Word: viol
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...ultra-involved point system which manages to cut away as much credit for every right answer as possible while counting all the wrong answers twice as much. The poor examinee begins to wonder, after a does of this, whether Bix Beiderbecke played a horn or a bass viol. But the Great Collector usually goes on and on, relentlessly playing momentary snatches of Bobby Hackett's guitar, PeeWee Russell's saxophone, and Tommy Dorsey's trumpet cleverly hiding even the labels from view as he feeds ancient record after ancient record into the mouth of the phonograph...
Passion Is Essential. He began by collecting ancient manuscripts and ancient instruments: a pardessus de viole (high-pitched, five-stringed viol), a viole de gambe (six-stringed forerunner of the cello), a viole d'amour (whose seven steel strings vibrate in "sympathy" as the seven gut strings are played), a basse de viole (big forerunner of the stringed bass). He commissioned Pleyel of Paris to make a two-manual, six-pedal harpsichord...
...bassoon what a double bass (bass viol) is to the cello. In its long evolution since Handel wrote for it, it has changed from a vague resemblance to a child's coffin to a strong resemblance to an overcomplicated vacuum cleaner. Its 20-odd feet of wooden tubing are capable of emitting the lowest-sounds known to orchestral music-lower than any at the left end of a piano keyboard. To everybody but a contrabassoonist, its Stygian burps sound like abysmal Bronx cheers...
When a man is healthy, the sound of his heartbeat is a solid, relatively high-pitched bong; when he is ill, it is a dullish, soggy boom. The highest heart sound is somewhere at the bottom of the range of a bass viol; the lowest is inaudible to human ears, even with a stethoscope. A delicate device to record these sounds on photographic film has been developed at Du Font's Haskell Laboratories by Dr. John Henry Foulger and Physicist Paul E. Smith Jr. The device consists of a microphone strapped to the chest, and a foot-long...
Melvin A. "Mel" Otterson, 4-43, Florida Southern College '41, and Miami. He plays the bass viol, and got his training at New Hampshire State Teachers College, where he was assistant band and orchestra conductor. He specializes in arranging and plays the electric guitar and the trumpet--this versatile gent also composes on the side...