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The Chinese Book Of Chronicles (Shujing) pinpoints the birth of music as occurring during the reign of the legendary "Yellow Emperor", Hwang Di, around the year 3000 B.C. Hwang Di's other accomplishments are said to have included the invention of boats, money, and religious sacrifice. He is said to have sent the noted scholar Ling Lun to the western mountain regions of his domain to find a way to reproduce the song of the phoenix bird. Ling returned with bamboo pipes, and captured music for mankind, taking the first step toward the genesis of the sheng and later the accordion!
The sheng was either brought to Central Europe by Marco Polo in the thirteenth century or else it found its way there with the Tartars via Russia during the migrations of the peoples. In the 1740's, Johann Wilde, the inventor of the nail violin, somehow discovered the instrument and popularized it by playing it for the Court Society of Petersburg. French sources, however, claim that the first sheng to appear in Europe was sent to Paris in 1770 by Father Pere Amiot, a Jesuit missionary in China, and that, by some unknown means, it was sent to Russia shortly after. Joseph Macerollo, the author of Accordion Resource Manual, wrote, "Corroboration of detail becomes increasingly difficult since both Russian and French accounts vie with one another as to leadership in the scheme of invention." The physicist, Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein from Copenhagen, often heard Wilde play the sheng in Petersburg and became fascinated with the sound of the instrument. Kratzenstein examined the sheng and invented an instrument which produced five vowel sounds by the principle of the free-reed. In 1770 he reported the results of his experiment and in 1782 he was awarded a PAS premium (St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences). The organ builder Kirsnik, who helped Kratzenstein in his experiments with the free-reed, built an instrument with an organ-style keyboard for the right hand and bellows which were pumped by the left hand. This became known as "Kirsnik's harmonica." In 1788 during a tour of Petersburg, Georg Joseph Vogler saw Kirsnik's harmonica and commissioned the Swedish master Rakwitz, whom he met in Warsaw, to build him a free-reed instrument similar to Kirsnik's harmonica, but on a larger scale, like an organ, with four keyboards of sixty-three notes each and a pedalboard of thirty-nine notes. The instrument was completed in 1790 and became known as Vogler's orchestrion. Assertions the appearance of the sheng in Russia marked the introduction of the free-vibrating reed principle in Europe are debatable. Among the earlier variations on this design in the West was the portative, which was widely heard in England during the 12th and 13th centuries. The portative consisted of a small keyboard, bellows, and reed pipes, and was strapped onto the player. The regal, later termed the Bible regal because of its wide use in churches, was the next step along this line. It had a keyboard, one or two sets of bellows, and, unlike the accordion and other open-reed instruments, close beating oboe-like reeds. This instrument eventually lost popularity due to a tendency to go out of tune too easily. It was frequently used for accompanying madrigal singers, between the 15th and 18th centuries. There were actually many varieties of the free-vibrating reed instrument developed during the early 1800s. Heinrich Band (1821-1860) of Krefeld, Germany, invented the bandoneon in 1840; this square-shaped instrument, played by pressing finger buttons is popular with Argentine tango bands. That same year Alexandre Debain finished his harmonium in Paris. In this pipeless organ (commonly found in churches and households until the advent of electric organs in the 1930s) air is passed to the reed blocks via foot-operated bellows. In some early models a second person was required to pump air into the instrument through bellows attached to the rear of the keyboard. It seems that the accordion did not become chromatic in note range until about the 1850's. Wheatstone in England had invented his concertina in 1829 and he continued to develop it over the next several decades, but he did not attach a piano keyboard to it. Busson did, and called it the "Organ accordion". By 1859 this had a three octave treble keyboard. Both the Wheatstone Concertina from 1844 and then accordion had uniform tone (i.e. were not diatonic or in one key only). It would appear that the development and popularity of the Wheatstone Concertinas actually slowed the acceptance of the piano type accordions in England, at least until the twentieth century. Between 1750 and 1850 the population in Europe almost doubled to 255 million people. Consequently, people in the industrial regions became poorer. In Germany, for