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Scruggs, Earl Eugene

(Encyclopedia)Scruggs, Earl Eugene, 1924–2012, American banjo player, b. Flint Hill, N.C. He developed a distinctive syncopated, three-finger style on the five-string banjo that changed the way it is played. From...

serenade

(Encyclopedia)serenade [Ital. sera=evening], term used to designate several types of musical composition. Opera and song literature yield numerous examples of the serenade sung or played by a lover at night beneath...

charleston, dance

(Encyclopedia)charleston, social dance of the United States popular in the mid-1920s. The charleston is characterized by outward heel kicks combined with an up-and-down movement achieved by bending and straightenin...

treble

(Encyclopedia)treble, highest part in choral music, thus corresponding in pitch to soprano, but associated with the voice of a boy or a girl. The term appeared in 15th-century English polyphony, probably as an angl...

Tune, Tommy

(Encyclopedia)Tune, Tommy, 1939–, American dancer, choreographer, and director, b. Wichita Falls, Tex. An unusually lanky 6 ft 6 in., Tune began his Broadway dancing career in the chorus of several mid-1960s musi...

program music

(Encyclopedia)program music Instrumental music of the 19th and 20th cent. that endeavors to arouse mental pictures or ideas in the thoughts of the listener—to tell a story, depict a scene, or impel a mood. Mousso...

psaltery

(Encyclopedia)psaltery sôlˈtərē, –trē [key], stringed musical instrument. It has a flat soundboard over which a variable number of strings are stretched. Its origin was in the Middle East, and it is referred...

Fornés, María Irene

(Encyclopedia)Fornés, María Irene, 1930–2018, Cuban-American playwright and director; she emigrated from Cuba with her family after her father's death in 1945. An early experimental work, Promenade (1965), a mu...

Jamal, Ahmad

(Encyclopedia)Jamal, Ahmad, 1930–, American jazz pianist, b. Pittsburgh, Pa. He started playing the piano at the age of three and became interested in jazz during the bop era. He began playing professionally at 1...

double bass

(Encyclopedia)double bass, bowed stringed musical instrument, the contrabass of the modern orchestral string section. It originated as a double-bass viol, an instrument described as early as 1566. A true double-bas...