Since the original seven white keys created natural major and minor scales consisting of two half-steps and five whole steps, the new black keys were slipped in between the whole steps to make 12 equal half-steps. The oldest documented keyboard that used the seven-plus-five keyboard is the German Halberstadt organ of 1361. But on some early organs and harpsichords, the colors were reversed. On the modern piano, these are called “sharps” and “flats” and colored black. In the 14th century, five new keys were added to the original seven, creating what is called a chromatic scale. But as other cultures and new ideas expanded the complexity of music beyond simple folk music and Gregorian chants, musicians needed more than a diatonic scale. The sound of the hydraulis made it a very popular instrument throughout the first five centuries A.D. These notes were all the ancient Greeks needed because their tones create natural diatonic scales: a major scale when starting on C and a minor scale when starting on A-still the two most commonly used scales in western music. The seven white piano keys named A, B, C, D, E, F, G reflect the seven basic notes of the hydraulis. In ancient Greece, the first musical keyboard device was called a hydraulis-meaning “water organ.” This instrument used the power of water to blow air through the pipes of a pan flute. So to find the origin of piano keys we must trace the evolution of a pipe organ all the way back to the third century B.C.E. The piano keyboard descended from the harpsichord, which descended from a combination of a stringed harp and the keys of a pipe organ. When we see piano keys we tend to think of a piano, but pianos are a relatively young invention. Representation of the hydraulis (second from left) and other instruments in the Zliten mosaic from ancient Rome.
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