Keyboard Instruments

Psaltery and Hammered Dulcimer

The psaltery is a medieval ancestor of the piano. The hand-held psaltery is like a small harp, or lyre, enclosed in a wooden box. The strings of the psaltery are exposed and plucked, rather than struck like the piano. The hammered dulcimer is also an ancestor of the piano. Not unlike the psaltery, the hammered dulcimer is an elongated lyre. However, the dulcimer has fewer strings, and these are struck rather than plucked. It is from these two early instruments, one plucked and one hammered, that the two dominant keyboards of the seventeenth and eighteenth century were developed.

Harpsichord and Clavichord

The harpsichord is basically a mechanical psaltery. Each key operates a mechanical device called a "jack." The plectrum-made of leather, a bird's quill, or, more recently, plastic-is attached to the jack by means of a pivoting "tongue." When the key is pressed down the jack is raised and, consequently, the plectrum plucks the string. When the key is released, the jack descends, and the plectrum makes contact with the string. This provokes the pivoting action of the tongue to tilt back and allow the plectrum to clear the string. A spring at the bottom of the tongue ensures that both tongue and plectrum return to their original vertical position. As this happens, a "damper," made of felt, stops the string from sounding. The first harpsichords appeared in fifteenth-century Italy, but it was in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that the instrument really flourished. The harpsichord, with its characteristically brilliant tinkling tone, provided the continuo for almost every combination of instruments in chamber music for approximately 200 years. It also accompanied opera, songs, and large-scale choral works. The Baroque repertory of harpsichord music is very extensive. Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725), J. S. Bach (1685-1750), George Frideric Handel (1685-1759), François Couperin (1668-1733), and many others composed major solo works for the instrument.

The clavichord is a direct descendent of the dulcimer. It is mechanically much simpler than the harpsichord, and its lack of volume limited it to chiefly domestic use. The keyboard is set perpendicular to the strings, which stretch across the length of the instrument. Each key is fitted with a brass implement called a "tangent." When the key is played, the tangent strikes the pair of strings above it causing the instrument to sound. The clavichord is often noted for its sensitive capabilities. The player has great control over the sound spectrum of the instrument: If the key is struck with great force, the tangent lifts the strings beyond their usual position, altering the pitch. Another expressive possibility is that of manipulating the tone after the initial striking of the key. While the tangent is still in contact with the strings and therefore able to influence the sound, an increase or decrease of pressure on the key can produce a number of effects. One possible result is a vibrato or "bebung;" another is the impression of a crescendo; yet another is a "portamento" or expressive connection between two different notes (often heard in string or wind instruments, as well as in singing). Bach taught his keyboard pupils on the clavichord, and one of the greatest compositions of the eighteenth century is the collection known as The Well-Tempered Klavier-forty-eight preludes and fugues that he wrote as study pieces to improve keyboard technique.

Both the harpsichord and the clavichord have severe limitations. The harpsichord's mechanism makes it incapable of any variation in volume or tone. The clavichord is responsive to the force or lightness with which the keys are struck, but it is too quiet. Composers longed for a keyboard instrument that was both loud enough and responsive to variations of touch.