example, between 1841 and 1913 over six million Germans emigrated to avoid poverty. Many sought fortune in America, and some took their instruments with them - mostly harmonikas which reminded them of their homeland. After a time, people began to ask their relatives to send them accordions, and soon after manufacturers received orders from around the world. Sales representatives began to set business in America. They were known and trusted by their relatives back at home. Accordion manufacturing began in the 1860's in Europe. Many of those brand names are still familiar today. Steel reeds were introduced by Hohner at their Trossingen factory in 1857. Soprani followed at Castelfidardo in 1872, and Dallape at Stradella in 1876. By the beginning of the 20th century, a bass system had been developed that used notes and chords similar to the modern stradella bass. Manufacturing also flourished in the Americas as some accordion manufacturers also emigrated. Amongst them were brothers Carl and Wilhelm Zimmerman of Castlefidardo. They founded an accordion factory in Philadelphia. In a few years Carl went to Latin America and went missing. In 1864, the firm in Castlefidardo was taken over by Ernst Louis Arnolds and developed into a leading accordion manufacturer. They became large exporters. In those days, harmonikas were one of the few products sold worldwide. In 1860 Arnold's company produced 218,400 accordions and export continued to grow. Soon manufacturers in Amsterdam, Antwerp, Bremen, and Rotterdam began to export their accordions to the American chain stores. By advertising in catalogues they were sold throughout North America, but the real export market for accordions was in Latin America. Many Europeans migrated to Latin America and consequently accordions were distributed in Chile, Guatemala, Uruguay, Columbia and Equador. Colonization by European powers was also responsible for the spread of the accordion, from Germany to America, Africa, China and the Caribbean where the accordion was adapted to the indigenous musics of the countries in which it landed - Cajun or Zydeco music of the southern states of the USA or the Brazilian tangos. Adaptations were not only made as the accordion landed in new lands, but refinements were steadily added, and a number of variants were patented in the late 1800's in Europe. The Chomatina, developed in Bavaria by G. Mirwald, had four octaves and tone registers. The autophone, patented in New York in 1880, ran automatically from cardboard strips, somewhat like a player piano. The Bandoneon, a large square type of concertina was developed by Heinrich Band in the 1840's. It is still popular in Argentina and finding increasing popularity in Europe today. The Flutina Polka, patented in 1851 by Busson had two ranks of reeds. In 1854, Leterne of Paris patented a similar instrument but with the second set of reeds tuned slightly away from the first, which would appear to be the first musette tuned The term "musette" is defined in one comprehensive dictionary of musical instruments, as "a generic term for small bagpipes." Several variants and modifications other than those mentioned above were patented in the late 19th century, even including a pedal accordion. However the features that have lasted and been included in modern accordions seem to be those associated with making it a more versatile instrument. These features enable the performance of more formal works written for the accordion and transcriptions of works originally written for other instruments. Some of the important differences between the instruments of that era and those of today were that early accordions did not have shoulder straps that allowed the player to hold the instrument close to the body. The older models were played by placing the thumb, the little finger, and sometimes the fourth finger of the right hand under the treble keyboard, leaving only the remaining two or three fingers free to press the keys. The thumb of the left hand was also placed under the instrument to steady it, with only the second and fifth fingers used for playing. Most players today wear double straps, although single-strapped accordions, which leave the keyboard at a less upright angle, are popular in the Soviet Union. Additionally, early accordions, like the bandoneon (and the harmonica) that exists today, produced different notes on the press and draw of the bellows. Thus, if the C key were pressed to produce that note on the opening of the bellows, the note D might sound when the bellows were closed. These instruments are characterized as diatonic, and the pitch of their notes was determined by the placement of the keys and the reeds by each maker. The chromatic accordion, which produced the same note on the press and the draw of the bellows, came into use in 1850 when an accordionist named Walter requested that one