Requinto
Encyclopedia
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
and Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
to mean a smaller, higher-pitched version of another instrument. Thus, there are requinto guitar
Guitar
The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
s, drum
Drum
The drum is a member of the percussion group of musical instruments, which is technically classified as the membranophones. Drums consist of at least one membrane, called a drumhead or drum skin, that is stretched over a shell and struck, either directly with the player's hands, or with a...
s, and several wind instrument
Wind instrument
A wind instrument is a musical instrument that contains some type of resonator , in which a column of air is set into vibration by the player blowing into a mouthpiece set at the end of the resonator. The pitch of the vibration is determined by the length of the tube and by manual modifications of...
s.
Wind instruments
Requinto was 19th century Spanish for "little clarinet". Today, the word requinto, when used in relation to a clarinet, refers to the E-flat clarinetE-flat clarinet
The E-flat clarinet is a member of the clarinet family. It is usually classed as a soprano clarinet, although some authors describe it as a "sopranino" or even "piccolo" clarinet. Smaller in size and higher in pitch than the more common B clarinet, it is a transposing instrument in E, sounding a...
, also known as requint in Valencian
Valencian
Valencian is the traditional and official name of the Catalan language in the Valencian Community. There are dialectical differences from standard Catalan, and under the Valencian Statute of Autonomy, the Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua has been established as its regulator...
language.
Requinto can also mean a high-pitched flute
Flute
The flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...
(akin to a piccolo
Piccolo
The piccolo is a half-size flute, and a member of the woodwind family of musical instruments. The piccolo has the same fingerings as its larger sibling, the standard transverse flute, but the sound it produces is an octave higher than written...
), or the person who plays it. In Galicia, the word may refer to a wooden fife
Fife
Fife is a council area and former county of Scotland. It is situated between the Firth of Tay and the Firth of Forth, with inland boundaries to Perth and Kinross and Clackmannanshire...
-like instrument held sideways.
Small guitar
The requinto guitar has six nylon strings with a scale length of 530 to 540 mm, which is about 18% smaller than a standard guitar scale.Requintos made in Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
have a deeper body than a standard classical guitar (110 mm as opposed to 105 mm). Requintos made in Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
tend to be of the same depth as the standard classical. Requinto guitars are also used throughout Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
.
Requintos are tuned: A-D-G-c-e-a.
The requinto was invented for use in the guitar orchestra, which usually consists of two requintos, two standard guitars, two bajos, and occasionally a bass or two. The bajos and requintos were designed to have a different tuning in relevance to the different tunings of string instruments in the string orchestra. The standard guitar would represent the viola, and in contrast, the requinto represents the violin and the baja represents the cello, whilst the bass is the bass.
Small drum
The requinto drum is used in the Puerto RicanMusic of Puerto Rico
The music of Puerto Rico has been influenced by the Spanish, African, Taíno Indians, France, and the United States, and has become very popular across the Caribbean and across the globe...
folk genre plena
Plena
Plena is a folkloric genre native to Puerto Rico. Its creation was influenced by African and Spanish music.-History:The music is generally folkloric. The music's beat and rhythm are usually played using hand drums called panderetas, but also known as panderos or pleneras. The music is accompanied...
, wherein it is a small conical hand drum that improvises over the other drum rhythms.