Childrens Illustrated Encyclopedia

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364

Music

Musicians Make Music by carefully organizing sounds into a

regular, pleasing pattern to entertain listeners. notes are the starting

point for all music. a note is a regular vibration of the air that

musicians create with musical instruments or with their voices. The

more rapid the vibration, the higher the pitch of the note—the

higher it sounds to a listener. certain notes sound better together

than others. Most music uses these notes, organized into a scale. a

scale is a series of notes that increase gradually and regularly in pitch.

Musicians usually play or sing notes at fixed time intervals. We call

this regular pattern of notes the rhythm or meter of the music. a

melody or tune is a combination of the rhythm, the notes the

musician plays, and their order. The melody is the overall

pattern that we hear and remember—and whistle or hum days or

perhaps weeks later.

The clef shows the pitch at

which to play the music. This

is the treble clef.

A crescendo shows

that the music gets

gradually louder.

Charlie “Bird” Parker (1920-55)

popularized a new form of jazz,

called “bebop,” in the 1940s.

c

c

chaMber Music

classical—rather

than pop—music

for small groups of

instruments is called

chamber music.

chamber music was

so called because it

began as music for

enjoyment in chambers,

or rooms, in the home.

composers wrote different

types of music for theaters or

churches. Today, performances

of chamber music often take

place in concert halls.

noTaTion

composers need a way of writing down the music they

create. Musical notation is a code of symbols and signs that

records every aspect of the music. in the 9th century, monks

began to use musical notation to help them remember the

tunes of holy songs. The system in use today had developed

fully by about 1200 ce.

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f g

d

e

The shape of each note tells the

musician how long to play it. This

is a quarter note.

The position of the notes on or between the five

horizontal staff lines indicates their pitch. Musicians

use letters of the alphabet as names for each of the

eight notes in an octave.

Jazz

The essential ingredient of jazz is

improvisation—the musicians make

up some or all of the music as

they play it. african-american

musicians created the very

first jazz music at the

beginning of the 20th

century in new orleans,

Louisiana. Jazz is a mixture

of blues, religious gospel,

and european music.

The firsT Music

The chanting of prehistoric people was

probably the earliest music. The oldest

surviving musical instruments are mammoth

bones from northern eurasia; musicians may

have banged them together or blown them to

make notes about 35,000 years ago.

The key signature shows which key

the music is in. A key is a series of

related notes.

The time

signature

shows the musician

the meter in which to

play the piece. This is

four-four, or common time.

When eighth

notes are next to

each other, their

hooks are usually

joined together.

All music is divided into equal measures,

each of which has the same number of

beats, as indicated by the time signature.

The bar marks the end of the measure.

Rests show where the

musician should pause.

Dynamic markings indicate

how loudly to play the music—

mf stands for mezzo forte, or

moderately loud.

The speed of the music

is often written in Italian.

Allegro means “quickly.”

A curved tie line joining two

identical notes means they must

be played as one unbroken note.

Ancient musicians of Ur in Sumer (now southern Iraq)

played lyres, flutes, pipes, and percussion instruments.

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