On the Origin of the Keyboard Mechanism in the Late Middle Ages

Abstract

History is full of instances of the transfer of techniques between two widely disparate branches of human activity. For example, the first truly refined trumpets and horns coincide with both the rise of new metallurgical techniques in the twelfth century and the exposure of the Crusaders to Saracen prototypes. The mining of copper and silver in Germany and Saxony was accompanied by the creation of skilled manpower capable of fabricating better musical instruments. Together with zinc ores from the Meuse Valley, this provided ample material for thinner trumpets of silver or brass, giving a far better tone quality to the sound. The art of repousse, modeling sheetmetal with hammer and punches, facilitated the production of instruments from a long strip of thin metal rolled over a rod and then riveted together.1 A similar connection between technological developments and musical instruments can be made for organ bellows during the Middle Ages. One of the intriguing problems still to be solved in the history of musical instruments is the origin of the keyboard mechanism. Within the short space of a century a number of keyboard-type instruments burst upon the medieval scene in considerable profusion. Neither their precise physiognomies nor their technological origins have been satisfactorily explained. How did the instrument-makers come by the necessary technology suddenly to develop, within the space of a few decades, it would seem, a series of keyboard instruments incorporating radically new principles of action and embodied in a rather ingenious system of connecting a key with a striking device which returned to its original position after hitting or plucking the string? The answer to this