The argument concerning the why’s and wherefore’s of extended keyboards is indeed not a new one, and indeed the publishing of music for extended keyboards is not, and one suspects never has been, without risk.
The eminent Bohenian pianist Jan Ladislav Dussek spent some eleven years in London, in part as a refugee from the French Revolution where he was unpopular with the regime at that time. He was, as well as being a pioneer of performance practice (he was, for example, the first to sit sideways to the audience so they could admire his profile), instrumental in advancing the limitations of piano design, as the following extract from Grove’s Dictionary of Musicians indicates:
“While in London he also encouraged the firm of Broadwood to extend the range of the piano – in 1791 from five to five and a half octaves, and in 1794 to six octaves. Compositions written for the extended keyboard were said to be for ‘piano with additional keys’; many compositions of this period were published with two versions for the right hand, so that they could be performed ‘with or without the additional keys’.”
It was a piano of this range that John Broadwood sent to Beethoven as a gift in 1817, and much of Beethoven’s later piano work was written for this instrument. Interestingly, after Beethoven's death, the music publisher Spina bought the Broadwood at the sale of the composer's effects. Spina later gave the instrument to Franz Liszt - a fitting recipient, for it was very likely the Broadwood that Liszt had played for Beethoven when taken to see him as a child-prodigy. Liszt kept the Broadwood when he lived in Weimar, where it remained until his death in 1886. The following year his estate donated it to the Magyar Nemzeti Muzeum (Hungarian National Museum) in Budapest, where it remains today.
From that point on, the keyboard range of the piano increased slowly but surely as the following table will indicate:
Date________________Keyboard Range
1794 to approx. 1804___6 octaves C1 to c4.
1804 to approx. 1824___6 octaves F1 to f4.
1804 to approx. 1860___6 octaves & 4th C1 to f4
1860 to approx. 1880___7 octaves A2 to a4
1880 to approx. 1900___88 keys A2 to c5 (today’s standard)
1900________________97 keys 8 octaves CCC to c5 (some specialised pianos, very rare)
So the concept of a ‘standard’ piano key range is not a ‘standard’ at all, but merely a convention forced upon pianists by manufacturers. My first two pianos (and that of my music teacher) were 85-note pianos, and it wasn’t until I was comparatively advanced as a pianist that I was given an 88-note piano. Now, of course, I have a 97-note piano and have played the ‘ultimate’ 102-note Stuart grand piano on a number of occasions.
I cannot for the life of me understand why pianists are critical of extended range pianos. Two reasons seem to be paramount:
1) There is very little music written for them, so what’s the point?
2) I get confused because the ends of the keyboard are not what I’m used to
Both are easily debunked. There is very little music because these instruments are not common. Whilst the Bosenyamaha Imperial has been around for a while now, it does not appear to have caught the imagination of composers much at all, quite possibly because there are so few of them in the concert halls of the world. The advent of the Stuart, with its new sound envelope and performance paradigm, is the one piano which is capable of meeting the challenges of modern 21st century piano music, but can also be adapted to the classical repertoire (including the extended range where appropriate) without any issues other than the infamous ‘it’s not a bloody Steinway’ syndrome.
The second is purely the limitation of the pianist, and his/her reliance on the physical size of the keyboard, and hence inability (or unwillingness in many cases) to adapt. The Bosenyamaha trick of discolouring the extra notes is a thinly disguised homage to that restriction and is a total anathema to the Stuart paradigm as I have said on a number of occasions now.
One wonders whether Dussek and Broadwood changed the colour of their extra keys to warn the innocent victims of their technological prowess. I know Beethoven was deaf, but he certainly wasn’t blind. I only wish pianists today shared his enthusiasm for the new order.