Key moments in keyboard history
The earliest known piece of music written for keyboard dates from around 1360, about the time that the first keyboard instruments – the clavichord and the harpsichord – began to appear. It’s sobering to think that the classical composers of the Baroque era – notable examples of which include JS Bach, who composed some of the greatest keyboard music ever written – did not have access to the modern piano as we know it, or indeed any form of piano, as the earliest examples date from the late 18th century. Pipe organs became standard in churches, while string-based keyboard instruments like clavichords, harpsichords, spinets and virginals were fashionable for well-todo drawing rooms of the day.
The clavichord was a small, rectangular wooden instrument that contained a set of strings that were plucked with a small blade or ‘tangent’ whenever a key was pressed. The design of the keyboard itself evolved from having seven keys per octave to the current design that features 12, including the black notes, or ‘accidentals’ as they’re known.
The more sizeable harpsichord was largely an attempt to produce a greater volume of sound. Many harpsichords featured double keyboards, but still lacked the ability to vary the dynamics of the performance, due to the fact that the strings were plucked.
The forerunner of the modern piano was invented around 1780, mainly in response to this lack of expressiveness. It featured what we know today as a velocity-sensitive keyboard: the player could vary the volume depending on how hard the keys were struck, and the strings were whacked with hammers rather than being plucked. However, these early pianos had light wooden frames, lightly-sprung key action, leather hammers and short sustain; compared to the iron-framed, weighted-action, felthammered, long-sustaining version of the instrument we know today.
Piano power
“Early synths played a note at a time”
The piano was a big hit with performers and composers of the time, pushing clavichords and harpsichords to the sidelines. It wasn’t until the 20th century and the advent of electricity that we started to see new instruments and innovations such as the Hammond tonewheel organ, the Ondes Martenot (a sort of early keyboard synthesiser/theremin hybrid), the Fender Rhodes and Wurlitzer electric pianos, the Mellotron (a tape-based precursor of the modern sampling keyboard) and early synthesisers such as the EMS VCS3, Roland Modular and Moog Minimoog. These early synths were monophonic – ie, only able to play one note at a time, which was great for basslines and solos – but it wasn’t until the Yamaha CS80 and Moog Polymoog appeared in 1976 that synths became the mainstay of twohanded keyboardists the world over, culminating in iconic milestones of the digital era such as Yamaha’s DX7 and the Roland D-50.
Today’s keyboardists have a huge list of influential players to take inspiration from, going back almost 100 years to the jazz greats of the 1920s, through the rock ’n’ roll era of the 1950s, 70s prog rock and beyond. Here’s a timeline of some of the great players from the last century – check out some of these guys’ work and you’ll definitely pick up plenty of pointers.