His early operas ( Gli equivoci nel sembiante 1679 ; L ’ honestà negli amori 1680, containing the famous aria " Già il sole dal Gange "; Il Pompeo 1683, containing the well-known airs " O cessate di piagarmi " and " Toglietemi la vita ancor ," and others down to about 1685 ) retain the older cadences in their recitatives, and a considerable variety of neatly constructed forms in their charming little arias, accompanied sometimes by the string quartet, treated with careful elaboration, sometimes with the continuo alone.

The later Neapolitan operas ( L ' amor volubile e tiranno 1709 ; La principessa fedele 1710 ; Tigrane, 1714, & c .) are showy and effective rather than profoundly emotional ; the instrumentation marks a great advance on previous work, since the main duty of accompanying the voice is thrown upon the string quartet, the harpsichord being reserved exclusively for the noisy instrumental ritornelli.

A string trio consists of three players, a string quartet four, a string quintet five, and so on.

" After a string quartet ," Martin explains, " I do not think there is a satisfactory sound for strings until one has at least three players on each line ... as a rule two stringed instruments together create a slight " beat " which does not give a smooth sound.

Ralph Vaughan Williams produced his most famous settings of six songs, the cycle On Wenlock Edge, for string quartet, tenor and piano ( dedicated to Gervase Elwes ) in 1909, and it became very popular after Elwes recorded it with the London String Quartet and Frederick B. Kiddle in 1917.

Butterworth's death on the Somme in 1916 was considered a great loss to English music ; Ivor Gurney, another most important setter of Housman ( Ludlow and Teme, a work for voice and string quartet, and a song-cycle on Housman works, both of which won the Carnegie Award ) experienced emotional breakdowns which were popularly ( but wrongly ) believed to have originated from shell-shock.

The String Quartet No. 5 was composed in 1934, and the sixth and last string quartet in 1939.

A string quartet

Importance was given to instrumental music — the main kinds were sonata, trio, string quartet, symphony, concerto, serenade and divertimento.

He took existing ideas, and radically altered how they functioned — earning him the titles " father of the symphony ," and " father of the string quartet.

This process placed a premium on chamber music for more public performance, giving a further boost to the string quartet and other small ensemble groupings.

* List of string quartet composers

Amongst other pioneers, the musical chemists Lejaren Hiller and Leonard Isaacson worked on a series of algorithmic composition experiments from 1956-9, manifested in the 1957 premiere of the Illiac Suite for string quartet.

The piece is Movement II ( Poco adagio ) of Opus 76 No. 3, a string quartet often called the " Emperor " or " Kaiser " quartet.

Since there is no established instrumental ensemble that includes the double bass, its use in chamber music has not been as exhaustive as the literature for ensembles such as the string quartet or piano trio.

Slightly larger sextets written for piano, string quartet, and double bass have been written by Felix Mendelssohn, Mikhail Glinka, Richard Wernick, and Charles Ives.

In the genre of string quintets, there are a few works for string quartet with double bass.

The opera was the first in which Rossini wrote out the ornaments of the airs instead of leaving them to the fancy of the singers, and also the first in which the recitativo secco was replaced by a recitative accompanied by a string quartet.

He is credited with the earliest string quartet.

Puccini also wrote orchestral pieces, sacred music, chamber music and songs for voice and piano, most notably his 1880 mass Messa di gloria and his 1890 string quartet Crisantemi.

This may have given him the confidence finally to complete a number of works that he had wrestled with over many years, such as the cantata Rinaldo, his first string quartet, third piano quartet, and most notably his first symphony.

Even with a release aid mechanism some of this effect will usually be experienced, since the string always accelerates faster than the retaining part of the mechanism.

( Rhythm section instruments usually include guitars, bass guitars, string basses, piano and other keyboard instruments, and drums.

* Classical fingerboards are normally flat and without inlaid fret markers, or just have dot inlays on the side of the neck — steel string fingerboards usually have a slight radius and inlays.

Frets are the metal strips ( usually nickel alloy or stainless steel ) embedded along the fingerboard and placed at points that divide the length of string mathematically.

A production rule in is formalized mathematically as a pair, where is a non-terminal and is a string of variables and nonterminals ; rather than using ordered pair notation, production rules are usually written using an arrow operator with as its left hand side and as its right hand side:

Primarily used for hunting wildfowl, these usually have a double string with a pouch between the strings to hold the projectile.

They are usually ROMplers, to give a wide variety of realistic instrument and other sounds such as drums, string instruments and wind instruments along with popular keyboard instrument sounds such as electric pianos and organs.

The double bass, also called the string bass, upright bass, bass fiddle, bass violin, doghouse bass, contrabass, bass viol, stand-up bass or bull fiddle, is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra, with strings usually tuned to E1, A1, D2 and G2 ( see standard tuning ).

All the parts of a double bass are glued together, except the soundpost, bridge and tailpiece, which are held in place by string tension, although the soundpost usually remains in place when the instrument's strings are loosened or removed.

To accommodate the additional string, the fingerboard is usually slightly wider, and the top slightly thicker to handle the increased tension.

The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick.

A crystal is located under each string, usually in the saddle.

The body is hollow and when a taut string is plucked, the body resonates, projecting sound both inward towards the harp player through a series of usually oval openings ( whose principal purpose is to allow access to the strings and only secondarily to enhance resonance ) and, much more importantly and powerfully, outward through the flexible and taut-strung sounding board.

Lever harps use a shortening lever ( usually shaped like a capital letter L ) on the neck next to each individual string which is to be activated ( i. e., turned ) manually to shorten the string and raise the tone a half step.

European harps in medieval and Renaissance times usually had a bray pin fitted to make a buzzing sound when a string was plucked.

Pitch pipes are also sold for string players, such as violinists and guitarists ; these pitch pipes usually provide the notes corresponding to the open strings.

A few additional partial frets of wood are usually glued to the body of the instrument, to allow stopping the highest-pitched courses up to a full octave higher than the open string, though these are regarded anachronistic by some ( although John Dowland and Thomas Robinson describe the practice of gluing wooden frets onto the soundboard ).

The lute's strings are arranged in courses, of two strings each, though the highest-pitched course usually consists of only a single string, called the chanterelle.

Other tunings exist, including " cross-tunings ," in which the usually doubled string runs are tuned to different pitches.

Thus, a piano quintet is usually a string quartet plus a piano.

This serves to bias the two output transistors slightly into conduction reducing crossover distortion ( in some discrete component amplifiers, this function is usually achieved with a string of two silicon diodes ).

Along with Punch and Judy, the cast of characters usually includes their baby, a hungry crocodile, a clown, an officious policeman, and a prop string of sausages.