Searching for the derivation of “key” resulted in no help.
I am guessing that “key” probably was only for locks, predating pianos, organs or typewriters.
So why would the keys on those devices be called that?
Hmm, the OED isn’t entirely clear. Key as in - the instrument used to unlock locks is the oldest definition. It claims there is a relationship between the term ‘key’ when it refers to tonality and harmonies and with the keys of an instrument.
It suggests that ‘keys’ etymology with regards to music is perhaps from the french ‘clef’, and suggests a relationship with clavis, which in Latin also appears to mean ‘lever or bar’, which seems to apply to piano instruments and maybe by association, typewriters etc. I think ‘clavichord’ is also latin.
Good question; don’t know the correct answer. But perhaps it is because music has keys, for example ‘key of A’ or ‘neighborhood of b’, or perhaps because ‘buttons’ doesn’t sound musical.
The more I think about it, the more it seems likely that clavis is the source of both primary definitions of ‘key’, into both French and English (unless it went from Latin to French, then to English. It’s easy to see how it’s definition as a lever or bar could refer to the keys of a piano/typerwriter, and then by association become the word used to describe what ‘key’ a song is in (based on what the started ‘lever’ is on the piano instrument.
From the same root comes “clef” (as in treble clef or bass clef). I had imagined that had passed through the “thing that opens a lock” meaning to the more abstract “guide explaining the symbols or terminology of a map or chart” meaning. The clef is the key to what these five horizontal lines mean.
Oddly, I’d also thought of the “key a song is in” as being based on the “guide explaining the symbols or terminology of a map or chart” meaning, since in written music it is written next to the clef and gives info like, “this line is C# instead of C”.
Does anyone know if anyone talked about the key of a piece of music before the advent of keyboard instruments?
The oldest reference in literature to the key of a piece of music the OED cites is 1597. The oldest reference to keys in keyed instruments is 1513.
The concept of a key is older, but I’m a bit hazy on it. I know of the mixolydian mode or scale. I’m fairly certain in the middle ages they talked about modes, which today we don’t really at all.
Piano instruments did become the standard for composing, if my music history knowledge is accurate. It stands to reason that words associated with them would become standard.
Wouldn’t that key ultimately come from the door unlocker definition, too, though? The key is what you use to unlock the information on the map or chart.
Indo-European “klau-” meant “wooden peg”, which developed into “nail” and “key” in Latin (“clove”, e.g, a nail-shaped spice).
Also developed into “claudere” (to shut), hence “close”.
English “key” may not be related…but the semantic idea of transferring “peg” to “door key” to “piano key” is paralleled in the Romance languages.
Not sure about the extension to “key of A minor”. As others have noted, that’s quite a late development…and, I’m pretty sure, NOT so shared among modern languages.
I should have mentioned that some IE family languages refer to “piano keys” with a term related not to “door key”, but rather to “thing that is touched” (Spanish “tecla”, French “touche”) – a keyboardist in a salsa band is a “teclador”.
Appel’s Harvard Dictionary of Music (p. 450) states that the extension to “key of A minor”, etc. occurred when a “tonal center” – a single note, as played by a single key on a harpsichord – came to be seen as dominating a composition, as the modal system began to decline in the early Baroque era.
Or is the salsa keyboardist a “tecladista”? Calling Nava, come in Nava! 
oh, she’s busy watching the Euro Cup game against France…
Might the use of “Key” for piano-style keys have been related to the key in a “key-way” to lock a shaft to a hub or gear in machinery, as shown here?
The size and shape are very similar, and it seems an easy shift from a rectangular cross-section stock to lock a shaft and the use of the same type material to strike a string, through a series of mechanical levers, as in a piano.
I don’t know if this is relevant, but the design of some ancient lock/key mechanisms was somewhat similar to that of piano keys - for example, the Egyptian lock on this page has a key that is a flat lever.
The earliest keyboard instrument is the Greek water organ, the hydraulis, which is said to have been invented by an engineer named Ctesibius of Alexandria in the 3rd century BCE.
This is a photograph of a reconstructed hydraulis where the keys are clearly visible. Note that the “keys” are in fact part of a lever mechanism that opens and closes the pipes.
According to William Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, the first textual mention of a water organ is in a passage quoted by Athenaeus. He uses the word “ἀγκωνίσκοι”, which transliterates as “agxonisxoi”, which as far as I can tell is related to words for gallows and strangling.
In latin, the poet Publius Optatianus Porphyrius who wrote a poem describing the water organ’s mechanism says:
“Quodque queat minimum ad motum intreme facta frequenter
Plectra adaperta sequi aut placitos bene claudere cantus”
(“To the smallest movement the agitated keys open and close themselves” )
The word he uses for “key” is “plectrum”, which is still the proper word for a guitar pick in English.
The Greek and Roman organs’ keyboards were similar to modern ones, in that they afforded dextrous playing with the fingers but technology regressed in the dark ages, when organs were operated by simple sliders that were pushed and pulled and could only be used to play long notes. The Greek-style keyboard with keys that were pushed reappeared in the early 14th century, with the Robertsbridge Fragment being the oldest surviving score for music that was evidently meant to be played on such an instrument.
Since early medieval organs were played with simple sliders that open and closed pipes, it might not be such a stretch to think that this may be where “key” came from: in both cases, it’s an instrument that is used for opening and closing.
THANKS!
Just had realized that CLAVIER had its root in chiave[IT] and chabi [arabic and Hindi].
It had never troubled me before, nor had that piano keys were “keys”
Not realizing that close or chuiso [IT] had common root.
Or that clove[spice] was a so named as a nail shape [ again the Italian for nail chiodo --wow]
That it goes back to klau for peg makes me think of joinery – pre-metal nails
Still the second notion of musical key - a chromatic subsetting leaves disturbed in its tie-in.
Sure we do, all the time, especially in music education for jazz or classical music.
When playing with others, we usually don’t have to mention the mode because it’s fairly obvious. For example, if I play something in A minor and tell the other guys it’s in A minor, I don’t have to day Dorian or Aeolian. First, they’ll usually know without me telling them. Second, most of the guys didn’t study music and don’t know what the words mean anyway. But they know which notes to play.
But if you pick up any book on music theory, the subject of modes comes in early and serves as the framework for much of the rest. Books also cover scales that are common but aren’t modes. (Modes are only those scales that you can play, in some key, using only white keys on the piano.)
Yes, as the term is most commonly used. But it’s also worth knowing that the term can be more expansive and refer to scales that are based on rotations of other scales. For example, you have your modes based on melodic minor (I-melodic minor, II-Dorian b2, III-Lydian augmented, IV-Lydian dominant, etc. The melody from the Simpsons theme song is a famous example of the Lydian dominant.) You find modes constructed on the melodic minor in jazz music theory quite a bit.
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