03/31/2025
March 29 is the 88th day of year and better known as Piano Day
How did the piano come to have 88 keys?
After word got out of Cristofori’s miraculous musical invention, composers started writing more and more music for the piano.
But the instrument’s four-octave range was limiting. So, piano manufacturers designed new pianos with more keys, so that composers like Haydn and Mozart could write more challenging material for a fuller keyboard.
By the time Romantic composers like Chopin and Liszt were writing music in the mid-1800s, pianos had up to seven octaves, allowing them to compose pieces with an even more ambitious range like the bafflingly virtuosic ‘La Campanella’.
In the late 1880s, piano manufacturer Steinway created the 88-key piano. Other manufacturers followed suit, and Steinway’s model has been the standard ever since.
An 88-key piano has seven octaves plus three lower notes (B, B flat and A) below the bottom C.
It has 52 white keys and 36 black keys (sharps and flats), with each octave made up of seven white keys and five black keys. So just imagine how boring music would be if 88 keys weren't invented and all we had was a 5 octave of its ancestor the Harpsichord
