A reference guide to musical instruments.

Originally published in 1943 and subsequently as a revised and enlarged edition in 1978, Musical Instruments has long been held in high regard, not only for its erudition, but for its originality of approach. By relating the instruments to their time and each other, epoch by epoch, the author sheds fresh light on their evolution and enables the reader to follow their ups and downs against the changing background of taste and fashion. Each chapter is introduced with an account of the musical forms and artistic trends of the period, before considering in detail the instruments that gave them expression. The reader is carried along, from the magical-sacred beginnings of music, through the instruments of antiquity, the experiments of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the refined instruments of the Baroque and classical periods, down to those of the Romantic age and its aftermath, including the modern era with its electronic synthesizers. The book is completed by an Appendix on the acoustics of music and amply illustrated by nearly 100 pictures and diagrams.

Originally published in 1943 and subsequently as a revised and enlarged edition in 1978, Musical Instruments has long been held in high regard, not only for its erudition, but for its originality of approach. By relating the instruments to their time and each other, epoch by epoch, the author sheds fresh light on their evolution and enables the reader to follow their ups and downs against the changing background of taste and fashion. Each chapter is introduced with an account of the musical forms and artistic trends of the period, before considering in detail the instruments that gave them expression. The reader is carried along, from the magical-sacred beginnings of music, through the instruments of antiquity, the experiments of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the refined instruments of the Baroque and classical periods, down to those of the Romantic age and its aftermath, including the modern era with its electronic synthesizers. The book is completed by an Appendix on the acoustics of music and amply illustrated by nearly 100 pictures and diagrams.

This book first appeared in 1967. In the years since then, it has spawned the new academic sub-discipline of musical iconology, which belongs equally to the histories of art and of music. Emmanuel Winternitz, who was for thirty-one years Curator of Musical Collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is one of the world's leading authorities on the history of musical instruments. He is also an erudite historian of art. Combining these two interests he has for many years studied the innumerable representations of musical instruments in Western art. In this collection of closely related articles, he examines what these pictures tell of the design and construction of instruments, of their performance, practice, and of the often subtle symbolic use to which artists put them. Kithara and cittern, lute and lyre, bagpipe and hurdy-gurdy, and the ubiquitous lira da braccio, all of these figured largely in the art of the Middle Ages or the Renaissance, together with a clutch of shwms, zinks, and crumhorns, and a variety of fantastic instruments that existed only in the imagination of the artists. In more than 200 photographs and many drawings, Winternizt illustrates instruments that range from an Egytptian wall-painting of a harp to a musette in a Watteau F te champ tre. He draws from the works of Titian, Raphael, D rer, and Bruegel, and also from medieval manuscripts and sculpture. Winternitz discusses these diverse elements with a combination of formidable learning, wit, and keen insight that makes this book at once a seminal work for scholars and a delight for lovers of art and music.

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