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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858 |
Dear CK: do you have any demireps who pick up demijohns?
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 393
enthusiast
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enthusiast
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 393 |
I'm no musician but I'm surprised the history of the note names hasn't been mentioned. (Or it has and I'm stupid/blind: disregard if so.)
Mediaeval music was slooow: modern recordings of Perotin's Viderunt omnes clock in at around thirty to sixty seconds per syllable. The word 'breve' of course means 'short'. It was the short note. It's now so long that (two full bars) that it's never seen for most instruments.
Then the monks got hyperactive or started taking drugs that speeded them up, or something, and needed a 'half-short' note too, the semibreve, the length of a full bar.
Then came yet another division of this. Two notes to a bar?? Were they mad? This was obviously the smallest note it was possible to have, so it was called the minim.
Beyond that they had to give up naming them realistically. Half a minim was called a crotchet, 'a little hook', because it looked like one.
Then quaver is self-explanatory: some radical modernist microtonal trill.
I don't know when semiquaver and its babies came in.
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,156
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,156 |
"gendarmerie royaume" [for GR]
I think it's Gendarmerie Royale. belM may wish to confirm/deny this.
Actually, upon further thought, I think it's GRC - with the C being "Canadienne".
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Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 163
member
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member
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 163 |
GRC = Gendarmerie royale du Canada (note: except for proper names only the first word in French titles are capitalised)
royaume = kingdom as in the example below:
le Royaume-Uni (de Grande-Bretagne et d'Irlande du Nord) the United Kingdom (of Great Britain and Northern Ireland), the UK
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803 |
In beautiful downtown Ithaca, NY there is a coffee shop which has all the exciting varieties available to the discerning neophile. Included are several varieties of latte (milk!) one of which is called breve. The breve is with half and half instead of milk. It comes in all the standard sizes including the smallest (or is it the middle-sized one?) called grande. Thus, at Juna's you can order a breve grande.
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1,289
veteran
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veteran
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1,289 |
Bach and B-A-C-H
Jazz, I think you are under some misapprehension here. The naming system used in Germany was already in place when J.S. started working. Of all the myriads of works he composed, he used the sequence of tones B-A-C-H only once. It appears, briefly, as the last theme introduced in The Art of Fugue and comes in at the very end. The Art of Fugue was the last thing he composed; indeed, according to his eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann, it was composed literally on his deathbed (he dictated the last sections, as by that time he had gone blind) and the reason it breaks off abruptly is that he died at the point at which it ends (only a few bars after B.A.C.H comes in). It was, in a way, the culmination of his life's work, as it is a summary and demonstration of the rules and art of fugue writing, of which he was the greatest master, and which was at that time beginning to die out. Appropriately enough, B.A.C.H is a solemn and mournful tune.
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Posts: 1,773
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,773 |
Thank you, NicholasW, for the explanation. I'd been wondering what led to those seemingly contrasensical terms.
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803 |
And many composers since Bach's time (or at least since Mendelssohn's rediscovery of Bach) have used that same theme in homage to J.S. Bach.
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Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 1,094
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 1,094 |
he used the sequence of tones B-A-C-H only once. Yes, I've read about the fugues in Gödel, Escher, Bach. My main question is why in the world they stuck H after B. It doesn't make any sense!! 
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Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 3,409
Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 3,409 |
GRC = Gendarmerie royale du Canada Merci. One thing that struck my mischievous mind was why the jackets of the Mounties in question did not follow the usual slavishly ubiqituous devotion to bilingualism I have come to expect of things Canadian. The jackets only had GRC on them, not RCMP, and the police in question were in Ottawa. Enlightenment, s'il vous plait? 
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