be custom-built for him. His model, incidentally, also featured 12 bass buttons, cleverly arranged so that all 12 key signatures could be accommodated. One interesting development from this period was the appearance of what subsequently became known as the Schrammel accordion, first used in 1877 with a quartet comprising an accordion, two violins, and bass guitar. The Schrammel had 52 treble buttons arranged in three rows that produced the same notes, together with 12 basses that produced different notes, on the press and draw of the bellows. This model was used often at Viennese gatherings and can still be heard today, but its popularity is limited because of its small range of notes and the difficulty with which it is mastered. It seems clear that at this stage the accordion was being conceived of as a portable type of organ. Pipe organs had of course become extremely sophisticated by then, with tones produced through open-ended wooden or metal flue pipes of up to eight feet (for the lowest C then in the instrument's range) in length, and with its own free vibrating reeds set in a brass plate, to be activated when the reed stop is engaged. This exact design was incorporated into the accordions of that era, with several brass or steel reeds embedded into a long wooden block in a somewhat simplified version of the modern accordion design. The first patent of an accordion with a piano keyboard was made by M. Bouton of Paris in 1852, but the piano-accordion did not come into popular use until the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1880, an instrument was made by Tessio Jovani in Stradella, Italy which included preset registers with the names of tutti, violina, celesta, flute, organ and tremolo and a bass-chord accompaniment with sixty-four buttons in the left hand. By the last decade of the nineteenth century, the left-hand manual had developed into a complex series of bass and pre-set chord buttons arranged according to the circle of fifths. There were six rows of buttons, consisting of two rows of bass buttons encompassing a range of a major seventh: 1) the counter-bass row (a major third above -- or a minor sixth below -- the fundamental bass tone), and 2) the bass row (the fundamental); plus four rows of pre-set chord buttons: 1) major, 2) minor, 3) dominant seventh, and 4) diminished. This system eventually became known as the "stradella" system, to differentiate it from the other forms of bass-chord systems which were common at the time. By the beginning of the twentieth-century the accordion finally evolved into a sophisticated instrument capable of playing in all keys. Composers gradually began to take note of this new improved accordion. The accordion you will see in the CrossSound concerts is a chromatic standard free bass accordion and has no keyboard. Unlike the stradella system, all the bass buttons play individual notes. This gives the accordion a fantastic range of notes. Organ and piano pieces can be played without needing to be arranged. Free Bass is used by many baroque and classical players. Credit for much of the growth of the classical accordion must go to the Hohner company which began manufacturing accordions shortly after the turn of the century. Christoph Wagner, the author of Das Akkordeon: Eine Wilde Karriere, wrote, "In the late 1920's, Hohner came up with a new idea for enlarging the market for the instrument. They decided to improve its public image by turning it from a folk instrument played by ear to a respectable instrument played from sheet music. A model 'accordion orchestra' of around thirty skilled amateurs was put together and toured extensively by bus throughout Germany and the neighboring countries presenting the new concept to the public. Hohner also began to publish sheet music of classical pieces and established a college for accordion teachers to 'raise the standard.' The response was enormous." Hohner's music school, which was established at Trossingen, a small village in the Black Forest, in 1931, became an official state academy in 1948 under the principalship of Hugo Herrmann (1896-1967), who, on the invitation of Ernst Hohner in 1927, composed the first original composition of musical importance for the solo accordion: "Sieben neue Spielmusiken, op. 57/1" (Seven New Pieces). Wagner continued, "when the Nazis came to power, the growth of the accordion slowed down. The propagandists claimed that the accordion was a 'nigger jazz instrument' for its close connection with modern American dance music. The Nazis tried to stop accordion bands from playing classical music which for them was an 'abuse of the music of our great masters.' The president of the Reichsmusikkammer -- the highest institution controlling music in the Third Reich -- declared that 'now is the time to build a dam against the flooding of our musical life by the accordion.'"
