moucharaby, in Islamic or Islamic-influenced architecture, an oriel, or projecting second-story window of latticework. The moucharaby is a familiar feature of residences in cities of North Africa and the Middle East; in France, where it was introduced from colonial sources, it is known as

mushroom, the conspicuous umbrella-shaped fruiting body (sporophore) of certain fungi, typically of the order Agaricales in the phylum Basidiomycota but also of some other groups. Popularly, the term mushroom is used to identify the edible sporophores; the term toadstool is often reserved for

anchor: The mushroom anchor is shaped like an upside-down mushroom and is used widely as a permanent mooring for lightships, dredges, and lighters.

fungus gnat, (family Sciaridae and Mycetophilidae), any member of two families of insects in the fly order, Diptera, that are small and mosquito-like with maggots (larvae) that feed on fungi. In Sciaridae, the dark-winged fungus gnat family, the eyes of the adults almost touch, and the wings are

mushroom poisoning, toxic, sometimes fatal, effect of eating poisonous mushrooms (toadstools). There are some 70 to 80 species of mushrooms that are poisonous to humans; many of them contain toxic alkaloids (muscarine, agaricine, phalline). Among the mushrooms that most commonly cause poisoning are

perched rock, boulder balanced on a pinnacle rock, another boulder, or in some other precarious position. Some perched rocks form in place, as where rainwash (and in some cases wind) has removed fine material from around the boulder. Others may be transported by tectonic forces (involved in

valve: On gasoline engines, poppet valves are used to control the admission and rejection of the intake and exhaust gases to the cylinders. In the Figure (right centre), the valve, which consists of a disk with a tapered edge attached to a shank, is held against the tapered seat…

Ndebele: …Ndebele traces its ancestry to Musi, or Msi, who, with his followers, diverged from a small group of Nguni people migrating down the southeastern coast of Africa and eventually settled in the Transvaal at the site of modern Pretoria. The descendants of Musi’s people were joined in the 18th and…

Musi River, main stream of southern Sumatra, Indonesia, about 325 mi (525 km) long and draining an area of 24,500 sq mi (63,500 sq km). It rises near Gunung (mount) Kaba (6,355 ft [1,937 m]) in the Pegunungan (mountains) Barisan and flows first south-southeast, then northeast, breaking through the

Stan Musial was an American professional baseball player who, in his 22-year playing career with the St. Louis Cardinals, won seven National League (NL) batting championships and established himself as one of the game’s greatest hitters. Musial was a phenomenal schoolboy athlete in both baseball

Stan Musial was an American professional baseball player who, in his 22-year playing career with the St. Louis Cardinals, won seven National League (NL) batting championships and established himself as one of the game’s greatest hitters. Musial was a phenomenal schoolboy athlete in both baseball

music, art concerned with combining vocal or instrumental sounds for beauty of form or emotional expression, usually according to cultural standards of rhythm, melody, and, in most Western music, harmony. Both the simple folk song and the complex electronic composition belong to the same activity,

Madonna: Music career of the late 1990s and 21st century: …experimentation in electronica continued with Music (2000). In 2005 she returned to her roots with Confessions on a Dance Floor, which took the Grammy for best electronic/dance album, and produced the hit track “Hung Up.”

Carole King: Many were gold records, including Music (1971), Rhymes & Reasons (1972), Fantasy (1973), and Wrap Around Joy (1974). Her marriage to Charles Larkey, the bass player of the City, failed, and in 1977 she married her manager, Rick Evers, who was abusive and who died of a drug overdose less…

Rose Tremain: …Way I Found Her (1997); Music & Silence (1999), which won a Whitbread Book Award; The Colour (2003); The Road Home (2007), winner of the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction (later called the Women’s Prize for Fiction); The Gustav Sonata (2016); and Islands of Mercy (2020). She

electronic music: Computer sound synthesis: This program, called Music 11, runs on a PDP-11 computer and is a tightly designed system that incorporates many new features, including graphic score input and output. Vercoe’s instructional program has trained virtually a whole generation of young composers in computer sound manipulation. Another important advance, discovered by…

electronic music: Computer sound synthesis: …activated the process was called Music 5.

