THE AGE OF THE KEYBOARD (pp. 81-241 in the book)

While the 19th century is arguably the most popular period in the repertoire of the piano, with its main focus on the expansion of the keyboard and its proper techniques, the interest in extended techniques was rather narrow.

There is some development of the cluster (mostly in music for the organ), some experimenting with resonance, and the surfacing of some low-grade extensions (e.g. micro-clusters, speech). If anything, the ‘romantic’ period is characterised by what could be called “the rise and fall of the keyboard glissando”: from testing the limits (full chord glissando) to the highpoint in the 1840’s-1860’s and the subsequent marginalisation due to the changes in technology of the piano keyboard and action.