As a music major, you tend to pick fascinating musical facts along the way. It's fascinating how an off-hand remark in a rehearsal or class can stick with you for years! Here are some of my favorite cool musical facts:
1. Singing can change your brain chemistry and make you happy.
Joyful, Joyful, Science is co-ol!
2. The two major brands of handbells are incompatible with each other.
Is this petty or what?
3. Pipe Organs are the largest instrument played by a single person!
The largest fully-functioning instrument is in Atlantic City, NJ and also bears the distinction of the loudest instrument worldwide.
4.Dvorak spent a summer hanging out in a tiny Iowa town.
Why? Because many of the town's inhabitant spoke Czech, his native language.
5. A chicken once fell off the stage at the Sydney Opera House.
Now there is a net above the pit to prevent such issues...
6. Flemish Composer Orlande de Lassus is considered the most prolific composer ever.
If you want to beat his record, you need to compose over 1,400 compositions!
7. Mixture stops on a pipe organ play multiple notes (in the overtone series) when one key is played on the console.
Unison can be deceivin'
9. The metal alloy handbells are made of seems sturdy but will pit easily from saliva.
(So your choir director will murder you if you chew gum anywhere near those bells!)
10. Paul Wittgenstein had to compose music for himself as a pianist who lost his hand in WWI
11. J.S. Bach walked 200 miles to hear Buxtenhude play.
So basically Bach invented groupie culture...
12. Poets and Musicians were basically the same job in medieval England.
(I actually learned this in a literature class, but who's keeping track.)
13. Many great French organists were blind.
It was one of the main career paths the Paris Institute for Blind Youth offered. Louis Braille himself began his professional life as a organist.
Did I miss your favorite musicial facts, tell me in the comments!
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