Immediate Predecessors of the Modern Acoustic Piano

The solution to the problem was the work of a single man-Bartolomeo Cristofori (1655-1731), who worked with the instruments in the Medici court of Florence. Cristofori's piano was in many respects the instrument that is played today. If anything, it was more complex than the modern-day instrument. Cristofori solved the problem of controllable volume by having the hammers fly free when the key was struck-the harder the key was struck, the harder the hammer would hit the strings. The second problem he solved was that of returning the hammers to a playable position rapidly, thus enabling the same key to be struck repeatedly without having to wait for the hammer to fall back into place. This return factor is crucial to all keyboard instruments and is called the "escapement." The quicker and more efficient the escapement, the faster the player could play. The strings of the clavichord and harpsichord are less taut such that, when a free-flying hammer is applied at force to such a loose string, the string absorbs some of the force and the hammer is slow to rebound. Cristofori introduced thick, high-tension metal strings that the hammers would be able to bounce off quickly, and designed a frame massive enough to hold them and act as a resonator. He reduced as far as possible the distance the hammer had to travel to hit the string, and created a complex mechanism that allowed the hammer to fall back, even when the key was released. A lever system made it possible for the hammers to be quite light. This was important, because the machinery of Cristofori's piano caused the player to feel the weight of the hammer multiplied eightfold as he struck the keys. Cristofori's piano was more laborious to play than its predecessors. Many scholars use the terms fortepiano, hammerklavier, and hammerflügel (literally "winged hammers") to refer to the "piano" of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The history of the piano during this time was one of astonishing improvement, including the development of heavier and more agile hammers (capable of a wide range of volume and tone), and advances in the technology of thicker, more tense strings. Because of the demand from players and composers for ever better and more expressive instruments, piano-builders all over Europe and later the United States applied themselves to the problems of speed, volume, tone, and expressiveness. By the end of the eighteenth century, the piano was replacing the harpsichord. In the early nineteenth century, Beethoven began to compose the piano works that would result in the greatest series of sonatas ever written for the instrument. Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849), Robert Schumann (1810-1856), and the virtuoso Franz Liszt (1811-1886) made the piano the heart of nineteenth-century Romanticism.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, the upright piano was developed, and factory production made the instrument affordable to ordinary households. The piano became the center of domestic entertainment, and found its way into chapels, clubs, and cafés. Every major modern composer, including Béla Bartók (1881-1945), Sergey Prokofiev (1891-1953), and Dmitry Shostakovich 1906-1975), made the piano central to their work.

Modern Acoustic Piano

The modern piano is the most brilliantly versatile of all musical instruments. It has the broadest variety of tone and mood, from thunderous to lyrical, from commanding to delicate. It has the widest dynamic range, and is equally at home in a modest living room or a great concert hall. The piano is played in chapels and pubs and with orchestras and jazz ensembles. It has a vast solo repertoire that encompasses some of the greatest music ever written, and its place in chamber music is immutable. The piano has held a dominant position in music-making for over two hundred years. A look under the lid of the grand piano gives us a hint into its history. With its massive frame and its tautly-stressed strings, which form a triangle as they go from short to long, the piano resembles a harp laid on its side.

The piano was used in jazz and popular music, and when recording began in the early twentieth century, pianists became household names and international stars. Serge Rachmaninoff (1873-1943), Josef Hofmann (1876-1957), Alfred Cortot (1877-1962), Vladimir Horowitz (1903-1989), Sviatoslav Richter (1915-1997), and Alfred Brendel (b. 1931) are some of the greatest pianists of the twentieth century. James P. Johnson (1891-1955), Art Tatum (1910-56), Thelonious Monk (1917-1982), and Keith Jarrett (b. 1945) are among the masters of jazz piano.

Pipe Organ

The mightiest of all keyboards-indeed, the mightiest of all musical instruments-is the pipe organ. The first organ was built in Alexandria during the third century BC, when a Greek engineer called Ktesibius attached hydraulic bellows to a set of pan-pipes. The idea was developed first by the Greeks, then by the Romans, but when the Roman Empire collapsed in the fifth century AD, so did the craft of organ-making. It was revived in the tenth century, and early versions of the great pipe organ were modest affairs. The "portative organ," (so called because it was carried around the neck) was an upright arrangement of wooden pipes of varying lengths. It was played with one hand on the keyboard and the other operating a bellows. The sound it made was sweet and not unlike a consort of recorders. The larger "positive organ" was placed on the floor or on a heavy table.

It wasn't until the end of the Middle Ages that organs developed as large-scale permanent fixtures in churches and cathedrals. The great period for organ-building was the Baroque Era, roughly from 1600-1750. It was during this time that the greatest organ music was written by composers like Heinrich Schutz (1585-1672), Dieterich Buxtehude (ca. 1637-1707) and, pre-eminently, J.S. Bach. The "Toccata and Fugue in D minor" is one of the most stupendous pieces of music ever written.

The twentieth century saw a revival in organ music. Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) and Arvo Pärt (b. 1935) continued the sacred tradition, while composers as different as Peter Maxwell Davies (b. 1934), Philip Glass (b. 1937), and Fats Waller (1904-1943) took the ancient instrument in new directions.