The+Keyboard.+Introduction

Many young people play a musical instrument. Do you? If you do, quite likely you play an electronic instrument, like an electric guitar or an electronic keyboard. Or do you practice on a traditional instrument, a flute, a trumpet, a violin, or another keyboard instrument: a piano? The unique feature of keyboard instruments such as the piano is the possibility to play several notes at the same time, up to ten keys with all fingers of both hands (or even more if you also use your elbows, like Little Richard used to do). You can easily strike chords on a keyboard instrument (you also can on a string instrument like the violin or the guitar). On a keyboard you can even play two or more melodies at the same time. And when the tones of these simultaneous melodies fit well together you have a pleasing, a ‘harmonious’ result. The various ‘voices’ of the piece are well matched. Such music is called ‘polyphonous’ (‘poly is ancient Greek for ‘many’ and ‘phone’ means ‘voice’). Polyphony emerged in Europe about a thousand years ago, when religious chants were performed by several singers. Initially, one voice would sing the main melody while the other voice or voices sang along but with a fixed interval, a fourth or a fifth or an octave, removed from the lead singer. Listen for instance to a Bomba written by Mateo Flecha (1481-1553), composer born in Catalonia, Spain. True polyphony developed when the other voices followed melodic lines that differed from the first voice, but still matched it in a harmonious manner. It was in 1364 the French composer and priest Guillaume de Machaut composed the first polyphonic setting of the mass called La Messe de Nostre Dame. This was the first time that the Church officially sanctioned polyphony in sacred music. ‘Canons’ are a very simple form of polyphony, one which everyone knows. The melody is constructed so that one voice can start. After it has sung the first line, the second voice joins in with the first line while the first voice performs the second line of the melody, and by the time it has reached the third line a third voice joins in with the first line. So, even though only one melody is actually performed, the different voices sing different parts of it at the same time, and yet the overall effect is pleasing to the ear: ‘in harmony’. No doubt, you too know a canon… find some classmates and go ahead, perform it. You never knew you too could be ‘polyphonous’. Go ahead and record your performance, load it up to our website so that students elsewhere can watch and hear you do it. European concert music has remained polyphonous until late in the twentieth century. In fact, polyphony is the hallmark of classical music as it flourished all over Europe and then spread to other parts of the earth in the past century or so. The instrument most suitable to perform polyphonous music is of course the piano since you can play several notes at the same time and thus perform different voices synchronously. Organs are also well-suited for polyphonous music, as they too are keyboard instruments (they used to be very popular, especially in religious households to play church hymns and sing along). Symphony orchestras perform polyphonous music. The many different instruments can play the different voices of the composition. You might even look at the symphony orchestra as one huge instrument, one which takes a hundred musicians to play, under the leadership of the director. European concert music spread across the continent and became a feature of bourgeois family life through the piano, which allowed people to perform quite complicated musical pieces in their own home. The piano is a delicate and intricate machine. Basically, it contains a large number of strings, one for each note. The strings are touched by small hammers, one for each string. The hammers are operated by the keys on the keyboard, one for each hammer, through a complicated mechanism. The keys on the keyboard have retained the same layout for over six centuries. But the mechanism that transmits the player’s touch to the hammer and then to the string took almost a thousand years to develop. At the same time in history, or even earlier, organ players sometimes added a second or third voice to the main melody, initially playing with fixed intervals and gradually increasing the variation between the several voices. Just like the singers did. Composers began to write music for several voices. In the course of five centuries this polyphonous music became increasingly complicated and sophisticated, with up to eight voices at the same time. Music became somewhat like a science, an audible counterpart of mathematics.
 * The Piano/Keyboard **

This diagram underscores the exponential nature of octaves, when measured on a linear frequency scale. Source: Wikipedia