Some Classical Music Fan Here ?

arnold stirrup wrote: BaldFriede wrote: The German word "Klavier" (older spellings "Claver") means "piano" and not "keyboard" (the German word for "keyboard" is "Klaviatur"). It may be true though that at the time of Bach the word just referred to the manual of the instrument. The first piano (full name "pianoforte") was built 1726 by Bartolomeo Francesco de Cristofori. They were definitely around already when Bach composed. Gottfried Silbermann (famous for his organs) built the first piano in Germany. I thinks Bach's intention with the WTC was to write a work for "keyboard", and not specifically a piano. He wanted to create a universal means of tuning a keyboard instrument, which, in fact, he did. He may certainly have had the pianoforte in mind as one of the purposes of composing WTC. The vast majority of Bach's keyboard works were written for either organ or harpsichord. WTC was initially written for and performed on harpsichord, but was meant to be applied to any keyboard instrument.

I'm sorry you guys have it almost all wrong, thought you're completely right about well tempered. Before then, there was no consistent tuning system where like say half steps were equal. It was based on arbitrary things or the overtone series.

BUT, the Klavier is actually an instrument independent of Organ, Piano, or Harpsichord, but in english it's called a Clavichord (sp?). It was Bach's personal favorite as far as keyboards were concerned because it was fairly flexible. I'm not exactly sure how it worked, but I think it was something similar to tapping a guitar, hammers would push down the strings. As you can imagine it really wasn't loud enough at all to play with any other instruments really, but many of he composers loved it for composing.

I do not want to appear ignorant or arrogant, but classical music is openly pretentious and hackneyed.  Ive listened to Shubert, Beethoven, Brahms, and Mozart and it seems staid and dull.