diapason
Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
- noun A full, rich outpouring of harmonious sound.
- noun The entire range of an instrument or voice.
- noun Either of the two principal stops on a pipe organ that form the tonal basis for the entire scale of the instrument.
- noun The interval and the consonance of an octave.
- noun A standard indication of pitch.
- noun A tuning fork.
Examples
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Drum, clarion, trumpet, and cymbal rung forth at once, and the deep and regular shout, which for ages has been the English acclamation, sounded amidst the shrill and irregular yells of the Arabs, like the diapason of the organ amid the howling of a storm.
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The next discovery was that two strings of the same substance and tension, the one being double the length of the other, gave the diapason-interval, or an eighth; and the same was effected from two strings of similar length and size, the one having four times the tension of the other.
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Even when slavery was first introduced into this country, Fate had written upon the walls of the nation that it “must go,” and go it must, as the result of wise statesmanship or amid the smoke of battle and the awful “diapason of cannonade.”
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Then two long sweeps were manned amidship, with two sturdy fellows to tug at each; and the quiet evening air led through the soft rehearsal of the water to its banks the creak of tough ash thole-pins, and the groan of gunwale, and the splash of oars, and even a sound of human staple, such as is accepted by the civilized world as our national diapason.
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Traffic and noise increase and spread; beginning at the factories, the wharves, the shipyards, and the sawmills, they mingle with wagon rumblings and human voices; the air is rent by steam-whistles whose agonising wails rise skyward, meeting and blending above the large squares in a booming diapason, a deep-throated, throbbing roar that enwraps the entire city.
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The little doctor knew me, and thinking me, I suppose, a person of consequence, removed his hands from behind him, suffering the skirts of his coat to fall forward, and with great celerity and gravity made me a low but important bow; then choosing more particularly to make my acquaintance he further advanced, and with another reverence he introduced himself as Doctor Jolks, in a murmured diapason.
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She watched wonderingly as the fingers of his left hand crawled like a powerful and menacing spider up and down the diapason.
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The ebony diapason was marked at the fifth, seventh, and twelfth frets with a pattern of ivory dots, and the rounded belly of it was composed of tapering strips of close-grained maple, separated skilfully by thin fillets of rosewood.
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A weird diapason whispered through this forest of statues.
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Of these numerical relationships the easiest for the layman to grasp were the Pythagorean intervals of diatesseron (fourth), diapente (fifth), and diapason
Note
The word 'diapason' comes from Greek roots meaning 'through all (notes)’.
