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Reconstruction of a tangent piano according to historical examples by Dierik Potvlieghe. The tangent piano is a very rare keyboard instrument that resembles a harpsichord and early pianos in design. It normally features five octaves of keys and the strings are acted upon by narrow wooden or metal slips when the keys are depressed.
The most common of these are the piano, organ, and various electronic keyboards, including synthesizers and digital pianos. Other keyboard instruments include celestas, which are struck idiophones operated by a keyboard, and carillons, which are usually housed in bell towers or belfries of churches or municipal buildings. [1]
Perhaps the most celebrated composers who wrote for the harpsichord were Georg Friedrich Händel (1685–1759), who composed numerous suites for harpsichord, and especially J. S. Bach (1685–1750), whose solo works (for instance, The Well-Tempered Clavier and the Goldberg Variations), continue to be performed very widely, often on the piano.
Keyboard instruments are not usually a standard members of a 2010-era orchestra or concert band, but they are included occasionally. In orchestras from the 1600s to the mid-1750s, a keyboard instrument such as the pipe organ or harpsichord was normally played with an orchestra, with the performer improvising chords from a figured bass part.
Pressing a key on the keyboard makes the instrument produce sounds—either by mechanically striking a string or tine (acoustic and electric piano, clavichord), plucking a string (harpsichord), causing air to flow through a pipe organ, striking a bell , or activating an electronic circuit (synthesizer, digital piano, electronic keyboard).
Keyboard works (Klavierwerke) by Johann Sebastian Bach traditionally refers to Chapter 8 in the BWV catalogue or the fifth series of the New Bach Edition, [1] both of which list compositions for a solo keyboard instrument like the harpsichord or the clavichord.
According to piano historian Arthur Loesser (1954), the first spinet piano was offered to the public in May 1935, by an American manufacturer Loesser does not identify. However, according to the Blue Book of Pianos, this manufacturer was Winter and Company (which eventually became part of the Aeolian-American Corporation ) [ 7 ] who sold this ...
Throughout the Baroque era, the harpsichord was one of the main instruments used in chamber music. The harpsichord used quills to pluck strings, and it had a delicate sound. Due to the design of the harpsichord, the attack or weight with which the performer played the keyboard did not change the volume or tone.