Oceanic music and dance, the music and dance traditions of the indigenous people of Oceania, in particular of Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia, New Zealand, and Australia. Music and dance in Polynesia and Micronesia are audible and visual extensions of poetry, whereas in Melanesia they are aimed

Drew Barrymore: …Dates (2004), Fever Pitch (2005), Music and Lyrics (2007), He’s Just Not That Into You (2009), and Going the Distance (2010).

band, (from Middle French bande, “troop”), in music, an ensemble of musicians playing chiefly woodwind, brass, and percussion instruments, in contradistinction to an orchestra, which contains stringed instruments. Apart from this specific designation, the word band has wide vernacular application,

music box, mechanical musical instrument that is sounded when tuned metal prongs, or teeth, mounted in a line on a flat comb are made to vibrate by contact with a revolving cylinder or disc that is driven by a clockwork mechanism. As the cylinder or disc revolves, small pins or other projections

Costa-Gavras: … group in America’s heartland; and Music Box (1989), on the prosecution of a Nazi war criminal in the United States.

Laurel and Hardy: … (1932), and the Academy Award-winning The Music Box (1932). Although never credited as such on the films, Laurel was the de facto director and head writer for virtually all of the team’s Roach comedies. That may explain the consistent look and feel of the films, even though they were attributed…

Chinese literature: Poetry: …in 125 bce of the Yuefu, or Music Bureau, which had been established at least a century earlier to collect songs and their musical scores. Besides temple and court compositions of ceremonial verse, this office succeeded in preserving a number of songs sung or chanted by the ordinary people, including…

Tennessee Titans: …became known as the “Music City Miracle.” The Titans then won two additional road playoff games to earn the franchise’s first Super Bowl berth. In the Super Bowl the Titans again found themselves trailing their opponent (the St. Louis Rams) with seconds remaining, and the game ended with Dyson…

conservatory, in music, institution for education in musical performance and composition. The term and institution derive from the Italian conservatorio, which in the Renaissance period and earlier denoted a type of orphanage often attached to a hospital (hence the term ospedale also applied to

musical criticism, branch of philosophical aesthetics concerned with making judgments about composition or performance or both. Unfortunately, it is difficult to show that a value judgment can stand for anything that is even remotely true about music, as opposed to standing for something that is

music drama, type of serious musical theatre, first advanced by Richard Wagner in his book Oper und Drama (1850–51; “Opera and Drama”), that was originally referred to as simply “drama.” (Wagner himself never used the term music drama, which was later used by his successors and by critics and

Rutland Boughton: …scheme, he published a book, The Music Drama of the Future (1908).

Japanese music: Music education: Public-school music in Japan was organized by a member of a Meiji educational search team, Isawa (Izawa) Shūji (1851–1917), and a Boston music teacher, Luther Whiting Mason (1828–96). Mason went to Japan in 1880 to help form a music curriculum for public schools…

music festival, usually a series of performances at a particular place and inspired by a unifying theme, such as national music, modern music, or the promotion of a prominent composer’s works. It may also take the form of a competition for performers or composers. Series of religious services

Steve Reich: …and in 1976 he completed Music for 18 Musicians, a piece structured around a cycle of 11 vibrantly pulsing chords that is perhaps his best-known composition. Tehillim (1981) marked Reich’s first setting of a text—the Psalms, sung in Hebrew—and he followed it with The Desert Music (1984), a setting of…

Brian Eno: …Music for Films (1978), and Music for Airports (1979) exemplified this approach.

Truman Capote: Later work: …30-year span, while the collection Music for Chameleons: New Writing (1980) includes both fiction and nonfiction.

