Musical Performance

Folk music is music of the common people. Created by someone who has a story to tell rather than composed by a trained musician, it is simple and easy to understand. Folk songs have easy, singable melodies, use simple harmonies, and (unless the song tells a sad story) have rhythms that are fun for dancing. The instruments of folk music are the instruments people happened to have around at the time. Sometimes inventive people built their own instruments if no others were available. Continue Reading »

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The staves for the percussion instruments are massed in the middle of the score. Who plays what depends on manpower, availability and ability.

The glockenspiel and celesta are both metallophones, the first having a resemblance to a small xylophone and the second to a small piano.

`Glockenspiel‘ means ‘bell-play’ in German. The glockenspiel used in marching bands is a set of steel bars set in a lyre-shaped frame. Mozart specified an instrumento d’ acciaio (steel instrument) for the part of Papageno’s magic bells in Die Zauberflote; this may have been a set of small tuned bells played from a keyboard like a modern celesta. These bells were also used by carillon players for practice. Continue Reading »

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The part for the tuba is written on the bass clef, under the stave carrying the part for the trombone. The tuba is not a transposing instrument, but should the part for the bass tuba go very low the sign 8va is used, obviating ledger lines and indicating that the music is to sound an octave lower than written. Continue Reading »

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