The array of buttons of this single tone manual parallels that of the button manual on the treble side. However, in the construction of this instrument, the measurements of the buttons were kept as they had been for the standard bass version -- a problem that only today has been recognized and which is being discussed passionately.
The American Accordionists' Association, founded in 1938, commissioned fifty works for the accordion between 1957 and 1995, including Concerto for Accordion and Orchestra (1960) by Paul Creston; Concerto Brevis for Accordion and Orchestra (1961) by Henry Cowell; Night Music for Accordion and String Quartet (1962) by David Diamond; Adagio and Rondo Concertante (1962) for two accordions and orchestra by Paul Pisk; and other works for solo accordion by Robert Russell Bennett, Lucas Foss, Ernst Krenek, Normand Lockwood, Otto Luening, Pauline Oliveros, Wallingford Riegger, William Grant Still, Alexander Tcherepnin and Virgil Thomson, to name a few. Edited from: The History of the Accordion In New Zealand By Wallace Liggett at http://www.accordions.com/; from the abridged version of The Classical Squeezebox by Henry Doktorski at The Classical Free-Reed, Inc.: http://trfn.clpgh.org/free-reed/history/; and Vom Accordion zum Akkordeon - the Emanzipation eines Konzertinstruments of Ralf Kaupenjohann, Clark/Hakenberg, trans. To find out about the history of the accordion in China, Japan, Germany, Italy and the United States (and elsewhere), just click on the country names. To see illustrations of many of the instruments and examples of accordion compositions mentioned on this page go to: http://trfn.clpgh.org/free-reed/history/birth.html For an explaination of accordion termonology go to: http://www.accordions.com/index/gen/ter/gen_ter.shtml#switch For information in simplified Chinese go to: http://accordions.com/china/ |
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"Drums, rattles and whistles are the three musical instruments traditionally manufactured by Alutiiq people. The word cayuaq traditionally refered to a drum but now has grown to mean all types of music. The large, circular, skin covered drum is a particularly powerful instrument, imparting a loud, penetrating beat. To the rhythmic pulse of drums, dancers sing in honor of ancestors, re-enact stories, and share community history. Drums are beaten with narrow, rounded-end sticks. The drummer controls the tone of his instrument by varying the location and intensity of his strike. Marie Meade listens to the sounds of different drums |
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differs from the modern cello in several ways. What may be most immediately obvious is that baroque cellos do not use end pegs. Next, the baroque cello uses gut strings rather than steel strings with nylon core which are used on 'modern' instruments. Steel strings were invented in the early 20th century but did not sell well until after World War II. Steel strings have a much more metallic and piercing sound. They are easier to play because it takes less technique to make them sound and they are very durable. Moreover they are not subject to weather fluctuations. Gut strings on the other hand are very temperamental - they go out of tune in humid weather or any kind of less-than-ideal conditions (and even in ideal conditions). They also break easily. Gut strings take much less tension than do steel strings. This has to do with another general difference between modern and baroque cellos,namely that the necks of modern cellos arch back more and are much thinner than the necks of baroque cellos. The bridge on a baroque cello is also thicker. Both the thinning of the bridge and arching of the neck on modern cellos was designed to help project the sound in larger and larger halls. Thus finally, baroque cellos have smaller bass bars. A bass bar is aligned from top to bottom on the inside of the cello and serves to spread vibrations from the strings to the bridge to the whole body of the instrument. The longer, bigger bass bars on modern instruments give the bass register a more focused and directed tone which helps to project their sound, but the boominess of the baroque cello is lost. In the baroque era carpets were not as common as now and the inside of the building (especially a church or something with stone walls) was part of the resonating body of the instrument. That is, it was not up to the instrument to project on its own - it had more help from the building.
