The clavier gave promise of its destined career in the Elizabethan age. Shakespeare immortalized it, and William Byrd (1546-1623) became the first clavier master. He and Dr. John Bull (1563-1628), says Oscar Bie, in his great work on "The Clavier and Its Masters," "represent the two types which run through the entire history of the clavier. Byrd was the more intimate, delicate, spiritual intellect; Bull the untamed genius, the brilliant executant, the less exquisitely refined artist. It is significant that these two types stand together on the threshold of clavier art." Bull had gained his degree at Oxford, the founding of whose chair of music is popularly attributed to Alfred the Great.
As early as the year 1400 claviers had appeared whose strings were plucked by quills attached to jacks at the end of the key levers. To this group belonged the virginal, or virginals, the clavicembalo, the harpsichord, or clavecin, and the spinet. Stops were added, as in the organ, that varied effects might be produced, and a second keyboard was often placed above the first. The case was either rectangular, or followed the outlines of the harp, a progenitor of this clavier type. It was often highly ornamented, and handsomely mounted. Each string from the first had its due length and was tuned to its proper note.
The secular music principle of the sixteenth century that called into active being the orchestra led also to a desire for richer musical expression in home and social life than the fashionable lute afforded, and the clavier advanced in favor. In France, by 1530, the dance, that promoter of pure instrumental music, was freely transcribed for the clavier. Little more than a century later, Jean Baptiste Lully (1633-1687) extensively employed the instrument in the orchestration of his operas, and wrote solo dances for it.
François Couperin (1668-1733), now well-nigh forgotten, although once mentioned in the same breath with Molière, wrote the pioneer clavier instruction book. In it he directs scholars how to avoid a harsh tone, and how to form a legato style. He advises parents to select teachers on whom implicit reliance may be placed, and teachers to keep the claviers of beginners under lock and key that there may be no practicing without supervision. His suggestions deserve consideration to-day.
He was the first to encourage professional clavier-playing among women. His daughter Marguerite was the first woman appointed official court clavier player. He composed for the clavier little picture tunes, designed to depict sentiments, moods, phases of character and scenes from life. He fashioned many charming turns of expression, introduced an occasional tempo rubato, foreshadowed the intellectual element in music and laid the corner-stone of modern piano-playing. Jean Philippe Rameau (1683-1764) continued Couperin's work.
What is generally recognized as the first period of clavier-virtuosity begins with the Neapolitan Domenico Scarlatti (1683-1757), and Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), the German of Germans. The style of Scarlatti is peculiarly the product of Italian love of beautiful tone, and what he wrote, though without depth of motive, kept well in view the technical possibilities of the harpsichord. His "Cat's Fugue," and his one movement sonatas still appear on concert programmes. In a collection of thirty sonatas he explained his purpose in these words: "Amateur, or professor, whoever thou art, seek not in these compositions for any profound feeling. They are only a frolic of art, meant to increase thy confidence in the clavier."
In Germany, with grand old Father Bach, the keyboard instrument was found capable of mirroring a mighty soul. The germ of all modern musical design lies in his clavier writings. It has been aptly said of this master of masters that he constructed a great university of music, from which all must graduate who would accomplish anything of value in music. Men of genius, from Mozart to the present time, have extolled him for the beauty of his melodies and harmonies, the expressiveness of his modulations, the wealth, spontaneity and logical clearness of his ideas, and the superb architecture of his productions. Students miss the soul of Bach because of the soulless, mechanical way in which they deface his legacy to them.
His "Twelve Little Preludes" alone contain the materials for an entire system of music. The "Inventions," too often treated as dry-as-dust studies, are laden with beautiful figures and devices that furnish inspiration for all time. As indicated by their title, which signifies a compound of appropriate expression and just disposition of the members, they were designed to cultivate the elements of musical taste, as well as freedom and equality of the fingers. His "Well Tempered Clavichord" has been called the pianist's Sacred Book. Its Preludes and Fugues illustrate every shade of human feeling, and were especially designed to exemplify the mode of tuning known as equal temperament, introduced into general use by Bach, and still employed by your piano tuner and mine.
Forkel, his biographer, has finely said that Bach considered the voices of his fugues a select company of persons conversing together. Each was allowed to speak only when there was something to say bearing on the subject in hand. A highly characteristic motive, or theme, as significant as the noblest "typical phrase," developing into equally characteristic progressions and cadences, is a striking feature of the Bach fugue. His "Suites" exalted forever the familiar dance tunes of the German people. His wonderful "Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue" ushered the recitative into purely instrumental music.
As a teacher he was genial, kind, encouraging and in every respect a model. He obliged his pupils to write and understand as well as sound the notes. In his noble modesty he never held himself aloof as superior to others. When pupils were discouraged he reminded them how hard he had always been compelled to work, and assured them that equal industry would lead them to success. He gave the thumb its proper place on the keyboard, and materially improved fingering. Tranquillity and poetic beauty being prime essentials of his playing, he preferred to the more brilliant harpsichord, or spinet, the clavichord, whose thrilling, tremulous tone, owing to its construction, was exceedingly sensitive to the player's touch. The early hammer-clavier, or pianoforte, invented in 1711, by the Italian Cristofori, who derived the hammer idea from the dulcimer, did not attract him because of its extreme crudeness. Nevertheless, it was destined to develop into the musical instrument essential to the perfect interpretation of his clavier music.