Theatre In the religious festivals of ancient Greece, singing, dancing and acting in the honour of the gods led to the birth of the first theatre. The first plays were based on stories from the Bible, as the years went. by plays began to reflect all forms of life. The most famous writer of plays was William Shakespeare. He was born in England and wrote about 35 plays which included tragedies...

Ballet More than 300 years ago with the combination of dance, music and mime, began a form of dance called the Ballet. It was originally performed only by men and it was only in the late 17th century that women began performing ballet. In this form of dance each movement is planned’ in advance with the flow of music, this planning is called choreography. Ballet dancers wear special shoes which have...

Orchestras   An Orchestra is a Group of people playing different musical instruments. This group is led by a person who is called a Conductor. The need for orchestras arose when composers were not able to regenerate the music they had written, to fulfil this need, they began to write the scores separately for all the instruments so that the music could be reproduced as it had been written. Once the...

Composers A person who writes music is known as a composer. Today an incredible variety of music is available, what is amazing about this feat is the fact that a music composer has only about a hundred different musical notes from which he has to create this variety. If we play the same musical note on different musical instruments then each one would produce a different sound. This probably made this...

Films The French brothers Auguste and Louis Lumiere were the first men to show a short motion picture. It was from that day that movies came into being. Motion pictures completely changed the world of entertainment. The first movies were silent and as the film was shown a pianist provided music in accompaniment based on the scenes. In 1927 the first movie with sound was shown, it was called a ‘Talkie’....

Circus The circuses as we see today came into being in the second half of the 18th century. In those days the acts were limited to trick riding but as time went by more were added and the circuses became a proper show. Initially these circuses were held indoors but eventually large tents were used to provide mobility and the circuses were able to move from town to town. Today when...

Musical Instruments Various types of instruments are used to produce music. Some of these date back to the earliest civilizations  and but are still used today, the flute and conch shell are examples. Musical instruments with strings are called string instruments, these include Guitars, Violins, Cello etc. We have a lot of instruments where sound is produced with the help of wind, these are called Woodwind instruments, like the Flute, Oboe,...

Singing & Opera During the middle ages Priests and Monks sang holy songs as they wandered preaching religion. The capability in human beings to be able to modulate their voice has inspired many song writers and composers. Many men and women can sing at very high pitches while others are capable of producing deep and rich sounds. It was in the 17th century that opera originated in Italy and spread to...