String Instruments

• Notes about music theory and history

Instruments

• String instruments have a resonant body, scroll, bridge, and strings.

• All string instruments have four strings.

• String instruments are the most numerous in the orchestra.

• Bowed instruments are played with a bow (con arco) or by plucking (pizzicato).

• Rosin is used on bows.

• Famous string instrument makers include Stradivari, Guarneri, Amati, and Franjo Kresnik.

• Plucked instruments produce sound by plucking the strings with fingers or a plectrum.

• Guitar types include classical, acoustic, electric, and bass guitar.

• Notable guitarists include Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Jimi Hendrix, and Eric Clapton.

• Harps have 47 strings of different colors and seven pedals.

• Lutes have a pear shape, a neck at a right angle, and 12-28 strings and originated in the renaissance.

• Mandolins have four pairs of strings, originated in Italy from the Lute, and have an almond shape (mandola) and are prevalent in Dalmatia and mandolin orchestras.

• Tambourines are traditional plucked instruments played with a plectrum.

• Tambourine instruments include Lisernica, brač, lugarija, čelo, and berde.

• Traditional plucked instruments include Portuguese guitar, ukulele, banjo, and Mexican guitar.

• Brass wind instruments include trumpet, horn, trombone, and tuba.

• Woodwind instruments include contrabassoon, bassoon, saxophone, English horn, oboe, clarinet, and piccolo flute.

• Percussion instruments with indefinite pitch include bongos, congas, large drum, rattle, drum (small drum), cymbals, gong, tambourine, maracas, triangle, castanets, and guiro.

• Percussion instruments with definite pitch include marimba, xylophone, vibraphone, bells, chimes, celesta, and timpani.

Historical Overview of Musical-Stylistic Periods

• Prehistory, Ancient Age, and Antiquity: up to the 5th century.
• Middle Ages: 5th-15th centuries.
• Renaissance: 15th-16th centuries.
• Baroque: 17th century, first half of the 18th century.
• Classicism: second half of the 18th century.
• Romanticism: 19th century.
• 20th-century and contemporary music.
• Style is the entirety of characteristics by which a creator, period, or artistic type differs from each other.
• Each style has its rise, bloom, and fall.
• It appears first in one art form and is then adopted by other art forms.

Music of Ancient Greece

• Muses are Thalia, Urania, Clio, Euterpe (goddess of music), Calliope, Melpomene, Polyhymnia, Terpsichore, and Erato.

• Mousike techne encompasses all arts under the protection of the Muses.

• The foundation of European culture, philosophy, and science.

• Instruments associated with Apollo include lyre, kithara, and Dorian scale and with Dionysus include aulos, diaulos, and Phrygian scale.

• Hydraulus is an early form of the water organ.

• Choral music involves 15-30 singers performing monophonic singing with instrumental accompaniment.

• Types of choral songs include dithyramb, threnody, paean, skolion, and hymenaeus.

• Seikilos epitaph is an example of ancient Greek music.

• Tragedy involves sung and spoken parts and the writer is the composer (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides).

Rome and Early Christianity

• Music's role: entertainment, performances, gladiator fights, military.
• Music was not considered to be as significant as in Greek culture.
• Rome saw the development of early Christian music, including the singing of psalms and hymns.
• St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan in the 4th century, composed hymns and transmitted music from East to West.
• St. Cecilia is the patron saint of music declared in the 15th century.
• In 1877, the music magazine "Sveta Cecilija" was founded in Croatia.
• Her day is celebrated on November 22nd.

Monophonic Church Music

• 4th century: Hymns (Himan) feature simple melodies with elements of folk singing and strophic poems in verses.

• 5th-6th centuries: Purification of spiritual melodies from folklore - Pope Gregory the Great devised a unified ritual Antiphonary.

• Chorale (chant) is performed vocally monophonically, with organs appearing in the 11th century.

• Free rhythm, scales - modes

• Melodies: syllabic and melismatic (melisma = ornament).

• Victimae paschali laudes and Haec dies are examples of hymns.

• Main church services: Liturgy of the Hours and Mass.

• Mass is a vocal service in the Catholic Church

• Ordinary of the mass: Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Benedictus, Agnus Dei (same text, only the melody changes).

• Proper of the mass: Introitus, Graduale, Offertorium (text and melody change).

• Requiem.

• Gregorian Chant: Monophonic sacred singing of the Catholic Church in Latin, a cappella.

• Psalmody solo is when the priest/soloist sings alone.

• Responsorial singing is when the priest and soloists alternate.

• Antiphonal singing is when two different choirs alternate.

• Schola cantorum: is a Roman singing school.

• Veni Creator Spiritus.

Glagolitic Chant and Development of Musical Notation

• Cyril and Methodius created the Glagolitic alphabet.

• Glagolitic is to speak in Old Slavonic.

• Glagolitic chant is the singing of Western Roman Church rites in the Croatian version of Old Slavonic instead of Latin.

• Krk, Istria, Croatian Littoral, Lika and Dalmatia dating back to the 9th century.

• Gospode, pomiluj - Dobrinj, Krk.

• Oral tradition into the 19th and 20th centuries as the first recordings.

• Accepted by the people and clergy.

• Some melodies are identical to Gregorian chants, only the text is translated.

• Heterophonic performance of chants.

• Puče moj – Kontaduri, Joško Ćaleta.

• Early Middle Ages: oral tradition

• Neumes are the first signs used to write down tones, originating in the 9th century.

• Two phases of neumatic notation: without staff lines and with staff lines

• Musical theorist Guido d' Arezzo introduced 4 lines and solmization syllables, with neumes written on the staff and text below, including the Hymn to St. John.

• Gothic notation that began in the 11th century included notes/signs in the shape of a rhombus.

• Square choral notation from the 13th century noted not only the tone's pitch but also its duration.

• Tablatures use letters, numbers, and notes, and are still in use today.

• Anima Christi is an example.

• Ars antiqua: 13th and early 14th century - development of polyphony, using black notes.

• Ars nova: 14th century - use of white notes (new art).

Monophonic Secular Music and Dances

• Notations of secular music date only from the 12th century.

• Crusades led to the education of knights.

• Themes of songs include love, satirical, political, heroic, nature, and Crusades.

• More developed melodies, a wider range, and Old Church scales.

• Strophic chants: identical melody for each verse.

• Singing in the vernacular with instrumental accompaniment.

• Troubadours: Southern France, trobar = to invent, courts (B. de Ventadour)

• Trouveres: Northern France, Adam de la Halle, courts

• Minnesanger: Germany, 13th century, influenced by Gregorian chant (Walther von der Vogelweide)

• Meistersinger: Germany, 15th century, master singers, singing schools (Hans Sachs)

• Jongleurs: Entertainers, actors, acrobats, and later musicians, performing music in squares and fairs for the people.

• Vagrants: Wanderers and vagabonds, traveling to European schools, satirical songs against church authorities.

• Play about Robin and Marion

• Pastoral is that which portrays pastoral life.

• Goliards: Poor traveling students, educated, performing skits and songs in Latin.

• Themes: love, youth, criticism of the church.