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NEW COMPOSITIONS BY Cameron Carpenter |
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Keyboard instruments with pedalboard – a brief history However unusual or even bizzarre it may seem, the idea of a piano endowed with a pedalboard similar to that of an organ actually has a long history behind it. Its antecedents are the clavichord and the harpsichord with single or double keyboard, which also often had a pedalboard attached. The first citation of a clavichord with pedalboard appeared around 1460 in the section dedicated to musical instruments of the encyclopedic treatise written by the scholar Paulus Paulirinus (1413-1471). It was thus established as an instrument useful for "practice" reasons, in exercises useful for coordinating the hands and feet, that organists could also use if they wished to avoid having to activate the organs' bellows or the rigorous cold of the churches. Johann Sebastian Bach owned a
clavichord with two keyboards and pedalboard for which he composed the
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart owned a fortepiano with independent pedals, built expressly for him in 1785 by Anton Walter. In the autographed manuscript of the Concerto in D minor K 466, composed the same year, the magnitude of the bass notes is evident. Furthermore, in letters to his father, Mozart mentions use of this piano with pedalboard in public improvisations. The instrument Robert Schumann refers to as a pedalflügel (piano with pedalboard) first entered his home in Dresden in 1845. Schumann's enthusiasm for this piano endowed with a pedalboard was so great that it inspired himto compose three works: Studies for Pedalflügel Op. 56, Skizzen for Pedalflügel Op.58 and Six Fugues on the name of "Bach" Op.60; he was also able to convince F. Mendelssohn Bartholdy to inaugurate a class especially for the pedalflügel in the Conservatorium of Leipzig. There are various systems with which a pedalboard was attached to the
piano: the most common was that of a pedalboard fastened under the piano
that activated its mechanics-keyboard; another System, though less frequent,
The "DOPPIO BORGATO" opens up a new page for the musical world, this particular instrument offering new possibilities to both composers and interpreters. In the 19th and 20th centuries other
composers also wrote for the piano with pedalboard, Alexandre Pierre François Boëly 1785 –
1858 Robert Schumann 1810 – 1856 Franz Liszt 1811 – 1886 Charles Valentin Alkan 1813 – 1888 Charles Gounod 1818 - 1893 Camille Saint-Saëns 1835 – 1921 Léon Boëllmann 1862 – 1897 Jean Guillou 1930 - 2019
Examples of works
composed for Musical Clocks able to be performed Ludwig van Beethoven 1770 - 1827 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 1756 – 1791
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