Enharmonic keyboard
An
enharmonic keyboard is a
musical keyboard based on an
enharmonic scale. At the very least such keyboards will have 17
keys per
octave, and
enharmonically equivalent
notes will have different
pitches. A typical keyboard will have
one key for, for instance, C sharp and D flat, but a basic 17 key enharmonic keyboard will have
two different keys for these notes.
One of the first instruments with an enharmonic keyboard was the
archicembalo built by
Nicola Vicentino, an
Italian Renaissance composer and
music theorist. The archicembalo had 36 keys per octave and was very well suited for
meantone temperament. Vincentino also built an organ equipped with an enharmonic keyboard, the archiorgano.
Many instruments with enharmonic keyboards were built during the Renaissance and
Baroque 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
harpsichord with 77 keys for 4 octaves (19 keys per octave plus one extra C), and
Friedrich Suppig, who in 1722 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 thirds.
With the advent of
microtonal music in the
20th century, instruments with enharmonic keyboards became more fashionable, as did
early and
Baroque music 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.
*
equal temperament*
meantone temperament*
musical tuning*
Janko keyboard* Fredrich Suppig,
Labyrinthus musicus,
Calculus musicus, facsimile of the manuscripts. Tuning and Temperament Library volume 3, edited by Rudolf Rasch. Diapason Press, 1990.
