Giuseppe Zarlino

Biography

Giuseppe Zarlino is noted by Dolge as having added semitones to his instruments about 1548, though Dolge cautions that there are no reliable records establishing who first applied the chromatic scale to keyboard instruments, since instruments predating Zarlino, such as certain clavicymbala with seventy-seven keys spanning four octaves, already had the chromatic scale. Zarlino's work is cited as a documented milestone in that uncertain history rather than as a definitive first. Dolge's broader point in this passage is that after the fifteenth century nearly all makers of key-stringed instruments used the chromatic scale essentially as found in modern pianos, with Zarlino serving as one identifiable reference point along that path. No further biographical detail is given.

Highlights

• Added semitones to his instruments about 1548

Source

Alfred Dolge, Pianos and Their Makers, Vol. I (1911), p. 77.

Public domain.