Steve Reich: In 2018 his Music for Ensemble and Orchestra, his first orchestral work in more than 30 years, was performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He then collaborated with German painter Gerhard Richter on a multimedia presentation for The Shed, a cultural institution in New York City, and it…

Brian Eno: …such as Discrete Music (1975), Music for Films (1978), and Music for Airports (1979) exemplified this approach.

Henry Koster: Films of the 1940s: …recycled the Durbin formula for Music for Millions (1944), in which Margaret O’Brien was cast as the young sister of a musician (played by June Allyson) with José Iturbi’s orchestra. Two more musicals followed: Two Sisters from Boston (1946), with Allyson, Kathryn Grayson, and Jimmy Durante, and

Music for the Royal Fireworks, orchestral suite in five movements by George Frideric Handel that premiered in London on April 27, 1749. The work was composed for performance at an outdoor festival celebrating the end of the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–48). Its first performance preceded a

A.M. Homes: Music for Torching (1999) features the disaffected protagonists from “Adults Alone” wreaking further havoc. Things You Should Know (2002), a second collection of short fiction, further mined middle-class America for black humour and insight.

20th-century Norwegian literature: After World War II: …fra en blå brønn (1960; Music from a Blue Well), about a young girl’s growing up, that brought her fame. Her focus remained always on the societal forces bearing down on the vulnerable individual.

the Band: …result of this separation was Music from Big Pink (1968), a wholly original fusion of country, gospel, rock, and rhythm and blues that, more than any other album of the period, signaled rock’s retreat from psychedelic excess and blues bombast into something more soulful, rural, and reflective. Yet it was…

music hall and variety, popular entertainment that features successive acts starring singers, comedians, dancers, and actors and sometimes jugglers, acrobats, and magicians. Derived from the taproom concerts given in city taverns in England during the 18th and 19th centuries, music hall

Constant Lambert: A perspicacious critic, his Music Ho! A Study of Music in Decline (1934) is an illuminating study of 20th-century music.

Alejo Carpentier: …La música en Cuba (Music in Cuba), based on extensive archival research. Using that documentation, he began to publish short stories with historical background and instances of the fantastic. This combination became the hallmark of his work and the formula for magic realism. Viaje a la semilla (1944; Journey…

It was customary in Tudor and Stuart drama to include at least one song in every play. Only the most profound tragedies, in accordance with Senecan models, occasionally eschewed all music except for the sounds of trumpets and drums. In his later tragedies, William Shakespeare defied this orthodoxy

Édouard Manet: Early life and works: …at whose suggestion he painted Music in the Tuileries Gardens (1862). The canvas, which was painted outdoors, seems to assemble the whole of Paris of the Second Empire—a smart, fashionable gathering composed chiefly of habitués of the Café Tortoni and of the Café Guerbois, which was the rendezvous of the…

intellectual-property law: Trends: …by these technologies was the music industry as the combination of compression technologies and “peer-to-peer” copying systems led to widespread unauthorized copying and distribution of digital music. One such system, known as Napster, acquired 70 million subscribers before courts in the United States compelled its closure. From the ashes of…

George Marshall: Feature films: Music Is Magic (1935) was a modest musical featuring Faye as an up-and-coming chorus girl who replaces a fading star (Bebe Daniels) in a movie. More notable was Show Them No Mercy! (1935), a gangster picture that centred on a young couple (Edward Norris and…

Albert Ayler: …as can be heard on Music Is the Healing Force of the Universe and New Grass (both 1969). On November 25, 1970, about 20 days after he disappeared, his body was found in the East River in New York City.

Frank Bidart: …Desire (1997) and the chapbook Music Like Dirt (2002), both of which were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. The poems of Music Like Dirt were later included in Star Dust (2005), which also features new material, including “The Third Hour of the Night,” a monumental narrative that examines the act…

Ken Russell: His next film, The Music Lovers (1970), portrayed the anguished life of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in a flamboyant, sensational style that infuriated audiences. The Devils (1971), based on the Aldous Huxley novel The Devils of Loudon, aroused even more vehement criticism with its story of mass sexual hysteria…

Sutton Foster: … in a Broadway revival of The Music Man.

