Split sharp
Encyclopedia
Harpsichord
A harpsichord is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It produces sound by plucking a string when a key is pressed.In the narrow sense, "harpsichord" designates only the large wing-shaped instruments in which the strings are perpendicular to the keyboard...
, clavichord
Clavichord
The clavichord is a European stringed keyboard instrument known from the late Medieval, through the Renaissance, Baroque and Classical eras. Historically, it was widely used as a practice instrument and as an aid to composition, not being loud enough for larger performances. The clavichord produces...
, or organ
Organ (music)
The organ , is a keyboard instrument of one or more divisions, each played with its own keyboard operated either with the hands or with the feet. The organ is a relatively old musical instrument in the Western musical tradition, dating from the time of Ctesibius of Alexandria who is credited with...
. It is a musical key divided in two, with separately depressible front and back sections, each sounding its own pitch. The particular keys that were split were those that play (C, D, F, G, A) on the standard musical keyboard. (On a modern piano these are the "black keys," though early instruments often colored them differently.)
Split sharps served two distinct purposes. First, in the broken octave, they allowed an instrument to include deep bass notes while retaining a short, compact keyboard. For details, see short octave
Short octave
The short octave was a method of assigning notes to keys in early keyboard instruments , for the purpose of giving the instrument an extended range in the bass...
.
Second, in older music, tuning
Musical tuning
In music, there are two common meanings for tuning:* Tuning practice, the act of tuning an instrument or voice.* Tuning systems, the various systems of pitches used to tune an instrument, and their theoretical bases.-Tuning practice:...
was generally not done by equal temperament
Equal temperament
An equal temperament is a musical temperament, or a system of tuning, in which every pair of adjacent notes has an identical frequency ratio. As pitch is perceived roughly as the logarithm of frequency, this means that the perceived "distance" from every note to its nearest neighbor is the same for...
, which treats note pairs such as A# and B as the same pitch
Enharmonic
In modern musical notation and tuning, an enharmonic equivalent is a note , interval , or key signature which is equivalent to some other note, interval, or key signature, but "spelled", or named, differently...
. Instead, they were assigned slightly different pitches on enharmonic keyboard
Enharmonic keyboard
An enharmonic keyboard is a musical keyboard based on an enharmonic scale. At the very least such keyboards will have 17 keys per octave, and enharmonically equivalent notes will have different pitches. A typical keyboard will have one key for, for instance, C sharp and D flat, but a basic 17 key...
s (particularly in "meantone temperament
Meantone temperament
Meantone temperament is a musical temperament, which is a system of musical tuning. In general, a meantone is constructed the same way as Pythagorean tuning, as a stack of perfect fifths, but in meantone, each fifth is narrow compared to the ratio 27/12:1 in 12 equal temperament, the opposite of...
"). This allowed certain musical intervals, such as the major third
Major third
In classical music from Western culture, a third is a musical interval encompassing three staff positions , and the major third is one of two commonly occurring thirds. It is qualified as major because it is the largest of the two: the major third spans four semitones, the minor third three...
, to sound closer to their ideal just
Just intonation
In music, just intonation is any musical tuning in which the frequencies of notes are related by ratios of small whole numbers. Any interval tuned in this way is called a just interval. The two notes in any just interval are members of the same harmonic series...
value, hence more closely tuned to Just intonation
Just intonation
In music, just intonation is any musical tuning in which the frequencies of notes are related by ratios of small whole numbers. Any interval tuned in this way is called a just interval. The two notes in any just interval are members of the same harmonic series...
.
In modern usage, split sharps are usually the method of choice for custom keyboards that play 19 equal temperament
19 equal temperament
In music, 19 equal temperament, called 19-TET, 19-EDO, or 19-ET, is the tempered scale derived by dividing the octave into 19 equal steps . Each step represents a frequency ratio of 21/19, or 63.16 cents...
, which, like meantone, uses different pitches for sharps and flats that are enharmonic in the standard 12 tone.
Further reading
- Kottick, Edward L. and George Lucktenberg (1997) Early keyboard instruments in European museums. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.