Musical instrument
A musical instrument is an instrument
created or adapted to make musical sounds.
In principle, any object that produces sound can be considered a musical
instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument.
The history of musical instruments dates to the beginnings of human culture.
Early musical instruments may have been used for ritual, such as a trumpet to
signal success on the hunt, or a drum in
a religious ceremony. Cultures eventually developed composition and performance
of melodies for
entertainment. Musical instruments evolved in step with changing applications.
The date and origin of the first device considered a
musical instrument is disputed. The oldest object that some scholars refer to
as a musical instrument, a simple flute,
dates back as far as 67,000 years. Some consensus dates early flutes to about
37,000 years ago. However, most historians believe that determining a specific
time of musical instrument invention is impossible due to the subjectivity of
the definition and the relative instability of materials used to make them.
Many early musical instruments were made from animal skins, bone, wood, and
other non-durable materials.
Musical instruments developed independently in many
populated regions of the world. However, contact among civilizations caused
rapid spread and adaptation of most instruments in places far from their
origin. By the Middle Ages, instruments from Mesopotamia were
in maritime Southeast Asia, and Europeans played
instruments from North Africa. Development in the Americas occurred at a slower
pace, but cultures of North, Central, and South America shared musical
instruments. By 1400, musical instrument development slowed in many areas and
was dominated by the Occident.
Musical instrument classification is a discipline in
its own right, and many systems of classification have been used over the years.
Instruments can be classified by their effective range, their material
composition, their size, etc. However, the most common academic method,
Hornbostel-Sachs, uses the means by which they produce sound. The academic
study of musical instruments is called organology.
There are
many different methods of classifying musical instruments. Various methods
examine aspects such as the physical properties of the instrument (material,
color, shape, etc.), the use for the instrument, the means by which music is
produced with the instrument, the range of the
instrument, and the instrument's place in an orchestra or
other ensemble. Most methods are specific to a geographic area or cultural
group and were developed to serve the unique classification requirements of the
group.[113] The
problem with these specialized classification schemes is that they tend to
break down once they are applied outside of their original area. For example, a
system based on instrument use would fail if a culture invented a new use for
the same instrument. Scholars recognize Hornbostel-Sachs as the only system
that applies to any culture and, more important, provides only possible
classification for each instrument.[114][115] The
most common types of instrument classifications are strings, brass, woodwind, and percussion.
An ancient
Hindu system named the Natya Shastra, written by
the sage Bharata Muni and
dating from between 200 BC and 200 AD, divides instruments into four main
classification groups: instruments where the sound is produced by vibrating
strings; percussion instruments with skin heads; instruments where the sound is
produced by vibrating columns of air; and "solid", or non-skin,
percussion instruments.[114] This
system was adapted to some degree in 12th-century Europe by Johannes de Muris, who used
the terms tensibilia(stringed instruments), inflatibilia (wind
instruments), and percussibilia (all percussion instruments).[116] In
1880, Victor-Charles Mahillon adapted
the Natya Shastra and assigned Greek labels to the four
classifications: chordophones (stringed instruments), membranophones (skin-head
percussion instruments), aerophones (wind instruments),
and autophones (non-skin percussion instruments).[114]
Hornbostel-Sachs[
Erich von Hornbostel and Curt Sachs adopted
Mahillon's scheme and published an extensive new scheme for classification
in Zeitschrift für Ethnologie in 1914. Hornbostel and Sachs
used most of Mahillon's system, but replaced the term autophone with idiophone.[114]
The original
Hornbostel-Sachs system classified instruments into four main groups:
·
Idiophones, which
produce sound by vibrating the primary body of the instrument itself; they are
sorted into concussion, percussion, shaken, scraped, split, and plucked
idiophones, such as claves, xylophone, guiro, slit drum, mbira, and rattle.[117]
·
Membranophones, which
produce sound by a vibrating a stretched membrane; they may be drums (further
sorted by the shape of the shell), which are struck by hand, with a stick, or
rubbed, but kazoos and
other instruments that use a stretched membrane for the primary sound (not
simply to modify sound produced in another way) are also considered membranophones.[118]
·
Chordophones, which
produce sound by vibrating one or more strings; they are sorted into according
to the relationship between the string(s) and the sounding board or chamber.
For example, if the strings are laid out parallel to the sounding board and
there is no neck, the instrument is a zither whether
it is plucked like an autoharp or
struck with hammers like a piano. If the instrument
has strings parallel to the sounding board or chamber and the strings extend
past the board with a neck, then the instrument is a lute, whether
the sound chamber is constructed of wood like a guitar or
uses a membrane like a banjo.[119]
·
Aerophones, which
produce a sound with a vibrating column of air; they are sorted into free
aerophones such as a bullroarer or whip, which move
freely through the air; flutes, which
cause the air to pass over a sharp edge; reed instruments, which use a
vibrating reed; and lip-vibrated aerophones such as trumpets, for which
the lips themselves function as vibrating reeds.[120]
Sachs later
added a fifth category, electrophones, such
as theremins, which
produce sound by electronic means.[109] Within
each category are many subgroups. The system has been criticised and revised
over the years, but remains widely used by ethnomusicologistsand organologists.[116][121]
Andre
Schaeffner, a curator at the Musée de l'Homme, disagreed
with the Hornbostel-Sachs system and developed his own system in 1932.
Schaeffner believed that the pure physics of a musical instrument, rather than
its specific construction or playing method, should always determine its
classification. (Hornbostel-Sachs, for example, divide aerophones on the basis
of sound production, but membranophones on the basis of the shape of the
instrument). His system divided instruments into two categories: instruments
with solid, vibrating bodies and instruments containing vibrating air.[122]
Musical
instruments are also often classified by their musical range in comparison with
other instruments in the same family. This exercise is useful when placing
instruments in context of an orchestra or other ensemble.
These terms
are named after singing voice classifications:
Some
instruments fall into more than one category: for example, the cello may be
considered tenor, baritone or bass, depending on how its music fits into the
ensemble, and the trombone may be alto, tenor, baritone, or bass and the French
horn, bass, baritone, tenor, or alto, depending on the range it is played in. Many
instruments have their range as part of their name: soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone, baritone horn, alto flute, bass guitar, etc.
Additional adjectives describe instruments above the soprano range or below the bass, for example: sopranino
saxophone, contrabass clarinet. When used
in the name of an instrument, these terms are relative, describing the
instrument's range in comparison to other instruments of its family and not in
comparison to the human voice range or instruments of other families. For
example, a bass flute's range is from C3 to F♯6, while a
bass clarinet plays about one octave lower.
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