Reply to Brian re 31-tone piano

> Manuel, how far are the key rows situated from one another
> vertically?
> Could, for instance, Beethoven's Hammerklavier sonata be
> performed on it? How about highly chromatic polyphonic
> passages? Could you play Bach's Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue
> on this 1796 31-TET contraption?
> How easily can 31-TET chromatic passages be performed? Or
> is this keyboard you mentioned useful only for playing 12-out-of
> 31-TET?

The Hammerklaviersonate, unlikely. I don't know the exact key sizes.
The Harmoniehammerfluegel (not a harpsichord what Brian said) has rows
of short white keys which are above one another in a straight line.
It was not designed to play 31-tone music on! But it is not a very
practical key layout and for playing Bach's Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue
on it, one would benefit from having very long thumbs :-).
There were only two instruments like this built. The older one that
Mozart knew doesn't exist anymore I think. However had there been a
break-out of Harmoniehammerfluegelomanie, they could have of course
made substantial improvements. It has one feature to ease playing
and that is an extra sixth row. The keys of the bottom row are connected
to other keys. Shifting a chromatic semitone is very easy.
The layout of the five upper rows is as follows:

Fx Gx Ax Bx Cx Dx Ex Fx Gx Ax ...
F# G# A# B# C# D# E# F# G# A# ...
F G A B C D E F G A ...
Fb Gb Ab Bb Cb Db Eb Fb Gb Ab ...
Fbb Gbb Abb Bbb Cbb Dbb Ebb Fbb Gbb Abb ...

Beethoven and Haydn have tried it out. Perhaps we may conclude that
they weren't very impressed from the fact that they didn't write any
music for it.

Manuel Op de Coul coul@ezh.nl

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Date: Mon, 11 Nov 1996 14:03:53 -0800
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