K
Kapelle
Chapel (= German: Kapelle; Italian: cappella; French:
chapelle) is a musical establishment, generally of a king, prince or other
ruler.
Kapellmeister
The Kapellmeister is the director of music (= Italian:
maestro di cappella; French: maître de chapelle) of a musical establishment,
either of a king or prince, or of an opera-house or municipality. The term
Kapellmeistermusik has a pejorative implication, suggesting music that
is correct but uninspired, a criticism widely if inaccurately applied to
a number of 19th century composers now subject to re-evaluation.
Key
Keys on a musical instrument are the levers which
when depressed produce a particular pitch of note. The word may be applied
to keyboard instruments such as the piano, the organ and the harpsichord,
or to the metal keys on woodwind instruments such as the flute, oboe, clarinet
and bassoon. The key in which a piece of music is written indicates the
scale used and the key note or home note, on the chord of which it must
end. Not all music is in a key, since attempts have been made in the 20th
century to extend music beyond the supposed limitations of key or tonality.
It is, in any case, only the very simplest music that remains in one key
throughout. Contrast is usually sought by changes of key during a composition,
which will end in the key in which it began, although mode may change from
major to minor (that is, a symphony in C minor may end with a movement
in C major, after intervening movements in other keys). The Fifth Symphony
of Beethoven, for example, is in C minor and opens with a movement in that
key, followed by a slow movement in A flat major, a C minor third movement
with a Trio section in C major and a last movement in C major.
Key signature
The key signature is the sharps or flats, or absence
of either, at the beginning of a piece of music, indicating the sharps,
flats and naturals belonging to the key of the music. Since a major or
minor scale, the two now in common use, has a fixed order of tones and
semitones (whole steps and half steps), these can only be preserved when
there is a change of key note by the addition of sharps or flats. In the
major scale, for example, there are semitones or half steps between the
third and fourth degrees and seventh and eighth degrees of the scale. In
the scale of C major, played on the white notes of the piano, these semitones
fall between E and F and between B and C, a fact apparent from the piano
keyboard, where there is no black key between the notes that form these
pairs. To keep the same pattern in the scale of G, the note F must be raised
to F sharp, so that there is still a semitone between the seventh and eighth
notes of the scale. Major key signatures can be calculated on the same
system. Each key with an extra sharp starts on a key note a fifth higher,
while the keys with flats are in a descending order of fifths. C major
itself has no sharps or flats, G has one sharp, D two, A three, E four,
B five, F sharp six and C sharp major seven, each new sharp the seventh
note of the scale. Descending in fifths, F has one flat, B flat two flats,
E flat, three, A flat four, D flat five, G flat six and C flat seven, each
new flat the fourth note of the scale.
Klangfarbenmelodie
(Ger., tone-color melody) A succession of tone
colors (even if with only a single pitch) treated as a structure analogous
to a melody, which is a succession of pitches. The notion was proposed
and the term coined by Arnold Schoenberg
in his "Harmonielehre" of 1911. It is reflected in his "Five Orchestral
Pieces" op.16 (1909, rev. 1949), especially the third, which was originally
titled "Farben" (Colors). Anton
Webern explored the concept extensively, e.g., in the first of his
"Five Pieces for Orchestra" op. 10 (1913) and in his orchestral transcription
of the six-voice ricercar from
Bach's "Musical Offering," and it
has played an important role in the development of serial
music and in some electro-acoustic
music. The texture that results has sometimes been termed pointillism,
by analogy with painting.
Konzertmeister
The leader of an orchestra (that is, the principal
first violin) is known in German as a Konzertmeister and in the United
States as a concertmaster, the latter term now finding more general favour
in other English-speaking countries, apart from Great Britain, where the
word leader is still preferred.