PIANISTS FOR ALTERNATIVELY SIZED KEYBOARDS

Today’s keyboard size dates back to about 1880, when male virtuosi were still actively involved with, and being promoted by, piano manufacturers. To produce a bigger sound in large concert halls, piano design started to incorporate cross-stringing and bigger soundboards, incorporating wider keys in order to minimise the angle of key flare.

As virtuosi performers  were large-handed males (such as Paderewski and Anton Rubinstein), the slightly wider keys would not have presented a problem. The basic cross-strung design from that time, with its ‘standard’ 6.5 inch octave keyboard, has since been adopted by virtually all acoustic piano manufacturers, in both grands and uprights. Digital piano and keyboard manufacturers have simply followed suit.

Other changes during the late 19th and early 20th centuries include the use of cast iron frames which led to an increase in string tension resulting in heavier and deeper action, the lengths of keys, the height of blacks over whites, and the vertical dip of the black and white keys. As the piano evolved, the need for standardisation increased as pianists (professional and amateur) started to travel outside their own communities, hence the ‘one size fits all’ approach that has prevailed over the last century.

‘The size of the piano also affected boys and girls differently. In the eighteenth century the piano had been no bigger than a harpsichord and often smaller. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, though – with pedals appearing at floor level, the keyboard expanding in both directions, and passages in octaves appearing regularly in the newest repertory – the piano suddenly became, for children who learned it, a daunting daily reminder of how far they had to go to measure up in the adult world. Children grow at different rates, and some grow into the piano earlier than others, but many more girls than boys have felt they would never have the instrument – or the part of the repertory created by big-handed men – within their reach. Since the instrument itself has been unyielding in size, the pianist’s seat has been the principal means of helping children, or players of different sizes generally, adapt to it.’  ….Parakilas et al., 1999, Piano Roles, p.151.

Dr Ralph Manchester has summarised the problem of the ‘one size fits all’ approach:

‘Musical instrument design has evolved over time, and that is part of the problem we now face. In most cases, the designers of those instruments were men (rather than women) who lived and worked a few decades to a few centuries ago, mainly in Europe. They were likely to design instruments that they could use and that would be favored by the majority of musicians back then, who were mostly male. Today, musicians comprise a more diverse group with far more women, relatively few persons of European descent, and more persons with various physical disabilities. Nonetheless, we still play instruments that were designed for a fairly homogenous group of performers.’ (Editorial, MPPA, Dec 2006.)

Since 1880, there has been an enormous increase in women undertaking tertiary level training with the aim of pursuing performing careers, as well as a dramatic growth in the number of piano students of Asian ethnicity. Women have hands approximately 15% smaller than men, and Asians have smaller hands than Caucasians. In addition, 20th century piano repertoire often requires larger hand spans than repertoire composed during the 17th to 19th centuries.

However, during the 20th century  some companies did experiment with narrow key models or other inventions to reduce the strain for ‘small hands’ playing the conventional keyboard, but they could not compete with mass production and promotion of the ‘standard’ 6.5 inch keyboard. Some companies produced pianos with double keyboards, such as the Bosendorfer grand piano with double keyboard,  Yamaha’s ‘educational’ double keyboard upright in the 1940s included a lower keyboard designed for small children until their hands grew sufficiently to enable them to play the ‘large’ keyboard. Narrower key pianos (small grands and uprights) by both Yamaha and Kawai were offered in a limited way, in Japan only, during the 1990s; they were actively promoted by Yoshinao Nakada until his death in 2000.

In 2000, the Dutch piano company Andriessen starts offering a ‘Kinderklavier’ (‘children’s piano) with narrow keys (7/8 and ¾) inserted into a Yamaha U1 upright. Unfortunately only two years later, Frans Willem Andriessen died and the project was discontinued.

The following images show a restored Yamaha with double keyboard, and the Goldhammer keyboards patented in 1958.