A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Transposing Instruments

by Alfred James Hipkins

TRANSPOSING INSTRUMENTS. Before pianoforte accompaniments were set in full notation, the practice of which, as Mr. W. H. Cummings has shown,^[1] was first due, about 1780–90, to Domenico Corri of Edinburgh, the entire accompaniment, at that time the most important study in keyboard playing, was from the figured bass stave, known as 'Figured,' 'Through' or 'Thorough' bass. From the varying natural pitch of voices, transposition was a necessary and much cultivated resource, and if the chromatic keyboard had been originally contrived to restore the chromatic genus of the Greeks, it was certainly very soon after permanently adopted to facilitate the practice of transposition. But the difficulties of the process seem to have very early prompted the alternative of a shifting keyboard, applied in the first instance to the diatonic arrangement of the keys, which in the 16th century was still to be met with in old organs: in other words, whatever the key might be, to play apparently in C. The oldest authority on the organ extant is the blind organist of Heidelberg, Arnold Schlick, who in 1511 published the 'Spiegel der Orgelmacher und Organisten,' of which only one copy is now known to exist.^[2] Schlick is quoted by Sebastian Virdung, who also published his book in 1511, and (2nd cap. p. 19, Berlin reprint p. 87) has an interesting passage on transposing organs, which we will freely translate.

When an organ in itself tuned to the right pitch can be shifted a tone higher or lower, it is a great advantage to both organist and singers. I have heard years ago of a Positive so made, but I only know of one complete organ, and that one I use daily, which together with its positive, two back manuals, pedals, and all its many and rare registers, may be shifted higher and back again as often as necessity requires. For some chapels and singers ad Cantum Mensurabilem such a contrivance is specially useful. Two masses or Magnificats may be in the same tone, and set in the same notation of line and space, and yet it may be desirable to sing the one a note higher than the other. Say both masses are in the Sixth Tone, with Clef C; the counter bass going an octave lower^[3]—in the other the counter bass goes a note or more lower, to B or A^[4], which are too low for bass singers, and their voices heard against others would be too weak, if it were not possible to sing the part a note higher. Now in the first mass the counter bass in C can be played on an organ as set, but the other demands transposition to D, with the semitones F♯ and C♯, which to those who have not practised it, is hard and impossible. So therefore, with an organ, as described, the organist may go on playing in C (E-sol-fa-ut) on the keyboard, although the pipes are in D (D-la-sol-re).^[5]

We may assume that in course of time the increasing skill of organists rendered mechanical transpositions unnecessary, since for the organ we hear no more about them; but for the harpsichord they were to be met with in the 16th and following centuries. Prætorius (a.d. 1619) speaks of transposing clavicymbals (harpsichords) which by shifting the keyboard could be set two notes higher or lower, and describes a 'Universal-Clavicymbal' capable of gradual transposition by semitones to the extent of a fifth. Burney in his musical tour met with two transposing harpsichords; one a German one, made under the direction of Frederick the Great, at Venice; the other (a Spanish one, also with moveable keys) at Bologna, belonging to Farinelli.

Considering the musical knowledge and skill required to transpose with facility beyond a supposititious change of signature and corresponding alteration in reading the accidentals, as from C to C♯ or C♭; it might appear strange that mechanical contrivances for transposition have not been permanently adopted, but it finds its explanation in the disturbance of the co-ordination of hand and ear. Those who have the gift of absolute pitch are at once upset by it, while those who have not that gift and are the more numerous, find a latent cause of irritation which, somehow or other, is a stumblingblock to the player. In the present day it is not a question of Temperament, equal or unequal, so much as of position in the scale of pitch, of which, if the ear is not absolutely conscious, it is yet conscious to a certain extent.

The transposing harpsichord mentioned by Burney, as belonging to Count Torre Taxis of Venice, had also a Pianoforte stop, a combination in vogue at the time it was made, 1760. A German pianoforte with moveable keyboard was made for the Prince of Prussia in 1786, and about the same period Sebastien Erard constructed an organised pianoforte, another favoured combination of the latter half of the 18th century, which transposed a semitone, whole tone, or minor third each way, to suit the limited voice of Marie Antoinette. Roller of Paris is also said to have made transposing pianos.

The most prominent instances of transposing pianofortes made in England in the present century are the following:—(1) The square piano of Edward Ryley, patented in 1801, and acting by a false keyboard, which was placed above the true one, and could be shifted to any semitone in the octave. Ryley's idea as stated in his specification went back to the original one of playing everything in the so-called natural scale of C. The patent for this complete transposer was bought by John and James Broadwood, and an instrument so made is in the possession of the present firm. (2) The Royal Albert Transposing piano, brought out by Messrs. Addison & Co. soon after the marriage of Her Majesty the Queen, a piccolo or cottage instrument, is described by Rimbault in his History, as having the keys divided at half their length, the front and back ends being capable of moving independently of each other. (3) Messrs. Broadwoods' transposing Boudoir Cottage pianos, made about 1845, displayed the novel feature of the instrument itself moving while the keyboard and action were stationary. In some of their pianos made in this way, the instrument was suspended between two pivoted metal supporters which allowed the gradual movement, semitone by semitone, effected by turning a pin at the side with an ordinary tuning-hammer. Subsequently the instrument was moved in a groove at the top and on two wheels at the bottom of the outer fixed case, but neither contrivance was patented, nor was long continued to be made. (4) The latest attempt at transposing by the keyboard has been brought forward in the present year (1884) by Hermann Wagner of Stuttgart. He names his invention 'Transponir-Pianino.' We gather from the description and drawings in the 'Zeitschrift für Instrumentenbau,' Band 4, No. 12 (Leipzig, Jan. 12, 1884) that the keyboard moves bodily, there being a preliminary movement for protecting the action cranks or rockers by raising them together while the keyboard is being shifted. (5) The last transposing contrivance to be mentioned is the 'Transpositeur' of Messrs. Pleyel, Wolff, & C^ie. of Paris, invented by M. Auguste Wolff in 1873. The Transpositeur being an independent false keyboard can be applied to any pianoforte by any maker. It has therefore the great merits of adaptability and convenience. It can be placed upon the proper keyboard of an instrument, and by touching a spring to the right hand of the player and a button which permits the keyboard to be shifted through all the semitones of an octave, the transposition desired is effected. The Transpositeur is patented and is sold by the Pleyel firm in Paris, or their agent, Mr. Berrow, in London, at a moderate price. It is of course open to the same natural objection which we have already noticed in speaking of the transposing clavicymbals of Prætorius.

[ A. J. H. ]

1. Vide Proceedings of the Musical Association 1880–81, pp. 19–28.
2. Reprinted in the Monatshefte für Musik-geschichte, Berlin 1869; edited with explanatory notes by Herr Robert Eitner.
3. To the C, second space of the bass clef, but evidently, as will b obvious, sounding the F lower.
4. In our pitch the double E and D.
5. This very difficult passage in the quaint original has been rendered from an elucidatory footnote by the Editor, Herr Eitner.