Scan 63
The New Encyclopedia Of Music And Musicians, 1929
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1and the like, or the variation and amplification of a theme by multiplying small details or adding accessory and embellishing figures. Such writing is called figurate or figured. Also the process and notation employed in thorough-bass (q. v.). A bass-part with the figures thus required is called a figured bass or basso continuo. G.
3Figure. A small melodic tone-group or motif, properly occupying not more than a measure or even not more than a beat or two, which has coherence and character in a slight and subordinate degree; usually the smallest element into which a phrase or clause, or its accompaniment, can be divided without resolving it into single tones. Figures are commonly made effective by repetition, imitation and variation, thus making them fully analogous to the small visible forms used in architectural decoration, in weaving, etc. Also the numerals used in the notation of thorough-bass. G.
5Final. In Gregorian music, the tone in each of the modes with which a melody must close, being in authentic modes the first or lowest tone and in plagal modes the fourth. G.
7Finale. The last movement in an extended work like a sonata, symphony or concerto, especially when strongly developed as a climax to the whole. Also, in the opera, the last scene in an act or of the work. G.
9In earlier operas acts were usually ended by an aria or duet in which some special opportunity for vocal display was afforded and in some cases the last act closed with a short chorus (or even a dance). But after about 1750, at first only in opera buffa, finales in concerted form (for all or most of the principal singers) began to become common, continuing more or less customary for about a century.
11Finger. As a noun, same as execution in general or as method of fingering. As a verb, in general, to play upon any instrument sounded by means of the fingers, or (where a choice of method is in view) to play a passage or piece with a particular fingering, or to mark upon a passage or piece the method of fingering to be employed.
13Fingerboard. In instruments of the lute- and viol-classes, the flat front of the neck or a flat or slightly arched piece of wood fastened to the neck, over which the strings are stretched to the head and against which they may be 'stopped' or temporarily shortened by finger-pressure. G.
15In the lute, guitar and similar instruments the fingerboard is provided with frets, so placed as to effect stopping in progressive semitones by pressing the strings against them. The old viols were similarly fitted. But the modern violin and its relatives have fingerboards without frets, so that the intonation is absolutely controlled by the placing of the finger.
17In instruments with sympathetic strings or accompaniment-strings of fixed intonation, only the principal or melody-strings pass over the fingerboard. The others are said to lie off the fingerboard.
19Finger-hole. In instruments of the woodwind group (flutes, oboes, clarinets, etc.), with some of the brass-wind group as well, a hole in the side of the tube the opening or closing of which is controlled by the player's finger; also extended to holes so situated that they are controlled by means of a key-and-lever mechanism.
21The general term for both is side-hole. The purpose of such orifices is to determine the position of nodes and loops in the vibrating air-column and thus govern the pitch of the tones produced.
23Finger-holes were used in some of the older instruments with a cupped mouthpiece (like the zinken and the serpent). They are also characteristic of the ocarinas.
25Fingering. In playing upon instruments that are sounded by means of or with the aid of the fingers (including those with a keyboard, those with strings plucked or subject to stopping and those wind-instruments with finger-holes, keys, valves, etc.), the method of applying the fingers in playing and the succession of fingers chosen in playing various classes of passages or combinations of notes. Also marks or numerals added to written or printed music to indicate the method of finger-succession that is required or suggested. See Touch. G.
27Until the 18th century keyboard-fingering was largely or wholly confined to the use of the fore-, middle- and ring-fingers, the thumb and little-finger being mostly idle. The finger-position was flat or unflexed. After 1700 a curved finger-position and the free use of all five fingers were gradually adopted. The technical problems of the best methods of executing shifts in scale-passages and the like, of adapting the hand to the free use of black as well as white keys, of treating all kinds of embellishments and special figures, of sounding chords and chord-series, etc., were variously regarded. When the piano replaced the clavichord and harpsichord in the late 18th century it naturally took over the theories as to fingering previously held. But its differences from its predecessors forced a fresh study of hand-mechanism, leading to many practices quite unknown earlier and to much greater uniformity in the treatment of details.
29The present notation of fingering assigns the numerals 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 to the digits, beginning with the thumb. The earlier form used 1, 2, 3, 4 for the fingers, beginning with the forefinger, and marked the thumb by x or o.
31Fioriture. See Embellishments. G.
33Fipple. The mouthpiece of any instrument of the whistle or direct-flute class, especially one in which there is a cavity into which the air is blown and whence it passes through a slit-shaped windway. All instruments having such mouthpieces are termed fipple-flutes. G.
35The mechanical principle is like that in the flue-pipes in the pipe-organ.
37Firing. In English bell-ringing, the simultaneous sounding of all the bells in a peal. G.
39First. The interval between the first degree of a scale and itself, or any similar interval, having the vibration-ratio 1/1; also a tone or note at that interval from any starting-point; in a standard scale called the tonic or keynote. Also called prime or unison.
41The above standard interval is called the perfect first, prime or unison, and is more an identity than an 'interval.' Another interval larger by a chromatic semitone, is the augmented first or prime (ratio 25/24), to which the name unison cannot well be applied.
43In the staff-notation, degrees, lines and spaces are numbered from the bottom, the lowest being the first.
45In classifying a group of voices or instruments of the same kind, that having the highest pitch is called first. Similarly, the strings of an instrument are numbered from above, the highest in pitch being the first.
47In a pipe-organ with more than one manual that belonging to the Great Organ is usually called the first. See also Prima Donna.
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