Voiced keys: the piano comes from the musical instruments of the ancient Greeks and gypsies

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The piano is a well-known and familiar instrument to all. However, of his progenitors, modern man knows only about the harpsichord. But the first musical instrument, from which the history of keyboards originates, appeared in the 3rd century AD.

Monochord is the ancestor of all keyboard instruments. It was originally a physical device that determines the relationship between the length of a string and its pitch. The ancient monochord consisted of one string, the length of which could be arbitrarily changed. The shorter the string, the higher the pitch.

From this simple one-stringed instrument, Aristide Quintilian created his own helicon in the 3rd century AD. Helikon Quintiliana had four strings tuned in unison, which made it possible to produce several sounds at the same time. They were fixed on the sides with fixed plates pressing on the strings from above. They were a kind of organ keys. However, the sound was born not only from pressing the "key", but also from hitting the string. Later, the "keys" were modified so that they simultaneously hit and hit the string.

Just one string

Over the centuries, there were more strings in the instrument, but out of habit they continued to call it the name of a one-string player (monochord). Music theorist Sebastian Virdung at the beginning of the 16th century explained this incongruity by the fact that, although there are many strings in the monochord, they all sound in unison. But later the instrument nevertheless received a different, more correct name - the clavichord.

By the beginning of the 16th century, this instrument already had 27 strings with 45 keys. And in 1778, an instrument appeared, made by the master Gass in Hamburg: on legs, with 38 double strings and 54 keys, trimmed with tortoiseshell. Its range was four and a half octaves, while the famous Guido d'Arezzo, the founder of the scale and notes, in the XI century had a monochord only two octaves.

The small number of strings, and moreover still tuned in unison, greatly limited the ability to play chords on the clavichord. It took a long time for every single sound to be produced from a separate string. And most likely, this innovation was borrowed for the clavichord from another ancient musical instrument - the cymbal with keys, or, as it was called otherwise, the harpsichord. Michael Pretorius, in his book Syntagma musicum (1614), describes the harpsichord as an oblong instrument, shaped like a bird's wing or a pig's snout, with a strong clear sound. Some authors believed that one of the ancestors of the harpsichord was cymbals, which were used by the gypsies from ancient times: a rectangular box with stretched strings, on which the player strikes with two special hammers.

Two in one

The harpsichord arose independently and differed significantly from the clavichord in that all the strings in it were free and made of different lengths and thicknesses, according to the tone they uttered. It is well known that the harpsichord was invented much later than the first clavichord was created.

The Germans called the harpsichords der Flugel (wing) because of their triangular shape. Tabletop harpsichords were called spinets, or, in the English manner, virginals. All instruments were usually richly decorated with painting and inlays, which gave them an extremely graceful appearance. But this musical device had one significant drawback: the harpsichords did not allow for a smooth playing, when one note seemed to flow into another. Their tone was the same volume and very abrupt.

The clavichord had other disadvantages and was only suitable for chamber music. Therefore, the subsequent efforts of the musical masters were aimed at creating an instrument that would combine the merits of the harpsichord and the clavichord. What only they did not come up with! The strings were made from brass, copper, steel, even from the guts of various animals. Hooks or feathers for strings were made of metal, wood, leather. They tried to borrow some of the solutions from the structure of the church organ. Including - a double keyboard. An interesting example of such an instrument was the harpsichord of Johann Sebastian Bach.

In 1511, a pedal was first attached to the harpsichord for the fullness and strength of bass notes. And in the 18th century, the Parisian master Pascal Tusquin created a special mechanism for pressing the strings. The result was appreciated by contemporaries, they were delighted with Tusken's instruments.

There were already queens of sound in the world - violins by Amati, Guarneri and Stradivari. And the musical quality of the harpsichord-clavichord still left much to be desired. It became clear that it was necessary to find a completely new principle of extracting sound from a string. It was then that the principle of striking the strings with hammers was applied to keyboard instruments. The first who began to work in this direction was the Florentine master Bartolomeo Cristofori. In 1709 he created an instrument called the gravecembalo col piano e forte. Subsequently, it began to be called simplistically - the piano.

Cristofori made sure that the strength of the sound depended directly on the strength of the strike on the key. Inside the instrument were deerskin-covered hammers and cloth dampers that rose when the corresponding key was pressed.

Queen of Sound

The first composer to compose the music for the instrument created by Bartolomeo Cristofori was Ludovico Gustini from Pistuí. He composed 12 sonatas entitled Sonate Da Cimbalo di piano e forte detto volgarmente di martelletti, which were published in 1732 in Florence.

The advantages of the piano were so great that soon in France and England, the harpsichord and clavichord faded into the background. True, in Germany the clavichord continued to be a favorite instrument for a long time. But first Mozart and then Beethoven preferred the piano. Since the 18th century, the piano has been divided into two varieties: the grand piano (with horizontal strings) and the piano (with vertical).

The next gigantic improvement in the piano was the invention of the rehearsal mechanism, which is used in all instruments today. It was invented by the Parisian piano manufacturer Sebastian Erard in 1823. Cross strings were introduced, which allowed for greater fullness of the sound. This discovery was reached simultaneously by the St. Petersburg master Lichtenthal and Henri Pape from Paris.

Further advances in musical technique have made it possible to achieve orchestral harmony and beautiful sound in the construction of modern pianos. New discoveries were made thanks to the titans of performing talent: Liszt, Rubinstein, Rachmaninov, Richter, Van Cliburn, Ashkenazi.

In 1850, about 33 thousand instruments were manufactured in Europe. And in 1910 - already 215 thousand in Europe and 370 thousand in the United States. Over time, having a piano in the home became a symbol of the wealthy middle class. Heinrich Steinweg and his sons played a central role in the 19th century - they founded a production called Steinway & Sons. Immigrants from Germany patented in the USA a cast iron frame for a piano and a cross-tension of strings for a piano. In 1878 Steinway patented the last change in the piano: the bending of the upper wing (lid) and the body, made of laminated puff maple.

Over the past decades, the center for grand pianos has shifted from Germany and America to Japan, South Korea and China. But the most famous are still the Steinway & Sons grand pianos, although recently they are also made at the Young Chang factories in South Korea. Well, since the eighties of the XX century, electric pianos have become attributes of home musical living rooms, as well as modern musicians.