Page 60 - ESSENTIAL LISTENING TO MUSIC

Figure 3.8
A three-manual (three-keyboard) pipe organ with only small pipes visible. Notice the stops (small circular objects on either side of the manual keyboards) and the pedal keyboard below.<
Figure 3.9
A two-manual (two-keyboard) harpsichord built by Pascal Taskin (Paris, 1770), preserved in the Yale University Collection of Musical Instruments, New Haven, Connecticut
Keyboard Instruments
Keyboard instruments, which are unique to Western music, boast highly intricate mechanisms. They are all “fixed pitch” instruments—you don’t “tune up” before you play. The pipe organ (Figure 3.8), the most complex of all musical instruments, developed during the late Middle Ages in the context of the religious music of the Western church. When the player depresses a key, air rushes into a pipe, thereby generating sound. The pipes are arranged in separate groups called ranks, each producing a full range of musical pitches with one particular timbre (the sound
of the trumpet, for example). When the organist wants to add a distinc- tive musical color to a piece, he or she simply pulls a knob, called a stop. The most colorful, forceful sound occurs when all the stops have been activated (thus the expression “pulling out all the stops”). The several keyboards of the organ make it possible to play several colorful lines at once, each with its own timbre. There is even a keyboard for the feet to play. The largest fully functioning pipe organ in the world is the Wannamaker Organ in the Macy’s Center in Phila- delphia. It has 463 ranks and 28,604 pipes activated by six
keyboards.
The harpsichord (Figure 3.9) appeared in northern
Italy as early as 1400 but reached its heyday during the
Baroque era (1600–1750). When a key is depressed, it drives a lever upward that in turn forces a pick to pluck a string, thereby creating a bright, jangling sound. The harpsichord has one important shortcoming, however: the lever mechanism does not allow the performer to control the force with which the string is plucked. Each string always sounds at the same volume, no
matter how hard the player strikes the key.
38 chapter three color, texture, and form
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Photo Joseph Szaszfai/Carl Kaufman/Courtesy Yale University Collection of Musical Instruments
© John Haskey