Scan 46
The American History and Encyclopedia of Music, 1908
27 lines. Read by computer on 18 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1allonger l'archet
2allonger l'archet (ăl-loñ-zhā lăr-shā) Fr.
3To lengthen or prolong the stroke of the bow. A violin term.
4Alma Redemptoris (ăl'-mä rē-děmp'-tōr-ĭs) Lat.
5Blessed Mother of the Redeemer. A hymn to the Virgin.
6almain (ăl'-män)
7alman (ăl'-män)
8Obsolete English words for a German. Other ways of spelling the dance allemande, in two-four time.
9almand.
10German: a German; a German dance. See also allemande.
11almehs (ăl'-mās) Tur. n.
12The dancing and singing girls of Turkey.
13Alp horn
14Alpen horn
15A horn used by Alpine herdsmen. It is from three to eight feet long and consists of strips of fir-wood firmly bound together to form a conical tube. The bell at the end curves slightly upward, and the cupped mouthpiece is made of hard wood. Its sounds are simple harmonics, that is, the tones produced by a column of air set in motion, when it is divided into its aliquot or equally divided parts. They are somewhat varied according to the material of which the horn is made and the size of its bore. This instrument is used to signal with, by the mountaineers, and also to sound the Ranz des Vaches, as they call the airs used to assemble the cattle on leaving the pasture.
16alphabet
17The musical alphabet which is used to designate the different sounds of the scale consists of seven letters, A, B, C, D, E, F and G, and the German's add H, making eight letters in their scale. The order in the scale is C, D, E, F, G, A, B, and the reason for this can be seen best from a short history of the musical scale.
18From the fact that the ancient Greek lyre had seven strings, and the ancient shepherd pipes consisted of seven reeds, it is natural to assume that the ancient Greek scale consisted of seven tones, each tone represented by one string or one reed on their old instruments. As their music developed new tones were added to the scale and in 340 B. C. their scale included fifteen tones, extending from A in the first space of the bass staff to A in the second space of the treble staff. Since the names of the notes were too long to be written out in full on a musical composition they were designated by letters of the alphabet.
19But these fifteen letters did not suffice to express all the variations a single note might undergo; so, as the music developed, these letters were written in a great many different forms, large and small, straight and inverted, horizontally, and leaning to the right or left, till by the time Alypius wrote his learned treatise on music not less than 1240 different musical forms were used by the Greeks.
20Now the Romans borrowed the Greek scale, but simplified it, using the fifteen letters of the alphabet to indicate their scale. But when Gregory the Great, Pope of Rome, in the Sixth Century, revised the music of his time, he discovered that the last eight letters of the alphabet were but a repetition of the first half, only an octave higher, so he used the first seven letters of the alphabet only, using capital letters to designate the lower octave, and small letters for the upper.
21Thus the original Greek scale of fifteen tones was preserved, and A was naturally the first note of the scale. But in the Tenth Century a new note was added just below lowest A, and this note, for no known reason, was named after the Greek letter Γ (gamma, G). Later other notes were added, till in the Sixteenth Century the scale reached as low as C on the second added line below the bass staff. Thus A, instead of being the first note of the scale, became the sixth, as it is today.
22In Germany this same system was originally adopted. But when accidentals came into use, and b came to be used for B flat, the square B was mistaken for an H, and in the German scale B flat is now called B, and B natural, H.
23alphabetical notation
24The system of notation in which the tones are indicated by letters of the alphabet. The earliest method of writing music known to history; it was used by the ancient Greeks and has continued in use to the present day. For full discussion see alphabet and letter notation.
25Alpine horn
26A long wooden trumpet used by the mountaineers of Switzerland not only
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