The Music Man, American musical film, released in 1962, that was based on a hit 1957 Broadway show written by Meredith Willson. Harold Hill (played by Robert Preston) is a charismatic con man who arrives in River City, Iowa, in the summer of 1912. Posing as a music professor seeking to prevent

musical notation, visual record of heard or imagined musical sound, or a set of visual instructions for performance of music. It usually takes written or printed form and is a conscious, comparatively laborious process. Its use is occasioned by one of two motives: as an aid to memory or as

Paul Auster: Further novels included The Music of Chance (1990) and Mr. Vertigo (1994). The Book of Illusions (2002) traces a writer’s immersion in the oeuvre of an obscure silent film star as he copes with his grief at the deaths of his wife and children in a plane crash.…

aleatory music: Among notable aleatory works are Music of Changes (1951) for piano and Concert for Piano and Orchestra (1958), by the American composer John Cage, and Klavierstück XI (1956; Keyboard Piece XI), by Karlheinz Stockhausen of Germany.

Wes Craven: …1999 Craven directed the uplifting Music of the Heart, starring Meryl Streep as a music teacher attempting to teach inner-city children to play the violin. His later films included Cursed (2005), a foray into the werewolf genre; the thriller Red Eye (2005); and the slasher movie My Soul to Take…

Coldplay: In 2021 Music of the Spheres appeared, and it became the band’s ninth consecutive studio album to reach the top spot of the British album chart.

James C. Petrillo: …to the establishment of the Music Performance Trust Fund, which for many years paid for free benefit concerts across the United States, kept musicians employed, and contributed to charitable causes. Petrillo fought to protect his union’s membership from changes wrought by technological change in the entertainment and recording industry.

New York 1950s overview: …and Decca), most of the music publishers, and many recording studios. Publishers were the start of the recording process, employing “song pluggers” to go across town and persuade each of the major label artists-and-repertoire (A&R) men to record a new song with one of their established singers. Alongside traditional publishers,…

music recording, physical record of a musical performance that can then be played back, or reproduced. Because music evaporates as soon as it is produced, humans, seeking permanence in life’s ephemera, have long sought ways to record and reproduce it. The efforts to capture the fleeting sounds of

music synthesizer, machine that electronically generates and modifies sounds, frequently with the use of a digital computer. Synthesizers are used for the composition of electronic music and in live performance. The intricate apparatus of the sound synthesizer generates wave forms and then subjects

MTV, cable television network that began as a 24-hour platform for music videos. MTV debuted just after midnight on August 1, 1981, with the broadcast of “Video Killed the Radio Star” by the Buggles. Following the format of Top 40 radio, video disc jockeys (or “veejays”) introduced videos and

lü pipes: …first to develop a comprehensive music theory, and the lü pipes embody their ideas. According to legend, Huangdi, the Yellow Emperor, sent the minister Ling Lun to find bamboo tubes to use for tuning pipes. Ling Lun cut one to an auspicious length and called it the huangzhong (“yellow bell”),…

music therapy, clinical discipline in which music is used to address nonmusical goals. Therapists use music listening, songwriting, improvisation, and lyric analysis as means of fulfilling goals in movement, cognition, speech and language, and mental health. Music therapy is an allied health

electronic instrument: The computer as a musical tool: Music V, created in 1967–68, is the most widely used sound-synthesis program to have been developed at Bell Laboratories. Music V consists of computer models of oscillator and amplifier modules, plus procedures for establishing interactions among the modules. Another widely used synthesis algorithm is Frequency…

music video, promotional film for popular music, especially a rock song. Music videos began to be widely broadcast on television in the early 1980s. Like the commercials they essentially are, music videos may qualify as the quintessential postmodern art form: hybrid, parasitic, appropriative, often

Ruth St. Denis: …her choreographic innovations were “music visualization”—a concept that called for movement equivalents to the timbres, dynamics, and structural shapes of music in addition to its rhythmic base—and a related choreographic form that she called “synchoric orchestra”—a technique, comparable to the eurythmics of Émile

electronic instrument: Sampling instruments; music workstations: …composition and sound-processing systems called music workstations. The Synclavier series, manufactured by New England Digital Corp. since 1976, is representative of this class of instruments.

