Summary: The roots and foreign branches of the guitar-family tree. The program looks at the more important of the many relatives of this instrument.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program discusses the instruments in the bass section of an orchestra-particularly the double bass. We see how the double bass, originally developed as an accompanying instrument, was used more prominently by such musical notables as double bass virtuoso and conductor Serge Kussevitzky-mentor of the late Leonard Bernstein. Music by Haydn and others illustrates the use of other bass...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program presents the wide range of instruments found in the percussion section of an orchestra-timpani, side drum, bass drum, cymbal, tam-tam, tubular bells, and xylophone-in performance. Works by composers from Mozart to Stravinsky illustrate the special effects achieved by using the various instruments.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: The development of brass instruments from the lowly cow horn. Although trumpet fanfares and brass bands are relatively recent in the history of music, even the bone or wooden ancestors of the trumpet were associated with royalty, pomp, or war. David Munrow explains how pitch variations are achieved with these brasses.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: In the 11th century, European musicians tried to make their instruments sound like the human voice. Instead of plucking the strings, they began drawing a piece of wood or bone across them to sustain the tone. By Elizabethan times, the viol was the aristocrat of bowed instruments, while the violin was considered fit only for pubs and parties. This program shows how fashions as well as musical...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: The development of reeds from those played loudly by the Saracens to frighten the Crusaders' horses, to the seventeenth-century forerunners of today's orchestral reed instruments.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008