Two or more strings of equal length are now divided
and set in motion by flat metal wedges, attached to the key levers, and
called tangents, because they touched the strings. In response to the
demand for increased range, as many as twenty keys were brought to act
on a few strings, commanding often three octaves. Guido d'Arezzo, the
famous sight-reading music teacher of the eleventh century, advised his
pupils to "exercise the hand in the use of the monochord," showing his
knowledge of the keyboard. The keyed monochord gained the name
clavichord. Its box-like case was first placed on a table, later on its
own stand, and increased in elegance. Not until the eighteenth century
was each key provided with a separate string.
No unimped triumphal progress can be claimed for the various claviers or
keyboard instruments that came into use. Dance music found in them a
congenial field, thus causing many serious-minded people to regard them
as dangerous tempters to vanity and folly. In the year 1529, Pietro
Bembo, a grave theoretician, wrote to his daughter Helena, at her
convent school: "As to your request to be allowed to learn the clavier,
I answer that you cannot yet, owing to your youth, understand that
playing is only suited for volatile, frivolous women; whereas I desire
you to be the most lovable maiden in the world.
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