Organs - The First Type of Piano

Although the piano is clearly a stringed instrument, in order to trace the period leading up to its development we must look back to before the birth of Christ to the godfarher of all keyboad instruments - the organ. The earliest know organ was the hydraulis, which is purported to have been invented in the region of 300b.c. by Ctesibius of Alexandria. The instrument came about from an experiment to apply a mechanical wind supply to a giant set of panpipes.

However, it was in Europe that the organ evloved, and where from the eight century it exerted a strong influenceover the early development of Western music. Strangely, though, it was not for another five years that the "chromatic" keyboard was developedand applied to the organ. Initially, the notes of the keyboard were designed aroundthe modes that were used as the basis of music at this time, meaning that the early organs only used what we now call the "white notes". The accidentals (the "black" notes) were gradully added to reflect changes in approach to music composition. Since the fourteenth century, keyboards have remained much the same - except for the colour, which at the time was the reverse of the black and white keys which we are familiar with today.