African music, the musical sounds and practices of all indigenous peoples of Africa, including the Berber in the Sahara and the San and Khoikhoin in Southern Africa. The music of European settler communities and that of Arab North Africa are not included in the present discussion. For the music of

atonality, in music, the absence of functional harmony as a primary structural element. The reemergence of purely melodic-rhythmic forces as major determinants of musical form in the Expressionist works of Arnold Schoenberg and his school prior to World War I was a logical, perhaps inevitable

global music, broadly speaking, music of the world’s cultures. The term global music replaced world music, which had been adopted in the 1980s to characterize non-English recordings that were released in Great Britain and the United States. Employed primarily by the media and record stores, this

Oceanic music and dance, the music and dance traditions of the indigenous people of Oceania, in particular of Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia, New Zealand, and Australia. Music and dance in Polynesia and Micronesia are audible and visual extensions of poetry, whereas in Melanesia they are aimed

music recording, physical record of a musical performance that can then be played back, or reproduced. Because music evaporates as soon as it is produced, humans, seeking permanence in life’s ephemera, have long sought ways to record and reproduce it. The efforts to capture the fleeting sounds of

Western music, music produced in Europe as well as those musics derived from the European from ancient times to the present day. All ancient civilizations entered historical times with a flourishing musical culture. That the earliest writers explained it in terms of legend and myth strongly

global music, broadly speaking, music of the world’s cultures. The term global music replaced world music, which had been adopted in the 1980s to characterize non-English recordings that were released in Great Britain and the United States. Employed primarily by the media and record stores, this

Ricky Martin: Albums from the 2010s and 2020s and marriage: In 2011 Martin released Música + alma + sexo (2011; “Music + Soul + Sex”), which features such guest collaborators as British singer Joss Stone. Martin’s 10th studio album, A quien quiera escuchar (2015; “To Those Who Want to Listen”), won the Grammy Award for best Latin pop album.…

John Bull: …150 extant pieces), published in Musica Britannica (1951). His music is distinguished less by emotional depth or freshness of invention than by an unfailing resourcefulness in devising keyboard figuration. Bull combined with an essentially conservative outlook a taste for technical experiment and the solution of unusual problems—enharmonic modulations, for example,…

Alejo Carpentier: …La música en Cuba (Music in Cuba), based on extensive archival research. Using that documentation, he began to publish short stories with historical background and instances of the fantastic. This combination became the hallmark of his work and the formula for magic realism. Viaje a la semilla (1944; Journey…

counterpoint: Counterpoint in the Middle Ages: …in the late 9th-century treatise Musica enchiriadis. Here a plainchant melody, or “principal voice” (vox principalis), is combined with another part, “organal voice” (vox organalis), singing the same melody in parallel motion a perfect fourth or fifth below (e.g., G or F below C).

musica ficta, in medieval music, notes that were not included within the gamut first authorized by the Italian theorist Guido d’Arezzo in the early 11th century. The opposite of musica ficta was musica recta, which included only the recognized notes. The original sense of musica ficta is now used

musica ficta, in medieval music, notes that were not included within the gamut first authorized by the Italian theorist Guido d’Arezzo in the early 11th century. The opposite of musica ficta was musica recta, which included only the recognized notes. The original sense of musica ficta is now used

musicology: …on musical instruments, Sebastian Virdung’s Musica getutscht (1511; “Music Translated into German”), contains woodcuts of instruments and some indications of instrumental practice and technique.

percussion instrument: Idiophones: …they form part of the musica irregularis decried by writers such as the German organologist Sebastian Virdung in 1511 and as such were restricted to popular entertainment or signaling. Written music of this period does not help to determine whether, or how, idiophones were played with voices or with other…

musica ficta: …opposite of musica ficta was musica recta, which included only the recognized notes. The original sense of musica ficta is now used infrequently. The term later came to mean pitch alterations that were necessary in performance but not notated.

