On the origins of the use of "key" or "clavis" to refer to the keys of an organ

Question

I'm in the middle of some research on the origins of the word "keyboard" to refer to the thing we all type on to communicate online these days. There's a clear genealogy backwards from the current keyboard through typewriters to teletypes to the first telegraph machines, where the base of the "keys" for the telegraph machine was already called a "key board" (see eg the bottom of this London patent illustration from 1837 )

The trail gets a little more mysterious from here. Other contemporary writings also refer to piano and harpsichord "key boards" so it seems likely that early telegraph inventors just borrowed the term from there. Those instruments seem to have inherited the term from the much older organ, which has had keyboard consoles for literal millenia.

What I'm looking for now is any definitive source for when the keys of an organ first started being referred to as "keys", and what people meant by that at the time. I've seen some apocryphal writing that it's because they "unlock" the sound from an organ, thus "key", but I'm quite curious to find a definitive "here's when it first started being referred to that way" reference.

It seems like there's likely a further twist here in that the english use of "key" may just be a direct translation of "clavis" from the latin, which has been used in relation to organs for quite some time.

Would love any pointers / wisdom / sources from the experts and enthusiasts here!

Answer 1

Etymonline says this about the musical sense of key:

"The musical sense originally was "tone, note" (mid-15c.). In music theory, the sense developed 17c. to "sum of the melodic and harmonic relationships in the tones of a scale," also "melodic and harmonic relationships centering on a given tone." Probably this is based on a translation of Latin clavis "key," used by Guido for "lowest tone of a scale," or French clef (see clef; also see keynote). Sense of "mechanism on a musical instrument operated by the player's fingers" is from c. 1500, probably also suggested by uses of clavis. OED says this use "appears to be confined to English." First of organs and pianos, by 1765 of wind instruments; transferred to telegraphy by 1837 and later to typewriters (1876)."

(emphasis added to Etymonline's text by me.)

Etymonline "key"

The same site has entries for "clavier" and "clavichord":

"1708, "keyboard of a pianoforte, organ, etc.," from French clavier, originally "a key-bearer," from Latin clavis "key" ... ".

Etymonline "clavier"

Answer 2

The development of the water organ (1st keyboard instrument) by Ctesibius in the 2nd century B.C.E. (with later commentaries on Ctesibius by Hero of Alexandria and Vitruvius) uses a physics-based lever as the name of the key on the instrument. Ctesibius' "Commentaries" are not extant but J. Perrot (in "The organ, from its invention in the Hellenistic period to the end of the thirteenth century") notes that both Hero and Vitruvius seem to be working from copies of it. Hero uses the Ancient Greek term ἀγκωνίσκος (transliterated: ankōnískos) for key and Vitruvius uses the Latin term 'pinna' for key--again, both terms are basically "lever".

There is a gap roughly from 200 C.E. with Vitruvius' commentary in De Architectura to approximately C.E. 1404, when the term "clavichord" appears in the "Minneregal" by Eberhard von Cersne of Minden (according to Grove Music via Oxford University Press). Latin definition senses of clavis include the concept of lever which, especially on the clavichord, apply directly to wood stick/rod holding the hammer that strikes the string. Grove Music provides the following as the first sentence on their article "Keyboard": A set of levers (keys) actuating the mechanism of a musical instrument such as the organ, harpsichord, clavichord, piano etc.

That neither the Ctesibius' terminology for key of the first keyboard instrument nor the terms used by early commentators on the invention are the term used today is not surprising: the technology of hydraulis (and much else) fell into disuse/mists of the past. It seems that starting around 900 C.E. the development of the pipe organ (often using hand pushed/pulled sliders rather than keys) in the West restarted mostly from scratch with minimal connection to the Ancient Greek and Roman technical knowledge (even if peppered by rare poetic stories of the past organs' charms). It would take the influx of "old" knowledge during the Renaissance and later to accelerate development.