What key is a piano in?

An 88-key piano has seven octaves plus three lower notes (B, B flat and A) below the bottom C. It has 52 white keys and 36 black keys (sharps and flats), with each octave made up of seven white keys and five black keys.

classicfm.com - A standard piano has 88 keys. But why? - Classic FM

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A standard piano has 88 keys. But why?

By Maddy Shaw Roberts

A standard piano has 88 keys: 52 white and 36 black. But who decided this number would be the norm, and why?

Before the piano was invented, composers wrote a lot of music for the harpsichord, which has just 60 keys. This meant that everything they wrote was limited to the harpsichord’s five-octave range.

Then, the first piano was invented.

Around the year 1700, Bartolomeo Cristofori, a musical instrument technician from Padua, Italy, decided it was time to update the harpsichord – and he came up with a new keyboard instrument with a hammer mechanism. Cristofori was hired by the Florentine court of Grand Prince Ferdinando de’ Medici in 1688 to look after their harpsichords and, eventually, other instruments. A 1700 inventory of Medici instruments mentions an ‘arpicimbalo’ (lit. an instrument resembling a harpsichord) invented by Cristofori. The instrument had a brand-new hammer and damper mechanism, two keyboards and a range of four octaves (49 keys). Poet and journalist Scipione Maffei described it in 1711 as a ‘gravicembalo col piano, e forte’ (harpsichord with quiet and loud). It was here that the ‘pianoforte’ found its name.

Composers wanted to expand the range of their music

After word got out of Cristofori’s miraculous musical invention, composers started writing more and more music for the piano. But the instrument’s four-octave range was limiting. So, piano manufacturers designed new pianos with more keys, so that composers like Haydn and Mozart could write more challenging material for a fuller keyboard. By the time Romantic composers like Chopin and Liszt were writing music in the mid-1800s, pianos had up to seven octaves, allowing them to compose pieces with an even more ambitious range like the bafflingly virtuosic ‘La Campanella’.

Steinway created the 88-key piano

In the late 1880s, piano manufacturer Steinway created the 88-key piano. Other manufacturers followed suit, and Steinway’s model has been the standard ever since. An 88-key piano has seven octaves plus three lower notes (B, B flat and A) below the bottom C. It has 52 white keys and 36 black keys (sharps and flats), with each octave made up of seven white keys and five black keys.

Why did piano manufacturers stop at 88 keys?

Today’s composers usually write piano music that fits within the range of an 88-key model. Most piano makers also accept this as the limit, because anything outside is considered too high or low for the human ear. But there are a few exceptions. Stuart and Sons set a world record in 2018 when they created a nine-octave piano, with 108 keys. Bösendorfer sells 97-key pianos, whose nine extra keys are coloured black so the pianist can distinguish them from the standard 88. The keys are rarely used, but the extra bass strings add harmonic resonance that contributes to the rich, overall sound of the instrument. Here’s an idea of how they look on the rather grand Bösendorfer semi-concert grand piano, which has an extra four keys:

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What is Chopin's hardest piece?

25, No. 6, in G-sharp minor, is a technical study composed by Frédéric Chopin focusing on thirds, trilling them at a high speed. Also called the Double Thirds Étude, it is considered one of the hardest of Chopin's 24 Études, ranking the highest level of difficulty according to the Henle difficulty rankings.

en.wikipedia.org - Étude Op. 25, No. 6 (Chopin) - Wikipedia

Étude Op. 25, No. 6, in G-sharp minor, is a technical study composed by Frédéric Chopin focusing on thirds, trilling them at a high speed. Also called the Double Thirds Étude, it is considered one of the hardest of Chopin's 24 Études, ranking the highest level of difficulty according to the Henle difficulty rankings.[1]

Excerpt from the beginning of the Étude Op. 25 No. 6

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Technical difficulties [ edit ]

The most conspicuous difficulty is the trilling of thirds quickly, such as in the beginning of the piece. However, there are also other difficulties, such as playing a chromatic scale in thirds with one hand (m. 5), and alternating chords with fingerings 3–5 and 1–2 (m. 27). At one point (m. 31), both hands do this together in descending diminished seventh chords.[2]

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