MEET THE INSTRUMENTS OF THE ORCHESTRA

This expressively colourful large format book is ideal for the curious - even slightly curious - youngster between the ages of say eight and fifteen. It generously straddles the gap between pre-teen and teen. Vivid, unstuffy, practical, fun, accurate and reflective, it also embraces multimedia. A CD-ROM comes with it – inserted into the inside hard cover of the book. This introduces you to the sound of some fifty instruments and families of instruments. It does this by examining each instrument’s range, and via a host of brief MP3 samples from classical scores.The reach of this book and CD-ROM is long. There are, for example, references to and descriptions of the heckelphone and the ophicleide as well as the maracas, the tam-tam and the crotales. Neither are those eccentrics of the twentieth century, the ondes martenot (the audio illustration is from Messiaen's Turangalila) and the theremin neglected. Maurice Martenot invented the Ondes (waves) in 1928 while Lev Theremin produced the theremin in 1920. Neither is Dr Moog and his synthesiser ignored. The voice is considered in great detail. The harpsichord - chummily and aptly referred to as plucky jacks in a box - is treated also. There are mentions for Poulenc and De Falla as twentieth century composers who wrote for concertante works for the instrument.