Related stringed keyboard instruments

Stringed keyboard instruments have sometimes been altered slightly for various reasons. For example, as early as the 16th century harpsichords were occasionally strung with gut rather than with metal wire in order to imitate the sound of a lute. Such gut-strung harpsichords, one of which was owned by J.S. Bach, were called in German Lautenwerck. The 18th-century tangent piano dispensed with pivoted hammers and instead had loose slips of wood or metal supported vertically in a rack above the backs of the keys; as a bar abruptly halted the motion of a key, its slip, or tangent, continued to rise to strike the strings and rebound. While inexpensive to make and easy to maintain, this simple mechanism allowed the player relatively little control of loudness and articulation.

Stringed keyboard instruments have as their principal defects an inability, first, to sustain a tone indefinitely and, secondly, to alter the tone’s loudness once a key has been depressed. Various attempts have been made to build stringed instruments sounded by other means than plucking or striking—including vibrating the strings by blowing a current of air past them, as in the piano éolien of 1837. The most successful of these other instruments adopted the principle of the hurdy-gurdy—i.e., vibrating the strings by friction.

An instrument of this kind appears in several diagrams in the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519). Some apparently highly successful ones (none of which, unfortunately, has survived) were made by the Nürnberg builder Hans Haiden, who described them at length in pamphlets published in 1605 and 1610. These instruments had a series of rosined wheels that rubbed the strings when they were drawn against them by the action of the keys. According to Haiden, the instrument, which he called a Geigenwerck, was capable of recreating the sound of an ensemble of viols and produced sounds of different loudness, depending on the force with which the keys were depressed.

In 1772 a device called a celestina was patented by Adam Walker of London; it employed a continuous horsehair ribbon (kept in motion by a treadle) to rub the strings of a harpsichord. Thomas Jefferson, who ordered a harpsichord equipped with a celestina in 1786, commented that it was suitable for use in slow movements and as an accompaniment to the voice. Similar devices, some using rosined rollers, were applied to pianos by various ingenious inventors throughout the 19th century.

The organ

An organ is a keyboard instrument in which sound is produced by pipes or reeds to which wind is supplied through a mechanism under the control of the organist. Pipe organs of the kind commonly encountered in Christian churches since the late Middle Ages are among the largest, most complicated, and most expensive musical instruments; they are products of sophisticated craftsmanship blended with artistry.

Reed organs such as the foot-pumped harmonium and melodeon, types developed and mass-produced during the 19th century, are simpler and cheaper to construct than pipe organs. They were widely used domestically and in small churches before becoming virtually obsolete by the mid-20th century, when electronic substitutes became commercially available. These electronic substitutes are versatile and relatively compact, though not necessarily inexpensive, and are chiefly useful in situations where tonal beauty, sensitivity, and imposing visual presence are not essential—for example, in popular music ensembles or homes. For more demanding purposes, electronic organs have given way in the late 20th century to even more versatile and portable synthesizers (see electronic instrument).

The enormous and varied pipe organ repertoire is especially rich in solo music intended for performance in churches, either during the liturgy or before and after services. The organ’s most familiar ensemble role is accompanying choral and congregational singing, a function in which the organist may also conduct the singers. Organ recitals, a favourite form of public entertainment before the advent of radio and recordings, most often take place in churches but also occur in municipal auditoriums, concert halls, and other secular buildings where organs have been installed.

Perhaps most important among such venues in the early 20th century were theatres where organs were used to accompany silent films. Theatre organs, while not generally very large, were highly innovative in tonal and mechanical design and made use of technological improvements that were slow to find their way into more conservative church organs. Among the special effects produced by theatre organs are colourful sounds made by percussion devices that act independently from the pipes.