ORIGINS (from The Violoncello It's Origin and Construction by Joshua Furman edited by Drcello, May1998) - The name "violoncello" (or cello for short) first became current in the mid-17th century, but bass violins of one kind or another are mentioned in several literary works of even earlier centuries. The cello actually originated in the early 16th century as a member of the violin family. The earliest violins were an amalgam of the features of well-known instruments in common use about 1500: the rebec, the renaissance fiddle and the lira da braccio. It is now well known that the viols were actually not ancestors of the violins in any decisive aspect of construction, tuning or playing technique. The earliest known makers of instruments that would be recognized today as cellos were Andrea Amati (who died before 1580) of Cremona, Gasparo da Salo (1540-1609) of Brescia and his pupil Giovanni Paolo Maggini (1581-1632). Their cellos were larger than modern cellos (up to 80 cm in length), and survivers have been shortened. Antonio Stradivari was the greatest maker of violoncellos and violins. He lived from 1644 to 1737 and was a student of Nicolo Amati (1596-1684), son of Andrea. One famous cello made by Andrea Amati, is called "The King." The violoncello has paintings of the arms, devices and mottoes of Charles IX, the king of France. Because of its decorations it is believed to be one of the thirty-eight violoncellos ordered for Charles IX. On the center of the back can be seen the crown over the remaining outline of the coat of arms. The physical characteristics of this violoncello are not much different from the modern day violoncello. This allows us to conclude that violoncellos have not changed much since then. (Elizabeth Cowling, The Cello, (Great Britain: Scribners, 1975), p. 28) For more information on the cello see the Internet Cello Society |
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Anatomically, the erhu has a vertical post without a fingerboard which goes through the sides of the resonator at the base. This resonator, made or various woods, is covered with python-skin which gives this instrument its unique "whining" tone color. Said to be the closest instrument in sound to the human voice, its tone is mellow and expressive. The player usually sits, resting the erhu on one leg, pulling the horse hair bow horizontally between the two vertical strings. The bow is never played outside the strings.
Another relation to the erhu is the jinghu, the main accompaniment to singing in Beijing opera. It is similar in structure to the erhu but has a quite different character due to its smaller size and the fact that it is made of bamboo (traditionally a variety found in Fujian province). Despite its small size and lightweight characteristics the sound is loud and piercing. There are almost an endless list of erhu relations not only in China such as the zhuiqin, datong, "horse bone" hu, but as mentioned in Korea, the hyegûm, in Japan, the kokyu, the Mongolian morin khuur, and in India and all over Central Asia and the Middle East, relations can be found. Text compiled loosely from the following sites: http://www.clarionmusic.com/instruments/silk/silk.html --Text Copyright (C) 1996 By Michael Santoro. All Rights Reserved Site Copyright (C) 1996, Clarion Music Center; http://power.beijing.cn.net/bikeserver/CultureC/CultureC10; http://www.music.upm.edu.my/malaysia/instruments/erhu.html - (Tan 1983). Copyright © 1997 Minni Ang; http://www.hku.hk/linguist/staff/huqin.html; http://www.students.uiuc.edu/~kejimli/erhu.html |
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The kayagûm was supposedly invented by King Kasil on the model of the Chinese zheng, can be traced back to 551 A.D. when a refugee from the state of Kaya, fearing annexation, fled to Silla and presented the king with the kayagûm, Kaya's new instrument. Evidently the refugee, U Ruk, was a well known composer in Kaya. According to the story, he played eleven pieces of his own composition based on Kayan folk melodies for his hosts which were denounced 'inelegant and improper.' Three Silla musicians Popchi, Kyego, and Mandok rewrote the pieces which not only eventually pleased the composer, but earned the praise "great music" from the King Chinhung. This offering ensured the survival of the instrument which was later transmitted to Japan in the form of the koto. |
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There are two main schools of koto music, Yamada, originally popular in the Kanto plain around Tokyo, and Ikuta, more popular in Kansai, the area around Osaka, Kyoto, and Nagoya. Although originally, there was differnces in the length of the koto, now both schools use the same kind of instrument. The main differnences today are in the shape of pick, and thus the technique. In the Yamada style, the tips of the picks are used, the player's knees rest evenly against the koto. In the Ikuta style, the left edge of the thumb's pick and the right edges of the finger picks are used, so the optimum sound can be achieved by sitting at a 45 degree angle to the left. The Sawai school belongs to the Ikuta tradition and often uses a stand for the instrument rather than kneeling.There are also differences in notation and repertoire between the Yamada and Ikuta schools, but in both cases, string numbers are used rather than pitches. The Yamada is said to be the more classical tradition.
