * Via Giovanni, places in Rome See also * * * Geovani * Giovanni Battista * San Giovanni (other) *San Giovanni Battista (other) San Giovanni Battista is the Italian translation of Saint John the Baptist. It may also refer to: Italian churches * San Giovanni Battista, Highway A11, a church in Florence, Italy * San Giovanni Ba ... [...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] |
Figured Bass
Figured bass is musical notation in which numerals and symbols appear above or below (or next to) a bass note. The numerals and symbols (often accidentals) indicate intervals, chords, and non-chord tones that a musician playing piano, harpsichord, organ, or lute (or other instruments capable of playing chords) 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 ( 1600–1750), though rarely in modern music. Figured bass is also known as thoroughbass. Other systems for denoting or representing chords include plain staff notation, used in classical music; Roman numerals, commonly used in harmonic analysis; chord letters, sometimes used in modern musicology; the Nashville Number System; and various chord names and symbols used in jazz and popular music (e.g., C Major or simply C; D minor, Dm, or D−; G7, etc. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pratolino
The Villa di Pratolino was a Renaissance patrician villa in Vaglia, Tuscany, Italy. It was mostly demolished in 1822. Its remains are now part of the Villa Demidoff, 12 km north of Florence, reached from the main road to Bologna. History The villa was built by Francesco de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, in part to please his Venetian mistress, the celebrated Bianca Cappello. Villa and gardens were designed by his court architect, designer and engineer Bernardo Buontalenti, who completed the construction from 1569 to 1581. It was sufficiently finished to provide the setting for Francesco's public wedding to Bianca Cappello in 1579. In its time it was a splendid example of the Mannerist garden. Francesco had assembled most of the property, which was not a hereditary Medici possession, by September 1568, and construction began the following spring. The garden was laid out along a perfectly straight down-slope axis passing through the center of the villa, which stood midway. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cosimo III De' Medici, Grand Duke Of Tuscany
Cosimo III de' Medici (14 August 1642 – 31 October 1723) was Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1670 until his death in 1723, the sixth and penultimate from the House of Medici. He reigned from 1670 to 1723, and was the elder son of Grand Duke Ferdinando II. Cosimo's 53-year-long reign, the longest in Tuscan history, was marked by a series of laws that regulated prostitution and May celebrations. His reign also witnessed Tuscany's deterioration to previously unknown economic lows. He was succeeded by his elder surviving son, Gian Gastone, when he died, in 1723. He married Marguerite Louise d'Orléans, a cousin of Louis XIV. The marriage was solemnized by proxy in the King's Chapel at the Louvre, on Sunday, 17 April 1661. It was a marriage fraught with tribulation. Marguerite Louise eventually abandoned Tuscany for the Convent of Montmartre. Together, they had three children: Ferdinando in 1663, Anna Maria Luisa, Electress Palatine, in 1667, and Gian Gastone, the last Medicea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
