String Techniques
This technique occurs when a musician plucks any of their strings.
Pizzicato
This term is used to label the lyrics of an opera in Italian, German, or French.
Libretto
The modern string quartet features these four instruments.
Violin 1, Violin 2, Viola, Cello
This French composer's most famous work, the opera Carmen, was set in "exotic" 19th century Spain.
Georges Bizet
Mr. Rack graduated from Hanover Park in this year.
2018
This technique is performed by bowing two strings at the same time.
Double Stop
This famous conductor of the New York Philharmonic in the mid-20th century is probably best known today as the composer of West Side Story.
Leonard Bernstein
This family of luthiers made the most expensive violin ever sold, at $23 million.
Stradivari Family
This famous Austrian composer wrote operas in Italian, German, and Latin, as well as 41 symphonies, many piano and chamber works, and a famous Requiem mass.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
This number appears frequently in Canadian power trio Rush's album art. It references the title of their fourth album.
2112
When a string player needs notes outside of first position, they perform this maneuver.
Shifting
This composer earned the nickname of "Father of the Symphony" because of his prolific use of the art form in the classical period.
Most student violins feature synthetic strings, but instruments used in professional orchestras usually feature strings of this variety.
Catgut
This German composer wrote nine famous symphonies (including the Eroica and Choral), as well as 32 piano sonatas and five concertos.
Ludwig van Beethoven
While playing for this baseball team, players Dusty Baker and Glenn Burke invented the high-five following an important home run on October 2, 1977.
Los Angeles Dodgers
This instruction is given to a string player when a composer wants a harmonic-heavy sound. It tells a musician to play as close to the bridge as possible.
Sul Ponticello
This inventor of the modern saxophone had many brushes with death as a child; his village nicknamed him the "ghost-child of Dinant."
Adolphe Sax
This instrument, a precursor to the string family, was popular in the renaissance and was a bowed instrument featuring frets.
Viol de gamba
This German composer served as the Kapellmeister of the Lutheran church, writing weekly oratorios. His immense musical output is catalogued using the BWV system.
Johann Sebastian Bach
This humanoid alien, who resembles a blue elephant, plays the nalargon with his feet in the 1983 film Return of the Jedi.
Max Rebo
This technique, literally meaning "with the wood," is performed by flipping the bow over and "bowing" the strings with the wooden part.
Col legno
The modern piano features pedals: the sustain, una corda, and this one which sustains individual pitches without affecting the dampers of other notes.
Sostenuto
A modern violin features this many pieces.
70 Pieces
This American composer and pianist became the first woman to publish a symphony in the United States with her "Gaelic Symphony."
Amy Beach
This language of the island of Numenor was used extensively by composer Howard Shore when writing music for the Nazgul in The Fellowship of the Ring.
Adunaic