An enharmonic keyboard is a

musical keyboard A musical keyboard is the set of adjacent depressible levers or keys on a musical instrument. Keyboards typically contain keys for playing the twelve notes of the Western musical scale, with a combination of larger, longer keys and smaller, sho ...

, where

enharmonic In music, two written notes have enharmonic equivalence if they produce the same pitch but are notated differently. Similarly, written intervals, chords, or key signatures are considered enharmonic if they represent identical pitches that ar ...

ally equivalent notes do not have identical pitches. A conventional keyboard has, for instance, only one key and pitch for and , but an enharmonic keyboard would have two different keys and pitches for these notes. Traditionally, such keyboards use black split keys to express both notes, but ''diatonic'' white keys may also be split. As an important device to compose, play and study

music Music is the arrangement of sound to create some combination of Musical form, form, harmony, melody, rhythm, or otherwise Musical expression, expressive content. Music is generally agreed to be a cultural universal that is present in all hum ...

, enharmonic keyboards are capable of producing microtones and have separate keys for at least some pairs of not equal pitches that must be enharmonically equal in conventional keyboard instruments.

The term (divergence of scholar opinions)

"Enharmonic keyboard" is a term used by scholars in their studies of enharmonic keyboard instruments ( organ,

harpsichord A harpsichord is a musical instrument played by means of a musical keyboard, keyboard. Depressing a key raises its back end within the instrument, which in turn raises a mechanism with a small plectrum made from quill or plastic that plucks one ...

piano A piano is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when its keys are depressed, activating an Action (music), action mechanism where hammers strike String (music), strings. Modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys, tuned to a c ...

, harmonium and

synthesizer A synthesizer (also synthesiser or synth) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis a ...

) with reference to a keyboard with more than 12 keys per

octave In music, an octave (: eighth) or perfect octave (sometimes called the diapason) is an interval between two notes, one having twice the frequency of vibration of the other. The octave relationship is a natural phenomenon that has been referr ...

. Scholarly consensus about the term's precise definition currently has not been established. The New Grove Dictionary (2001) defines an "enharmonic keyboard" as "a keyboard with more than 12 keys and sounding more than 12 different pitches in the octave", however the article does not specify the origin of the term. suggested applying the term "enharmonic keyboard" more precisely, to keyboards with 29–31 keys per octave. , in his turn, raised the objection that this use of the term is contrary to early theoretical works. Some modern scholars .g. describe instruments with such keyboards as ''split-keyed instruments''.

Known realizations

One of the first instruments with an enharmonic keyboard was the archicembalo built by

Nicola Vicentino Nicola Vicentino (1511 – 1575 or 1576) was an Italian music theory, music theorist and composer of the Renaissance music, Renaissance. He was one of the most progressive musicians of the age, inventing, among other things, a microtonal keyb ...

, an

Italian Renaissance The Italian Renaissance ( ) was a period in History of Italy, Italian history between the 14th and 16th centuries. The period is known for the initial development of the broader Renaissance culture that spread across Western Europe and marked t ...

composer and music theorist. The archicembalo had 36 keys per octave and was very well suited for

meantone temperament Meantone temperaments are musical temperaments; that is, a variety of Musical tuning#Tuning systems, tuning systems constructed, similarly to Pythagorean tuning, as a sequence of equal fifths, both rising and descending, scaled to remain within th ...

. Vicentino also had made one ''arciorgano'' in Rome and one ''arciorgano'' in Milan. Both pipe organs were equipped with enharmonic keyboards, like those of the archicembalo. None of Vicentino's instruments survive. Many instruments with enharmonic keyboards were built during the Renaissance and

Baroque The Baroque ( , , ) is a Western Style (visual arts), style of Baroque architecture, architecture, Baroque music, music, Baroque dance, dance, Baroque painting, painting, Baroque sculpture, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished from ...

eras. Most composers and performers who used these instruments are virtually unknown today. Among them are Johann Kaspar Kerll's teacher, Giovanni Valentini, who played a

with 77 keys for 4 octaves (19 keys per octave plus one extra C), and Friedrich Suppig, published one of the definitive works for an instrument with an enharmonic keyboard: The ''Fantasia'' of the ''Labyrinthus Musicus'', which is a multi-sectional composition that makes use of all 24 keys and is intended for a keyboard with 31 notes per octave and pure

major third In music theory, a third is a Interval (music), musical interval encompassing three staff positions (see Interval (music)#Number, Interval number for more details), and the major third () is a third spanning four Semitone, half steps or two ...

s. With the advent of microtonal music in the 20th century, instruments with enharmonic keyboards became more fashionable, as did early and

Baroque music Baroque music ( or ) refers to the period or dominant style of Classical music, Western classical music composed from about 1600 to 1750. The Baroque style followed the Renaissance music, Renaissance period, and was followed in turn by the Class ...

for such instruments. For performance and recording purposes, either old instruments are reconstructed or two recordings of two differently tuned instruments are combined in one, thus creating an effect of an enharmonic keyboard. Isomorphic note-layouts are a class of enharmonic keyboard, opened in 1721 by Ivo Salzinger's ''Tastatura nova perfecta'', Germany. One isomorphic note-layout, the Wicki, when mapped to a hexagonal array of buttons, is particularly well-suited to the control of enharmonic scales. The orientation of its hexagonal columns of

s and tempered

perfect fifth In music theory, a perfect fifth is the Interval (music), musical interval corresponding to a pair of pitch (music), pitches with a frequency ratio of 3:2, or very nearly so. In classical music from Western culture, a fifth is the interval f ...

s place all the notes of every well-formed scale – pentatonic (

cardinality The thumb is the first digit of the hand, next to the index finger. When a person is standing in the medical anatomical position (where the palm is facing to the front), the thumb is the outermost digit. The Medical Latin English noun for thum ...

5),

diatonic Diatonic and chromatic are terms in music theory that are used to characterize scales. The terms are also applied to musical instruments, intervals, chords, notes, musical styles, and kinds of harmony. They are very often used as a pair ...

(cardinality 7), chromatic (cardinality 12), and enharmonic (cardinality 19) – in a tight, contiguous cluster. The notes of each progressively-higher cardinality are appended to the outer edges of the lower-cardinality scale, such that each well-formed scale's note-controlling buttons are embedded, unchanged, within the set of those controlling the higher-cardinality scales. Hence, the skills gained in learning to play chromatic music on a chromatic Wicki keyboard can be applied, without modification, to performance on an enharmonic Wicki keyboard. Isomorphic keyboards were not discovered until the latter half of the 19th century.

Notes

Citations

References

* * * * * * * * * *

The term (divergence of scholar opinions)

Known realizations

See also

Notes

Citations

References

Further reading