Music technology (mechanical)
The earliest known applications of technology to music was prehistoric peoples' use of a tool to hand-drill holes in bones to make simple flutes.
In the Classical era (1750–1820), Beethoven added new instruments to the orchestra to create new sounds, such as the piccolo, contrabassoon, trombones, and untuned percussion in his Ninth Symphony.
[6] In the early 21st century, interest in the music of the pharaonic period began to grow, inspired by the research of such foreign-born musicologists as Hans Hickmann.
By the early 21st century, Egyptian musicians and musicologists led by the musicology professor Khairy El-Malt at Helwan University in Cairo had begun to reconstruct musical instruments of Ancient Egypt, a project that is ongoing.
Various types of stringed instruments and drums have been recovered from Harappa and Mohenjo Daro by excavations carried out by Sir Mortimer Wheeler.
[9]: 46 When the Jews were captive in Babylon they hung their harps up and refused to use them while in exile, earlier being part of the instruments used in the Temple (1 Kgs.
A similar instrument was the lute, which had a large pear-shaped body, long neck, and fretted fingerboard with head screws for tuning.
"[10]: 2 Whitcomb writes that the pair of silver trumpets were fashioned according to Mosaic law and were probably among the trophies which the Emperor Titus brought to Rome when he conquered Jerusalem.
"[9] In Ancient Greece, instruments in all music can be divided into three categories,[12] based on how sound is produced: string, wind, and percussion.
The lyre, kithara, aulos, hydraulis (water organ) and trumpet all found their way into the music of ancient Rome.
[2] Roman-style instruments are found in parts of the Empire where they did not originate, and indicate that music was among the aspects of Roman culture that spread throughout the provinces.
Roman instruments include: During the Medieval Music era (476 to 1400) the plainchant tunes used by monks for religious songs were primarily monophonic (a single melody line, with no harmony parts) and transmitted by oral tradition ("by ear").
As Rome tried to centralize the various chants across vast distances of its empire, which stretched from Europe to North Africa, a form of music notation was needed to write down the melodies.
Instruments used to perform medieval music include the early flute, which was made of wood and which did not have any metal keys or pads.
The dulcimers, similar in structure to the psaltery and zither, were originally plucked, but became struck by hammers in the 14th century after the arrival of new technology that made metal strings possible.
Copper was the initial metal of choice for early plates, but by the eighteenth century pewter became the standard material due to its malleability and lower cost.
During the Baroque period, organ builders developed new types of pipes and reeds that created new tonal colors (timbres and sounds).
The Baroque period is often thought of as organ building's "golden age," as virtually every important refinement to the instrument was brought to a peak.
Builders such as Arp Schnitger, Jasper Johannsen, Zacharias Hildebrandt and Gottfried Silbermann constructed instruments that displayed both exquisite craftsmanship and beautiful sound.
These organs featured well-balanced mechanical key actions, giving the organist precise control over the pipe speech.
In France, the double keyboards were adapted to control different choirs (groups) of strings, making a more musically flexible instrument (e.g., the upper manual could be set to a quiet lute stop, while the lower manual could be set to a stop with multiple string choirs, for a louder sound; this enabled the harpsichordist to have two dynamics and tone colours from one instrument).
The piano was invented during the Baroque era by the expert harpsichord maker Bartolomeo Cristofori (1655–1731) of Padua, Italy, who was employed by Ferdinando de' Medici, Grand Prince of Tuscany.
John Broadwood joined with another Scot, Robert Stodart, and a Dutchman, Americus Backers, to design a piano in the harpsichord case—the origin of the "grand".
The cornet, a piston-valved brass instrument related to the trumpet, could not have been developed without the improvement of piston valves by Heinrich Stölzel and Friedrich Blühmel.
A piccolo and a pair of trombones help deliver effects of "storm" and "sunshine" in the composer's dramatic Sixth Symphony.
The euphonium was used in a few late Romantic and works, usually playing parts marked "tenor tuba", including Richard Strauss's Ein Heldenleben.
[22] Cornets appear in Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's ballet Swan Lake, Claude Debussy's La Mer, and several orchestral works by Hector Berlioz.
In 1821, Sébastien Érard invented the double escapement action, which incorporated a repetition lever (also called the balancier) that permitted repeating a note even if the key had not yet risen to its maximum vertical position.
Felt, which was first introduced by Jean-Henri Pape in 1826, was a more consistent material, permitting wider dynamic ranges as hammer weights and string tension increased.
Also called the "plate", the iron frame sits atop the soundboard, and serves as the primary bulwark against the force of string tension that can exceed 20 tons in a grand piano.
