The pianoforte and its music Author:Henry Edward Krehbiel Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Mediaeval Precursors WE have now before us the primary form of the instrument which, despite its simplicity, contested longest for supremacy with the pianofor... more »te after the latter had entered the arena. The mechanism of the monochord of the eleventh century was to all intents and purposes the mechanism of the clavichord (clams, key; chorda, a string), which might still have been seen occasionally in the music-loving houses of Germany in the middle of the nineteenth century. The key was a simple lever, one end of which received the pressure of the finger, while the other, extending under the strings of the instrument, was armed with a bit of metal placed upright and at right angles with the string. When the key was pressed down the blow dealt by this bit of metal, called a "tangent," set the string to vibrating, and at the same time measured off the segment of the string which had to vibrate to produce the desired tone. The tangent also acted as a bridge, and had to be held against the string so long as the tone was to continue. On its release the tone was immediately muffled, or damped, by strips of cloth which were intertwined with the wires at one end. Down to the end of the sixteenth century, though the strings were multiplied, the name monochord was still used, and, though the range of the instru- Dainper OwU. Tongua A Group of Clavichord Keys (From an instrument owned by the author) A Harpsichord Jack ment had reached twenty-four notes, the strings were still tuned in unison. Gradually, however, the strings for the acuter tones were shortened by a bridge placed diagonally across the sound-board, this contrivance being borrowed, it is said, from another keyed instrument, called the clavicymbal,which was, in effect, a triangular system of strings to which a ...« less