Full Description
This book explores the history of keyboard instruments from their fourteenth-century origins to the development of the modern piano. It reveals the principles of their design and describes structural and mechanical developments through the medieval and renaissance periods and eighteenth- and nineteenth-centuries, as well as the early music revival. Stewart Pollens identifies and describes the types of keyboard instruments played by major composers and virtuosi through the ages and provides the reader with detailed instructions on their regulating, stringing, tuning and voicing drawn from historical sources.
Contents
1. Origins of keyboard instruments; 2. Principles of design and construction; 3. The Henri Arnaut manuscript; 4. The renaissance; 5. The Baroque period; 6. Invention of the piano; 7. The classical period; 8. The romantic era; 9. Stagnation and revival; Bibliography; Index.
