18th Century Keyboard Music

Historical keyboard is a performance-oriented classical genre focused on playing repertoire on period-appropriate keyboard instruments—harpsichord, clavichord, fortepiano, early pianos, and historical organs—using techniques, tunings, and aesthetics drawn from the time the music was written. Rather than treating the modern concert grand as the default, historical keyboard prioritizes the specific colors and mechanics of older instruments (plectrum-plucked harpsichords, tangent or gut-strung clavichords, Viennese and English fortepianos, tracker-action organs). Performers adopt historical temperaments, historical pitch standards (e.g., A=415, 430, or local organ pitches), period fingering and articulation, and documented practices of ornamentation, cadenzas, and continuo realization. The result is a palette of timbres and articulations that illuminate Baroque, Classical, and early Romantic repertoire with clarity, speech-like phrasing, and historically grounded rhetoric.