Alex's+Info+on+the+Celesta

♪♫♪ The Celesta ♪♫♪

By Alex Volfman

The Celesta meaning heavenly in french is a struck idiophone percussion instrument operated by a keyboard which was invented in 1866 by a Parisian harmonium builder named Auguste Mustel. It works by keys that you press which are connected to hammers which strike a set of metal plates suspended over wooden resonators. Each of these plates makes a different sound over four or five octaves and will usually have a pedal to sustain or dampen the sound. The Celesta is usually used in symphony orchetras but is replaced with a more new german version because it is louder and has 5 octaves unlike the original. The Celesta is most famously remembered from the Nutcracker Ballet, Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, a song in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, for an introduction in one of Louis Armstrong's songs and has been used for a Pink Floyd song. The Celesta is quite capable of playing lots of different genres of music. It weighs 50 - 130 kilograms and is approximately 1 metre tall and wide with 60 cenitmetres depth. There are a lot of techniques used to play the Celesta which are the same as the piano. These techniques are rapid scales, glissandos, arpeggios, tremolos, octave tremolos and chords.



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A link to how the Celesta sounds: []

Bibliography "Celesta." //Vienna Symphonic Library//. N.p., N.d. Web. 10 Aug. 2010. . "Celesta." //Wikipedia//. N.p., N.d. Web. 6 Aug. 2010. .