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MODULATION

Volume 17 · 147 words · 1810 Edition

the art of forming anything to certain proportion.

in reading or speaking. See Reading.

in Music, derived from the Latin modulari. This word in our language is susceptible of several different significations. It frequently means Module no more than an air, or a number of musical sounds properly connected and arranged. Thus it answers to what Mr Malcolm understands by the word tune, when he does not expressly treat concerning the tuning of instruments. Thus likewise it expresses the French word chant; for which reason, in the article Music, we have frequently expressed the one word by the other. But the precise and technical acceptation to which it ought to be confined, is the art of composing melody or harmony agreeably to the laws prescribed by any particular key, that of changing the key, or of regularly and legitimately passing from one key to another. See Music.