Showing posts with label musical instruments. Show all posts
Showing posts with label musical instruments. Show all posts

May 23 - Accordion Invented!

 Posted on May 23, 2022     


This is an update of my post published on May 23, 2011:



Oom, pah, pah!

On this date in 1829 Armenian-born Cyrill Demian received in Vienna a patent for a musical instrument he dubbed an accordion. It had two to four keys that could play chords while the “squeeze box” (or bellows) was compressed.

(There was an earlier version of a similar instrument - one that went by another name altogether - invented in Berlin, Germany.)


Many versions of accordions exist today; most have a keyboard on one side, to play a melody, and buttons on the other side, to play chords. The keyboard and buttons don't have any way to give expression to a musical piece—there is no volume control, for example—so the pleated layers of cloth and cardboard known as the bellows are the mechanism through which musicians play loudly or softly, smoothly or energetically.




Celebrate the accordion's birthday by listening to folk music with an accordion, or accordion music by Weird Al Yankovic or folk metal groups.




Here's Weird Al's Yoda... 

Here is a nice Sicilian tarantella... 

And you gotta love this folk metal accordion battle... 

(Note: I presume the band is speaking Finnish, which I do not speak, so I don't have any idea whether or not there is cursing on this video.) 





Plan ahead:


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May 4 - Happy Birthday, Bartolomeo Cristofori

Posted on May 4, 2021

This is an update of my post published on May 4, 2010:



On this day in 1655, Bartolomeo Cristofori was born in Padua in the Republic of Venice (below shown in green). Of course, this region is now a part of Italy.



We don't know much about his early life, but we can assume that he received training in music and in making or repairing musical instruments, for when he was 33 years old, a prince from a nearby country, Florence (also now part of Italy), recruited his services to take care of his many musical instruments.

Prince Ferdinando de Medici furnished Cristofori with a house in Florence where the latter could tune, repair, and even restore musical instruments, including valuable harpsichords. He invented two new keyboard instruments, the spinettone and the oval spinet, and he built new instruments of already invented types, such as the clavicytherium (or upright harpsichord).

Finally, Cristofori started to work on a new keyboard instrument that was called an arpicembalo (harp-harpsichord), which Cristofori said could play soft and loud: ch fa il piano, e il forte. It is the Italian word for “soft,” piano, that ended up being attached to the new kind of instrument.


By 1711, Cristofori had built three pianos, one of which was given to a Catholic cardinal in Rome; the other two were sold. None of these first pianos have survived the three centuries between then and now. In 1713, Cristofori's patron, Prince Ferdinando, died. We know that Cristofori continued to make pianos, however, because the only three that have survived were all built in the 1720s.



One of Cristofori's pianos is pictured above. The three pianos are displayed or stored in museums in New York City (U.S.), Rome (Italy), and Leipzig (Germany). They are all inscribed “Bartolomeo Cristofori, inventor, made this in Florence in 172-.” Of course, the words are in Latin, not English, and the actual year iss noted.

We don't know how many instruments Cristofori made altogether.
 
Another thing that didn't survive is the only known painting of Bartolomeo Cristofori. It was destroyed during World War II, and all we have now are black-and-white photos of the piece:


It's a pity that we know so little about this man who apparently was quite ingenious - the man who invented what is today one of the most popular musical instruments.

Celebrate Cristofori!

Play the piano. Here is a virtual keyboard you can use if you don't have one! (An electronic or virtual keyboard is not at all like Cristofori's invention!)

Listen to some piano music. Try Scott Joplin's “The Entertainer” or the Beatles' "Let It Be."

 

Composer Scott Joplin is considered the King of Ragtime!


Here is a fascinating look at a piano performance requiring more than one person! (Look, ma! Three hands!) 

Sometimes it's fun to listen to music that wasn't originally composed for piano or performed on piano, now played on piano. As examples, check out this medley of hip-hop songs on piano and this punk rock song played as a beautiful ballad.

 

Hiromi

To hear piano combined with other instruments, try jazz composer Hiromi or George Gershwin's “Rhapsody in Blue."

There are lots of fun things you can do with a piano, including some games for little kids and apps for learning piano for older kids.

 



Learn how we make pianos today!

Find out here.

Have you ever seen...?

...this giant piano? (It makes it more fun to use the stairs!)



...Rowan Atkinson playing an invisible piano? (Not really, of course--but it's funny!)


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August 24 – International Strange Music Day

Posted on August 24, 2019

"Listening without prejudice."

That's what holiday inventor and musician Patrick Grant urges us to do - at least one day a year.

Grant is convinced that listening to music that is strange to us (and maybe even music that is just strange, period) can help us look at ourselves or at the world a little bit differently. And it can help us to accept the world's strangeness, become more tolerant of strangers, become more positive about diversity in all ways.

What do you think about his theory? I rather think he's onto something!

Broadening your musical spectrum is what it's all about. It's fine if you especially love rap, or punk rock, or classical, or country - your musical faves needn't change one bit! But maybe you can enjoy listening to several different types of music, depending on your mood, on the activity, on the company. 

 I learned that lesson when I noticed that my daughter loves the same kind of alt-rock that I love...


AND she loves the same kind of classic rock that I love...


BUT she also listens to, dances to, choreographs to, and loves so many more genres: classical, pop, hip hop, heavy metal, rap, musical theatre, and especially electronic dance music / house / trance.


Inspired by my daughter's wide-ranging musical taste, I have broadened my own taste by listening to hers...And I definitely like more music now than before. But today I'll have to really push myself to try new and different. Maybe opera? World music? Music made with water instruments, like this, or this, or this?


There is a sea organ in Zadar, Croatia.
It's the waves running over pipes that
makes the music!

I first heard a hammered dulcimer
at a Renaissance Faire...even though
it is not particularly appropriate to
Elizabethan England!
Do you know what a bagpipe sounds like? A didgeridoo? A hammered dulcimer? A theremin? 

Those are some of my favorite non-standard instruments - but they're common enough to run into in real life, I've found. You might even find some of them in a cool music store. If all else fails, check YouTube. 




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