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I totally agree to the idea of improving the acoustic piano, including increasing its register and number of keys. I'm totally convinced Beethoven would be thrilled to try the expanded Bösendorfer and Stuart & Sons and be immediately inspired to compose for them. Read about his opus 101, for example.

My digital piano has a Bösendorfer Imperial sample set with the extra low notes and it is quite fun to play, even if I have to transpose since obviously my DP is limited to 88 keys.

OK. I just thought the tone of the original post seemed odd.

So... you can get away with 85 keys most of the time. However, chances are there will be pieces you want to play where you need 88. I remember the joy of having enough notes for Prokofiev.

Bösendorfer makes two concert grands, one of which "only" has the standard 88 keys. The extra ones on the Imperial have their uses, but are mostly not necessary. It's up to the pianist how to use them. The thing is though, that most composers adapted their pieces to a standard keyboard, and there are many opportunities to try and play what we imagine the composer wanted. I'd love to play Gaspard de la Nuit on an Imperial.

Wow. I've learned so much from you guys Lots of love

No doubt, the opening motif of Scarbo is begging for those extra keys. I can't wait to try those notes as Ravel intended them.

Oh yes, Ando:

There are quite a few places in Ravel's music where those notes are contemplated. Remember, the largest Erard had a low G & G#.

Karl Watson,
Staten Island, NY
kw35@si.rr.com

It wasn't something that I thought much about, until I actually performed a piece that required the highest B, which I'd just learnt last year, on the C. Bechstein grand (c1900) on which I'd been performing regularly for the past few years. It has 85 keys - which I took note of when I first played on it, then promptly forgot all about, only to rediscover that fact when I ran out of keys in performance. (I practice all my pieces on my home piano, a digital with 88 keys).

It made me realize how easy it is to get used to something, whether it's too few keys or 'too many', not to mention all sorts of actions.

It's odd that no-one, to my knowledge, has yet recorded all the Ravel piano music on an Imperial (though Ondine has), though there's a recording played on Fazioli.

But there's a recording that has Ravel pieces recorded twice, on an Érard and on a modern Steinway, by Paolo Giacometti. I don't know whether he used the bottom G# (he didn't play Jeux d'eau).

Me, too. (You weren't alone; don't worry. It's possible the 100's of folks who viewed the thread but didn't reply may have also thought the same thing.)

well a bit late for may take, but here it is anyway. I feel 88 keys is plenty, but I can see how an amount in the 90's can make sense. 104 keys? you are going to either have some super tinny and harsh high notes, or a bass that is nearly out of audible range. It would also make recording one a real pain, as for ideal reproduction you would be sampling well below 20Hz and well above 20KHz, but more so than normal to account for higher and lower than normal notes (if they are present) Although, just because I don't see the use, does not mean they cannot exist, and you can always just ignore the extra keys.

My just-post-Mozart Broadwood square piano has 68 keys (FF to c4). I find it rather satisfying that pieces of that period take me right up to the very top note and right down to the very bottom one.

.... So those extra keys aren't there to keep Victor Borge from falling off the treble end? ;-)

I believe that some of these extended keyboards use white keytops for the standard 88, and black for the added ones, to avoid confusion.

I expect you're right.

Mozart died in 1791. By then both artists and composers were clamoring for “more notes” and more “power.” Pianomakers had, for some time, been pushing up against the structural limits of stress that could be handled by the simple all-wood structure of the early fortepiano. Many attempts were made to increase both the compass of the keyboard and string tensions using all-wood framing but structural integrity and stability were always an issue.

It was not until iron bracing (mostly in the form of wrought iron) was introduced in the early 1800s—roughly some twenty-five or thirty years after Mozart’s death—that the extended keyboard compass really became structurally practical.

Short iron “gap-spacers” placed between the belly rail and the pinblock came first but these were of limited value. Next came a variety of different types of metal bracing and framing some of which were quite ingenious and effective. Others, not so much. But it was the single-pour gray iron casting that made the modern, mass-produced piano possible. The single-pour cast iron frame was invented in the late 1820s but it wouldn't be (almost) universally accepted until the mid-1800s.

And here I must point out that the single-pour gray iron casting gets much more credit than it deserves. Its primary benefit was not one of performance, rather it offered a significant reduction in manufacturing cost. Indeed, I believe that a good case can be made that some of the design compromises that must be made actually limit the performance of the modern piano. Still, however it was designed, it was the introduction of metal bracing—of which most was either wrought or cast iron—that made expanded keyboards practical.

By the end of the 19th century nearly all pianos had single-pour cast iron frames and nearly all keyboards had a compass of 88 notes. There are no longer any structural limitations on just how many keys a piano can have. It is strictly up to the designer and the builder to put in however many keys (notes) he/she wants. It is up to the composer and the artist to determine if these “extra” notes are worth the effort and expense.

ddf

The keytops aren't black. When it's not being used, the section with extra keys can be covered with a black covering so that the player's view of the keyboard looks the same as a normal 88 keyboard.

There are three configurations:

1) a little hinged cover which folds over the extended keys

2) black keytops below A0

3) normal white keys.

Options 1 and 2 are equally popular. Bösendorfer has used both at different times.

The Imperial where I used to teach was option 2. Didn't bother me at all, my colleague on the other hand was begging for a cover to be added.

I knew an almost supernaturally fine sight reader who felt completely lost without the cover--his peripheral vision would get messed up throwing off his sense of keyboard location.

Interesting, I never saw #2 or #3.