Ever wondered why the piano has exactly 88 keys?
“Life is like a piano. What you get out of it depends on how you play it, wrote famous American musician Tom Lehrer. So true, isn’t it? Well, piano is one of the finest musical instruments that the world has ever experienced. You all know that piano has two kinds of keys, black and white and is played by alternating between them. But here’s what is interesting, unlike most key instruments that have a wide range of keys, piano has exactly 88 keys. Each of these keys represents a distinct note, thus offering the piano its versatile quality. Have you ever wondered why exactly 88 keys, not 50 or 100 or 44? The answer, as it turns out, is both historical and practical. Let’s figure it out together. Come, join the quest.
Piano: The descendent of medieval harpsichord
Not many know, but piano was inspired from a medieval European key instrument called harpsichord. It had 60 keys and produced sounds through a mechanical process. When the musician pressed a key, a corresponding plectrum (a small plastic piece of metal or ivory used to pluck strings in instruments) struck the tuned string, generating the sound.
Now, when piano was born in the early 18th century Italy in the hands of expert harpsichord maker Bartolomeo Cristofori, it too had 60 keys, representing five octaves (an octave in a musical instrument comprises of 12 notes). But he soon decided that he wanted to upgrade the instrument with a brand-new hammer and damper mechanism, two keyboards, and a range of four octaves (48 keys). This is when famous Italian poet and journalist Scipione Maffei described it as ‘gravicembalo col piano, e forte’, literally meaning “harpsichord with quiet and loud.”
Fun fact: This is how pianoforte; piano’s full name was conceived.
In case you are wondering, a shift from 60 to 48 keys was a move in the wrong direction, you are right! While the world now had a brand-new instrument, its four-octave range was limiting. This is when piano makers decided to take it further and construct pianos with more keys. Over the years, more and more pianos were manufactured, inspiring composers to write more and more music beyond the five-octave range and it wasn’t long before they did exactly what they had started out to do. In fact, this is when contemporary composers like Mozart and Chopin collaborated with piano makers to create piano with more keys and experiment with their music.
World welcomes Steinway’s 88-key piano
Over the course of history, pianos came in different shapes, sizes and number of keys and by the mid-19th century, they even evolved into full seven octaves. But the turning point came in 1880, when a popular piano manufacturer named Steinway pioneered the world’s first 88-key piano that became a universal standard ever since.
Interestingly, an 88-key piano features a full seven octaves plus four extra notes. Are you wondering what we are wondering? Why stop at 88? Well, because, it’s hard to compose music that goes beyond seven octaves as notes higher or lower are seemingly unsuitable for the human ear. Moreover, pianos with more number of keys can be longer, heavier and often expensive than the usual.
Modern-day piano
The piano that we see today has 52 white keys and 36 black keys. While the white keys represent the musical notes A to G, the black ones represent half-step intervals (better known as sharps and flats) between distinct notes. In case you haven’t guessed already, a team of seven white keys along with five black keys together form the 12 notes we know as octave.
Here's something more interesting. Even though the 88-key piano is a norm, there are still piano manufactures around the globe who are pushing its boundaries. For instance, an Australian piano manufacturing company called Stuart & Sons created a grand nine-octave piano featuring 108 keys in 2018. However, it is extremely heavy on the pockets and costs a whooping 300,000 Australian dollars.