Janko keyboard

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The Jankó keyboard is a musical keyboard layout for a piano designed by Paul von Jankó in 1882.[1]

Based on the premise that the hand can barely stretch more than a 9th on the piano, and that all scales are fingered differently, Jankó's new keyboard had two interlocking 'manuals' with three touch-points for each key lever. Instead of the traditional row of white and black keys, the keyboard has an array of keys.

Each vertical column of keys is a half step away from its neighboring columns, and on each horizontal row of keys the interval from one note to the next is a whole step. This key layout results in all chords and scales having the same "shape" on the keyboard with the same fingerings regardless of key, unlike a traditional keyboard.

For an 88 note (full size) keyboard, there would be 264 keys in total, with each note playable by 3 keys in vertical alignment. In the picture, the white keys have been coloured to show how the keys are interconnected.

At the time of its invention, the Jankó keyboard was hailed as revolutionary. Arthur Rubinstein said of the Jankó piano, "If I were to begin my career anew it would be on this keyboard." Franz Liszt said "This invention will have replaced the present piano keyboard in fifty years' time!"

Despite Liszt's prediction and Rubinstein's endorsement, the Jankó keyboard never caught on, mainly because few were prepared to relearn their repertoire on a new unestablished keyboard with totally new fingering. (It was a far more radical change for the pianist than, for example, for the clarinetist to change to the Boehm system.) Also, since cast-iron framed pianos were not very portable, Jankó pianos would not have been available for musicians on the move. It may have rivaled the traditional piano had it been invented at an earlier period when keyboards were more portable due to the lighter wooden frame, and when the traditional keyboard was not quite as favoured as it was after the romantic era.

"While guitars, violins and other string instruments are commonly played in various different tunings (thus altering the pattern of notes on the fingerboard), the cost of manufacturing keyboard instruments would have prevented manufacturers from taking the commercial risk with any new chromatic arrangement, especially since pianos have always been restrictive with regard to portability." -José A. Sotorrio

However, recently, due to the potential of portable MIDI and electronic keyboards, similar keyboard designs have since been proposed, most notably the Bilinear Chromatic Keyboard (by José A. Sottorio) and the Japanese Chromatone keyboard. These keyboards are often referred to as 6-6 keyboards due to the two levels of whole-tone scales.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Dolge, Alfred (1911). Pianos and Their Makers (book), (fulltext on Google Books link) 1, Covina/Dover, 78-83. ISBN 0486228568. 

[edit] External links