A very ingenious piano at the Musical Village

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On our way back from meeting with fellow myLotter Lynn Fowler, we visited the ‘musical village’ at Darnum. This was a fascinating place with a huge number of musical instruments, mostly pianos and organs, housed in several old buildings including a church which had been transported there and rebuilt. What was sad is that the place has now been sold and the various items will be auctioned off in July. The owner is a piano tuner and repairer but has also restored a number of the other instruments on display. Pictured is a piano of a type that I’ve never seen before but first a bit of background. When a person sings and is accompanied by a pianist, sometimes they find the notes overall are at a pitch that they can’t handle easily. Maybe the notes are in general too high or too low making a good performance difficult. However if the piano player is reading from the music it is difficult for him to play in another key ie to make the music higher or lower to suit the singer, unless he has the music rewritten. Some are able to transpose easily but most amateurs would need the music written out again in a different key. This piano solves that problem. By moving the lever within the red circle the whole keyboard can be moved slightly to the right or left so it hits a different set of strings. So the pianist can play the same music but by moving the lever, say, to the left the notes will sound lower than they did. I think this is a very clever idea.