William Croft: His Musica sacra (1724) contains 30 anthems and a setting of the Church of England burial service that is still in use. His occasional anthems, such as O Clap Your Hands (1706), contain some of his best writing. He also wrote incidental music and works for…

percussion instrument: Idiophones: …are first seen in the Musica theoretica (1492) of the Italian musical theorist Franchino Gafori. One hears of them intermittently thereafter until they come to the fore in the mid-18th century as concert instruments. The rims of glasses of graduated sizes containing enough water to tune them were rubbed by…

madrigal: In 1588 Nicholas Yonge published Musica Transalpina, a large collection of Italian madrigals in English translation. Thomas Morley, the most popular and Italianate of the Elizabethan madrigalists, assimilated the Italian style and adapted it to English taste, which preferred a lighter mood of poetry and of music. Other English madrigalists…

Sir John Pritchard: As the musical director of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic (1957–63), he introduced Britain to the “Musica Viva” concept, in which the performance is preceded by a spoken introduction and musical samples. He was music director of the London Philharmonic (1962–66), touring with them in the Far East…

musical, theatrical production that is characteristically sentimental and amusing in nature, with a simple but distinctive plot, and offering music, dancing, and dialogue. The antecedents of the musical can be traced to a number of 19th-century forms of entertainment including the music hall, comic

band, (from Middle French bande, “troop”), in music, an ensemble of musicians playing chiefly woodwind, brass, and percussion instruments, in contradistinction to an orchestra, which contains stringed instruments. Apart from this specific designation, the word band has wide vernacular application,

musical bow, stringed musical instrument found in most archaic cultures as well as in many in the present day. It consists of a flexible stick 1.5 to 10 feet (0.5 to 3 m) long, strung end to end with a taut cord that the player plucks or taps to produce a weak fundamental note. The player may

music box, mechanical musical instrument that is sounded when tuned metal prongs, or teeth, mounted in a line on a flat comb are made to vibrate by contact with a revolving cylinder or disc that is driven by a clockwork mechanism. As the cylinder or disc revolves, small pins or other projections

Henry Carey: …poems set to music, called The Musical Century (1737). Despite the popularity of his work, Carey suffered great poverty, largely because his plays and poems were widely pirated by unscrupulous printers.

musical, theatrical production that is characteristically sentimental and amusing in nature, with a simple but distinctive plot, and offering music, dancing, and dialogue. The antecedents of the musical can be traced to a number of 19th-century forms of entertainment including the music hall, comic

musical composition, the act of conceiving a piece of music, the art of creating music, or the finished product. These meanings are interdependent and presume a tradition in which musical works exist as repeatable entities. In this sense, composition is necessarily distinct from improvisation.

musical criticism, branch of philosophical aesthetics concerned with making judgments about composition or performance or both. Unfortunately, it is difficult to show that a value judgment can stand for anything that is even remotely true about music, as opposed to standing for something that is

percussion instrument: Idiophones: Musical cups, the forerunners of musical glasses, are depicted on the Borobudur stupa. The South Asian rastrarang can be played either with small sticks by percussion or by rubbing wetted fingers along the rims—the cups do not contain water. But the jaltarang, also South Asian,…

chamber music: Form: …elaborated to create a “development section”), and a recapitulation of the first part with changed harmonies. The second movement was generally in slow tempo and could represent one of several forms: another sonata form, a set consisting of theme and variations, or the like. Then followed a movement in…

Japanese music: Music education: Public-school music in Japan was organized by a member of a Meiji educational search team, Isawa (Izawa) Shūji (1851–1917), and a Boston music teacher, Luther Whiting Mason (1828–96). Mason went to Japan in 1880 to help form a music curriculum for public schools…