A fife is a small shrill pipe of the flute kind, resembling the piccoloflute, used chiefly to accompany the drum in military music. It is pierced with six finger-holes, and usually has one key. Its ordinary compass it is two octaves from D on the fourth line of the treble staff upwards. A combination of fifes and drums is the officially recognized music in the British army and navy. Research Fife
The flageolet is an old musical wind instrument first appearing in the early 16th century and still in use until the 19th century and being the ancestor of the modern tin whistle. The flageolet is similar in shape and sound to the piccolo. It has four finger holes at the front and two thumb holes at the back. Research Flageolet
The flute is a tubular or sometimes globular musical instrument enclosing air that is set in vibration when the player's breath is directed against the sharp edge of the hole. Usually additional holes in the flute wall can be opened or closed to produce different pitches. In transverse, or horizontally, held flutes, such as the Western orchestral flute and the Chinese di, the mouth hole, or embouchure, is cut into the side of the tube. In end-blown, or vertically held, flutes the hole may be at the end of the tube (for example, the Arabic nay). In duct flutes, such as the end-blown penny whistle and the recorder and the police whistle and ocarina, a mouthpiece channels the breath against the edge of a sound hole.
The transverse flute, the typical flute of Western music, was known in China by about 900 BC. By about ad 1100 it reached Europe, where it became a military flute in German-speaking areas-hence its old name of German flute. Families of flutes from soprano to bass were played in 16th and 17th-century chamber music. Made in one piece, these flutes had a cylindrical bore and six fingerholes. The flute was redesigned in the late 1600s by the Hotteterre family of French woodwind makers. They built it in three sections, or joints, with one key and a conical bore tapering away from the player. This flute displaced the recorder as the typical orchestral flute in the late 1700s. Gradually, more keys were added to improve the intonation of certain tones; by about 1800 a four-keyed flute was common, and eight-keyed flutes were developed in the 19th century. In 1832 the German flute maker Theobald Boehm created an improved conical-bore flute, and in 1847 he patented his cylindrical-bore flute, which is the model in widest use now. The cylindrical Boehm flute is made of metal or wood and has thirteen or more tone holes controlled by a system of padded keys. Its range extends three octaves, from middle C upward. Other orchestral flutes include the piccolo and the alto and bass flutes. Research Flute
Originally, an orchestra was a semi-circular space in front of a stage where in Ancient Greek theatre the chorus sang and danced. Today the term applies to a body of instrumental performers and also to the part of the theatre where they are positioned. The orchestra is faced by a conductor in the middle, who stands with his back to the audience, and the performers have set locations in front of him. The first violins are positioned at the front-left of the orchestra, the violas in the centre with the cellos to their left and the harp to the front-right, and other instruments simularly arranged with the percussion at the back and left and the trombones at the centre back and the tuba at the back-right corner.
The modern use of orchestral accompaniment to dramatic music was begun in Italy and France about the beginning of the 17th century, Monteverde of Mantua probably having most to do with its development. In his opera Orfeo, produced in1608, he employed an orchestra of thirty-six instruments, consisting of harpsichords, violins, viols, lutes, guitars, organs of wood, trumpets, flutes, and other instruments. Orchestral music gradually developed into a separate branch of music. Comparatively early, the violin became the leading instrument a position which it has maintained and subsequently all instruments of the viol class were discarded in favour of the violin, viola, violoncello, and double bass. This family of instruments constitutes what is termed the
full-stringed band.
The different kinds of instruments used in the modern orchestra and their numerical proportion to one another are determined partly by the size of the combination and partly by the nature of the works to be performed. An example of a typical orchestra contains fourteen first violins, twelve second violins, ten violas, eight violoncellos, eight double-basses, one harp, three flutes, one piccolo, three oboes, one cor anglais, three clarinets, one bass clarinet, three bassoons, one contra fagotto, four horns, four trumpets and cornets, three trombones, one bass tuba, three kettledrums (also known as tympani), one side drum, one bass drum, one triangle, and one pair of cymbals. The manner in which the tones of the different instruments are blended or contrasted in an orchestral composition is termed orchestration or instrumentation. Orchestral music, apart from its use in connection with works of a dramatic nature, received little attention until the beginning of the 18th century. Amongst those most intimately associated with its development are Johann Sebastian Bach, Christoph Willibald Von Gluck, Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn, Hector Berlioz, Wilhelm Wagner, Johannes Brahms, Peter Tchaikovsky, Antonin Dvorak, and Richard Strauss. Research Orchestra
The piccolo is a small woodwind instrument of the flute family. It is played from the trebleclef, but its music is usually written an octave lower than the pitch of the sounds produced. Research Piccolo
Abbreviations
Research Fife
