Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) piano or pianoforte, musical instrument whose sound is produced by vibrating strings struck by felt hammers that are controlled from a keyboard. The piano's earliest predecessor was the dulcimer. The ...

(Encyclopedia) Pius XI, 1857–1939, pope (1922–39), an Italian named Achille Ratti, b. Desio, near Milan; successor of Benedict XV. Pius's pontificate was marked by great diplomatic activity and by many importa...

(Encyclopedia) Louis XII, 1462–1515, king of France (1498–1515), son of Charles, duc d'Orléans. He succeeded his father as duke. While still duke, he rebelled against the regency of Anne de Beaujeu and was impr...

(Encyclopedia) Sullivan, Louis Henry, 1856–1924, American architect, b. Boston, studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris. He is of great importance in the evolution...

(Encyclopedia) European Commission (EC), institution of the European Union (EU) invested with executive powers; it also is the main EU institution that initiates legislation. Located in Brussels, Belgium, it was fou...

(Encyclopedia)  CE5 Orders of architecture orders of architecture. In classical tyles of architecture the various columnar types fall, in general, into the five so-called classical orders, which are named Doric, ...

(Encyclopedia) Franche-Comté fräNsh-kôNtāˈ [key] or Free County of Burgundy, former province and former administrative region, E France. It is coextensive with Haute-Saône, Doubs, and Jura depts. Dôle was the...

(Encyclopedia) song, relatively brief, simple vocal composition, usually a setting of a poetic text, often strophic, for accompanied solo voice. The song literature of Western music embodies two broad classification...

(Encyclopedia) scale, in music, any series of tones arranged in a step-by-step rising or falling order of pitch. A scale defines the interval relationship of each tone to the others upon which the composition depend...

(Encyclopedia) Ojibwa chĭpˈəwäˌ, –wə [key], group of Native North Americans whose language belongs to the Algonquian branch of the Algonquian-Wakashan linguistic stock (see Native American languages). Their ...