Dictionary of Music - Birding America

Wuorinen, Charles 477bassoon are played with a double reed, which is setin vibration by the player’s breath and in turn makesthe air column inside the instrument vibrate. Theclarinet, basset horn, heckelphone, and saxophoneare played with a single reed. (See also DOUBLEREED; REED.)Woodwind instruments are among the oldestdevised by man. The ancient Greeks used theAULOS, and practically every people who kept livestockhad some kind of shepherd’s pipe, rangingfrom PANPIPES to the SHAWM. Most of the woodwinds,however, remained fairly simple and limited,like the old FIFE and the RECORDER, operatedsimply by finger holes. Not until the developmentof keys could the player cover a wider range ofholes, which until then had been out of reach. It isnot known exactly when keys were developed—some apparently had been devised by the fifteenthcentury. They were not widely used until the seventeenthcentury, and they did not acquire their modernform until the late eighteenth and early nineteenthcenturies. (See KEY, def. 2; BÖHM SYSTEM.)woodwind quintet Another name for wind quintet;see under QUINTET.woofer (woo ′fûr). In sound equipment, a speakerdesigned to handle low frequencies only. It is usuallyused together with a TWEETER and sometimeswith a mid-range speaker.word painting In vocal music, a term for variousways of making the music portray the meaning ofthe words. For example, when the text describes risingin the air or climbing a mountain, the musicmight rise in pitch; or when the words describe birdssinging, the music might imitate birdcalls or birdsong.Although today word painting is generallyregarded as a very obvious device, it was often usedin earlier periods, particularly during the Renaissanceand baroque periods, and by such masters asLasso and Bach.world music A general term for the ethnic musicof both Western and non-Western countries that inrecent decades has been influenced to varyingdegrees by Western popular music (reggae, rock,hip-hop and the like) and instruments (electronickeyboards and electric guitars), as well as usingprerecorded sounds (see SAMPLING). It embraces alarge variety of styles and sources, from countriesas diverse as Armenia, Canada, Mali, Japan,Morocco, Tibet, Myanmar, and India. Somewhatconfusingly, the term has been applied to fieldrecordings, cross-cultural experiments, and venerablenon-Western classical styles such as MAQAMand RAGA. Western classical composers have beenlooking beyond their own traditions for new structuresand timbres, in both classical and folk music.Soundtrack engineers compile non-Western musicto provide startling new effects and rhythmic complexities.The amalgamation and/or hybridization ofdifferent styles has given rise to a large body ofworks, and it is impossible to say whether or not itwill have a lasting effect.wuchtig (voo KH′tiKH, voo KH′tik) German. Adirection to perform in a weighty manner, withheavy emphasis.Wuorinen (wôr′i nən), Charles, 1938– . AnAmerican composer, pianist, and conductor knownfor his dissonant, highly chromatic scores, whichinclude symphonies, a violin concerto, chambermusic, piano pieces, and electronic music. His Time’sEncomium (1968–1969), which won the PulitzerPrize, is considered one of the finest works ever producedon the RCA Synthesizer; it uses both pure synthesizedsound and processed synthesized sound (thatis, further altered) so as to give both a foreground andbackground of musical ideas, much as live performersdo. In his Piano Concerto no. 2 (1974), for amplifiedpiano and orchestra, the soloist is pitted against theorchestra, but unlike the traditional acoustic piano,the electronically amplified instrument is able todrown out the entire orchestra. In Piano Concerto no.3 (1984) the soloist performs nearly all the time, andin much of the half-hour work the orchestral sectionssupply an extension of the piano’s tone colors anddynamics. Outstanding among Wuorinen’s manyother compositions are Symphony no. 3 (1959); PianoVariations (1963); two piano sonatas (1969; 1976);On Alligators (1972) for string and woodwind quartets;Two-Part Symphony (1978), a serial work in C;