The koto, as its ancestors in China and Korea, is said to resemble a dragon and even today, the koto's body parts are still referred to as dragon-head, dragon-back, dragon-legs, etc. Two sounding holes are cut out of the backboard. Traditionally, Japanese music is pentatonic (five notes excluding the octave), and the most popular traditional Japanese koto tuning is called "hirajoshi," literally "tranquil tuning," D Eb G A Bb D. Some other common traditional tunings are gakujoshi, honkumoijoshi, and kokinjoshi. Some Books on koto music 1) Willem Adriaansz. 1973. "The Kumiuta and Danmono Traditons of Japanese Koto." University of California Press. 2) William P. Malm. 1959. "Japanese Music-and musical instruments" Chales E. Tuttle Company. 3) Peter Ackermann. 1986. "Studieren zur Koto-Musik von Edo" Robert Gunther, Band Barenreiter Kassel. 4) Bonnie C. Wade. 1976. "Tegotomono." Greenwood Press, Inc. Materials on this page taken from: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/2592/koto.html; http://www.bangaloreonline.com/blr/music/mshino.htm; Wade, Bonnie C. "Tegotomono",1976 Greenwood Press, Inc.; http://www.asahi-net.or.jp./~np5y-hruc/kt-play1.html; http://home.san.rr.com/koto/instru.htm |
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(from http://www.bl.uk/collections/patents/famous.html) The Evolution Of The Modern Flat-Back Mandolin in the US |
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The development of the marimba has been shaped over several centuries and by dozens of cultures. Scholars suggest that the marimba began simply as a set of wooden bars laid over a hole on the ground and struck with sticks. The Zulus (of South Africa) have a myth about the goddess "Marimba" who made an instrument by hanging gourds below wooden bars. Perhaps this is the source of the name of the instrument? Text courtesy of Paul Cox - Assistant Curator of Musical Arts, The Cleveland Museum of Art |
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Many people probably think that the images shown here are accordions. Accordion is not however a generic word and it applies only to a specific instrument. Shown above and beside are English concertina. Other instruments commonly mistaken for the accordion are the bandoneon and the melodion. Acdordions themselves come in a myriad of different forms and sizes though the main division is between accordions with keyboards and those without. The development of the accordion into the standard free bass (chromatic) accordion that will be played in the CrossSound concerts by Teodoro Anzelotti is outlined below. (Edited from: The History of the Accordion In New Zealand By Wallace Liggett at http://www.accordions.com/; from the abridged version of The Classical Squeezebox by Henry Doktorski at The Classical Free-Reed, Inc.: http://trfn.clpgh.org/free-reed/history/; and 
THE ACCORDION
The sheng, a bamboo mouth organ, is the first known instrument to use the free vibrating reed principle, which is the basis of the accordion's sound production. Shaped to resemble the phoenix, the sheng has between 13 and 24 bamboo pipes, a small gourd which acted as a resonator box and wind chamber, and a mouthpiece. Other instruments using a free vibrating reed were developed in ancient Egypt and Greece, and were depicted in many beliefs. There was also a mouth-organ in use among the Chingmiao tribes (non-Chinese people related to the Thai-speaking people of Haenan) in Guizhou Province, China that may have predated the sheng.
German: Fagott
Wing joint: the bocal joins the straight, wood wing joint or tenor joint, which is shorter and narrower than the long joint that runs parallel to it.
