Gillespie

Five Centuries of Keyboard Music

Part I

1. Stringed Keyboard Instruments:Their Origins and Development

Equichier

-The equichier is the oldest stringed keyboard instrument.

-Guillaume Machaut (ca1300-1377) listed an exchaquier d'Engleterre in an enumeration of musical instruments.

-The equichier (chessboard) was also called chekker in England and Schachtbrett in Germany.

-It's construction principle is also not known, it was popular as early as the fourteenth century.

Clavichord

-The clavichord is the oldest stringed keyboardinstrument about which there is specific information.

-Pythagoras used one of it's ancestors, the monochord, as early as the sixth century B.C.

-Another ancestor was the dulcimer, which still exists as the Hungarian cimbalon.

-One of the first pictoral representations of it was in the Weimarer Wunderbuch (1440).

-By the seventeenth century, the clavichord had achieved its classic form:

~the mechanism was enclosed in an oblong case three to four feet long, and two wide

~small metal tangents attached to the ends of the keys gently struck the strings from below

~one technique peculiar to this instrument was the Bebung or tremolo, which produced a slight vibrato or fluctuation in

pitch

Harpsichord

-The harpsichord is also called clavecin (French), cembalo or clavicembalo (Italian).

-The Ruckers family from Antwerp was the most important harpsichord builder.

-It's ancestors include the psaltery of the Middle Ages, which is similar to the modern zither.

-By the fifteenth century it was in today's form, and it was also shown in the Weimarer Wunderbuch.

-The strings were plucked by a quill.

-In the sixteenth century strings were added (e.g. a set of "four-foot" strings) and the range increased towards the

lower regions.

-Germans used the word "Flügel" to designate it.

-Between 1650 and 1750 the harpsichord varied from six to eight feet in length, and ideally had two keyborads

with each five octaves in range.

-Three or four sets of strings plucked by small quills or leather plectra on wooden jacks.

-Each set of strings varied in pitch and tone quality, and was operated by stops placed above the keyboard

(certain strings are being damped).

-A pedal keyboard was occasionally used with the harpsichord or with the clavichord.

-Venetian Swell: enabled the lid of the instrument to be opened and closed.

-The spinet is a modest harpsichord, the strings were strung at acute angles to the keyboard.

-The virginal had only one set of "eight-foot" strings which were strung parallel to the keyboard.

Pianoforte

-In 1709, the Florentine Bartolomeo Cristofori introduced the gravicembalo col piano e forte.

-The sound is produced by an escapement mechanism with hammers.

-The hammer is lifted by means of a lever (under-hammer).

-As the hammer returns to the bed, a damper rises to stifle the vibrating string.

-In 1720, Cristofori improved the striking action and added a side-slip, which is the origin of our soft or una

corda pedal.

-The German Gottfried Silbermann and his pupil Johannes Zumpe (in England) preserved Cristofori's invention.

-In 1716, the French Jean Marius designed models of harpsichords with hammers, probably influenced by the

German Pantaleon Hebenstreit, who invented the Pantaleon in 1705.

-In 1726, two Silbermann harpsichord s with hammers came to the attention of J.S. Bach at the Court of Saxony.

-Aided by Bach's helpful advice, Silbermann, in 1745, built the first pianoforte with a sonority perfectly equal

along its range of keys.

-Muzio Clementi (1752-1832) founded a piano factory in London and became one of the first pianists; he

published his first piano sonatas in 1770.

-After 1789, The German builder Johann Stein used a sostenuto foot pedal. Previous to this period, the builder

had employed knee stops.

-The square piano was first constructed in 1758 by Christian Friederici of Saxony.

-When the Clavicytherium was provided with an appropriate set of hammers (ca1740), it emerged as the upright

piano.

-Sebastien Erard (1752-1831) built his first piano in 1777.

-Ignac Pleyel (1757-1831), a German who owned a music publishing house in Paris, also began manufactoring

pianos there in 1809.

-The first American piano was made in 1775 by John Behrent in Philadelphia.

-In 1825, the American Alpheus Babcock invented the metal framework.

-In 1821, Pierre Erard secured a patent for a double-escapement mechanism.

-German piano builders included Blüthner and Bechstein.

-France: Pleyel, Erard, and Gaveau

-Austria: Bösendorfer

-America: Steinway and Baldwin