Piano
A standard piano has 88 keys: 52 white and 36 black. But who decided this number would be the norm, and why?
Before the piano was invented, composers wrote a lot of music for the harpsichord, which has just 60 keys. This meant that everything they wrote was limited to the harpsichord’s five-octave range.
Then, the first piano was invented.
Around the year 1700, Bartolomeo Cristofori, a musical instrument technician from Padua, Italy, decided it was time to update the harpsichord – and he came up with a new keyboard instrument with a hammer mechanism.
Cristofori was hired by the Florentine court of Grand Prince Ferdinando de’ Medici in 1688 to look after their harpsichords and, eventually, other instruments.
A 1700 inventory of Medici instruments mentions an ‘arpicimbalo’ (lit. an instrument resembling a harpsichord) invented by Cristofori. The instrument had a brand-new hammer and damper mechanism, two keyboards and a range of four octaves (49 keys).
Poet and journalist Scipione Maffei described it in 1711 as a ‘gravicembalo col piano, e forte’ (harpsichord with quiet and loud). It was here that the ‘pianoforte’ found its name.
Composers wanted to expand the range of their music
After word got out of Cristofori’s miraculous musical invention, composers started writing more and more music for the piano.
But the instrument’s four-octave range was limiting. So, piano manufacturers designed new pianos with more keys, so that composers like Haydn and Mozart could write more challenging material for a fuller keyboard.
By the time Romantic composers like Chopin and Liszt were writing music in the mid-1800s, pianos had up to seven octaves, allowing them to compose pieces with an even more ambitious range like the bafflingly virtuosic ‘La Campanella’.
Steinway created the 88-key piano
In the late 1880s, piano manufacturer Steinway created the 88-key piano. Other manufacturers followed suit, and Steinway’s model has been the standard ever since.
An 88-key piano has seven octaves plus three lower notes (B, B flat and A) below the bottom C.
It has 52 white keys and 36 black keys (sharps and flats), with each octave made up of seven white keys and five black keys.
Why did piano manufacturers stop at 88 keys?
Today’s composers usually write piano music that fits within the range of an 88-key model. Most piano makers also accept this as the limit, because anything outside is considered too high or low for the human ear.
But there are a few exceptions. Stuart and Sons set a world record in 2018 when they created a nine-octave piano, with 108 keys.
Bösendorfer sells 97-key pianos, whose nine extra keys are coloured black so the pianist can distinguish them from the standard 88. The keys are rarely used, but the extra bass strings add harmonic resonance that contributes to the rich, overall sound of the instrument.
Here's a brief overview of musical notes, along with some information about octaves and half steps:
1. **Natural Notes**:
In classical and popular music, there are twelve different notes. Seven of these notes are called the **natural notes**, represented by the white keys on the piano. The remaining five notes are represented by the black keys. The natural notes are named after the first seven letters of the alphabet: A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. The piano provides a visual overview of these notes, with C as the starting point. Each note appears in several places on the piano; moving to the right indicates higher pitches, while moving to the left indicates lower pitches.
2. **Middle C**:
The middlemost C on a standard piano with 88 keys is called **middle C**. It serves as an essential reference point for musicians. Using middle C as a reference makes it easier to play the correct version of a note, whether high or low.
3. **Octaves**:
A standard piano has seven to eight versions of each note. The distance from any note to the nearest lower or higher version of the same note is called an **octave**. Octaves allow us to distinguish between low and high versions of a note.
For example, here are some common octaves and their corresponding notes:
- Octave 7 (C7 to B7): Very high
- Octave 6 (C6 to B6): High
- Octave 5 (C5 to B5): Moderately high
- Octave 4 (Middle C, C4 to B4): Medium
- Octave 3 (C3 to B3): Moderately low
- Octave 2 (C2 to B2): Low
- Octave 1 (C1 to B1): Very low
4. **Half Steps and Whole Steps**:
The distance between each of the twelve different notes is called a **half step** or **semitone**. It's equivalent to moving from one white or black key on the piano to the key immediately to its right or left. The distance between natural notes E and F and between natural notes B and C is a half step (1), while all other keys have a distance of two half steps (2).
- The distance between natural notes E and F and between natural notes B and C is a half step.
- The distance between all other keys is two half steps.
Feel free to explore these musical concepts further! 🎵 🎹
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