Keyboard instrument

Keyboard instruments are musical instruments through which the player creates sound by striking keys or pushing buttons. The term keyboard instrument refers to a large family of musical instruments that includes everything from the piano to the organ, harpsichord, and clavichord. Keyboard instruments are among the most versatile of all musical instruments, primarily because they allow the musician to both play many notes at the same time and play notes at an especially rapid pace. Due to their versatility, keyboard instruments have enjoyed a prominent place in Western music for centuries. In fact, almost every significant composer since the sixteenth century has been a skilled keyboard performer, and many wrote music specifically for keyboard instruments. Historically, the most primitive keyboard instruments date back to antiquity, while the earliest stringed keyboard instruments first appeared in the fourteenth century. Since that time, keyboard instruments have grown to become some of the most commonly heard and easily identifiable of all musical instruments.

Brief History

The first keyboard instrument to be developed was the organ. In the third century BCE, Greek engineer Ctesibius (or Ktesibios) created a primitive organ in Alexandria, Egypt. Ctesibius's organ—called the hydraulis, or water organ—consisted of a series of pipes and a set of large keys. When a key was pressed, water inside the organ pushed air through the pipes and created sound. Although the hydraulis was quite limited as an instrument, the basic idea behind it proved popular. For the next several centuries, the Greeks and Romans worked to further develop the organ. After the fall of the Roman Empire, organ making all but completely stopped until the first simple pipe organs were produced in the tenth century. Organ making began to reach its zenith when the earliest full-sized permanent pipe organs began to appear in churches in the late Middle Ages.

In the fourteenth century, around the same time that the first great pipe organs were being built, another important breakthrough in the development of keyboard instruments was made. That breakthrough was the creation of the clavichord, the first stringed keyboard instrument. Resembling a smaller version of the modern piano, the clavichord was a percussive instrument that was played somewhat like the organ, but it used strings instead of pipes. When a musician pressed a key on the clavichord, a small metal blade subsequently struck a tuned string and created sound. Although it enjoyed only limited popularity on its own, the clavichord generated considerable interest in the idea of stringed keyboard instruments. Moreover, its debut set in motion a wave of innovation that resulted in the creation of numerous other instruments over the course of the centuries that followed. The ultimate product of this innovation was the modern piano. First created by Italian musical instrument expert Bartolomeo Cristofori in the eighteenth century, the piano was larger and louder than its predecessors were. In time, the piano came to be one of the most popular and widely played musical instruments ever created, and it was easily the most recognizable member of the keyboard instrument family.

Overview

The keyboard instrument family includes a wide variety of instruments that were created over the course of hundreds of years. In fact, many members of the keyboard instrument family are quite different from one another. Despite the fact that all its members use some sort of keyboard, the keyboard instrument family includes instruments that fall into four of the five main categories of musical instruments, including chordophones, aerophones, idiophones, and electrophones.

The best-known members of the keyboard instrument family are chordophones, instruments in which sound is produced through the vibration of strings. Within this category, there are two types of keyboard instruments. One type includes instruments that create sound with the help of mechanisms that strike the strings to cause vibrations. The modern piano is the chief example of this type of chordophone keyboard instrument. The other type includes instruments that use a mechanism that plucks the strings to cause vibrations. The harpsichord, which dates back to the late Middle Ages, is an example of this type of chordophone keyboard instrument. Others include the clavichord, virginal, and the spinet.

Aerophones are instruments that produce sound by causing a body of air to vibrate. In the keyboard instrument family, pipe organs are the most well-known aerophones. All pipe organs have some sort of air source that forces air into the pipes to cause vibrations that produce sound. Other examples of aerophone keyboard instruments include the harmonium, a small organ that uses reeds instead of pipes, and the accordion, a handheld instrument that also uses reeds and usually features a keyboard.

Idiophones are non-drum percussion instruments that are struck with a stick or mallet to produce sounds. Like traditional keyboard instruments, idiophones have their played parts arranged into a set of parallel rows. The most common types of idiophones are the xylophone and the marimba. The only true keyboard instrument that is classified as an idiophone is the celesta, a type of glockenspiel that has a piano-like keyboard and produces a bell-like sound when played.

Electrophones are electronic versions of traditional musical instruments. In the keyboard instrument family, electric organs and synthesizers are the most common electrophonic instruments. Electric organs typically replicate the sound of pianos, organs, and other traditional keyboard instruments. Synthesizers, on the other hand, can be used to produce a wider range of sounds, including sounds that are not necessarily musical at all. In addition to being able to reproduce the sounds of various keyboard instruments and other types of musical instruments, synthesizers can produce sound that no normal instrument could create. Because of their great versatility, synthesizers and electric organs are used in many types of music—including rock and jazz, among others—and are frequently used when traditional instruments are unavailable or too cumbersome to be practical. They are also used when a broader range of sounds are required.

Bibliography

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