Cauyaq (Central Yup'ik frame drum) — (pronunced ch'aw-yak) means "One you look at" in the Yup'ik language referring to the fact that when one is playing it, s/he faces the drum at all times.
Today, artists continue to fashion drums from local wood, carving and bending frame parts to shape. In addition to skin covers, some artisans use a resilient airplane fabric, treated with
Thus, almost all the innovations on the cello (which took place around 1800) happened because cellists were trying to project more. As the cello increasingly played a solo role ( and not just the bass line) it needed to project more in the larger halls where sat larger and increasingly public audiences (public concerts, invented in the 
The changgo, also called the changgu, or changgi (uncommon), is a double-headed drum with a body shaped like and hourglass. It is used to accompany almost every genre of Korean music from court music to shaman ceremonies. The body is usually made of paulonia wood (though there are examples of pottery bodies) which is varnished or painted red, and the heads are made of hide held into place with rope cords. In accompaniment a bamboo stick called a ch'ae strikes the right side of the drum making a tak sound, and the palm of the left hand strikes the left head making a kung sound.
The erhu's range is about three octaves. Its two strings are typically tuned a fifth apart to d and a, but can also be tuned much lower. In the Chinese orchestra, modeled loosely on the Western orchestra, erhu are divided into first and second erhu. A "piccolo" version of the erhu, traditionally used in opera from Guangzhou (Canton), is called the 
There are two types of kayagûm: the court kayagûm, and the sanjo kayagûm (above). The 
The koto is one of the oldest Japanese instruments, brought to Japan from China in the 7th or 8th century. Originally, the koto was played by blind court musicians as part of a chamber ensemble. In the Edo period (17th century), Yatsuhashi Kengyo(1614-1685),
one of the blind koto masters, succeeded in transforming the koto into a solo instrument. In 20th century, Michio Miyagi (1894-1956), also a blind koto player, introduced styles of western music into koto composition. Around 1920, he introduced the 17- string bass koto. This instrument was originally used for accompaniment, but today there are many solo pieces for the 17-string koto particularly in the 
The koto is roughtly two meters long and usually has 13 strings arched over independently movable bridges which sit on a hollow body of paulownia wood. These days, synthetic fibre such as tetron is used for strings, as silk strings are expensive, and cannot be stretched as tightly. The strings are struck with ivory or plastic picks attached to the thumb, index finger and middle finger of the right hand with leather bands. The thickness of all the strings is the same.
"In the National Gallery in Washington DC, a painting by Agnelo Gaddi (1369- 1396) depicts an angel playing a miniature lute called the mandora. The miniature lute was probably contrived to fill out the scale of 16th century lute ensembles. The Assyrians called this new instrument a Pandura, which described its shape. The Arabs called it Dambura, the Latins Mandora, the Italians, Mandola. The smaller version of the traditional mandola was called mandolina by the Italians.
The marimba you will hear in the CrossSound concerts was made by the Adams Company of the Netherlands. It has a Honduran rosewood keyboard, metal resonators and is the largest marimba made today at 5 octaves: C2 - C7. Tuning is A=442 hz.
A distant relative of the Western lute, the pipa is one of the oldest musical instruments in the world, first appearing in Chinese texts over 2000 years ago. During the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD) the pipa became one of the most popular musical instruments in China. Bai Juyi, among the most important poets of that period, vividly described pipa music and its techniques in his famous poem Pipa xing, or "Ode to the Pipa." The Tang Dynasty pipa was larger than the modern version and was played with a wooden plectrum instead of the five picks used today (a technique still used by its Japanese descendent, the biwa, and once used on the extinct Korean pip'a).
The sheng, a wind-Instrument that is also known as the Chinese mouth organ, was first mentioned in oracle bone inscriptions during the Shang dynasty as early as 1500 B.C. The term "sheng" means “to grow and develop" and the character depicts seeds sprouting from the ground.
THE ZHENG