My secret weapon – the Moor double keyboard piano

I have no excuse for feeling uncomfortable about manual hopping on the organ, with this piano to practice on.

This splendid instrument belongs to a trust, but lives with me. The keyboards are essentially an 8′ and a 4′ working on a single set of strings – on the upper keyboard a linkage operates the hammer an octave higher than the key you have depressed.  You can even couple the two keyboards together, like a harpsichord.

The idea is that octave passages, 10ths and so on can be spread between the two keyboards, making Rachmaninov, Chopin and the like much easier to play.

The system was invented by Emmanuel Moor in the 1920s and 30s.  He was a Hungarian composer and  pianist (had lessons from Liszt), who developed strong ideas on the reformation of the piano.

Winifred Christie-Moor

His wife, concert pianist Winifred Christie-Moor, promoted the instrument tirelessly across Europe and America, and it was taken seriously enough for Pleyel, Bosendorfer, Bechstein and Steinway all to produce examples – the trust also looks after several Moor double keyboard grand pianos.

As pianists would need to relearn their whole repertoire to play on it (and pianists, I suspect, also like using thunderous octave passages to show off), the idea was probably doomed from the start, and once the European piano manufacturers had picked themselves up from the destruction of WW2, no one was interested any more.

Mine is probably the only upright Moor piano to survive.  It’s got a lovely sonorous tone, particularly in the bass.  Quite a heavy action because of all the coupling inside – but good practice for surviving on a tracker organ!

I have loads more information about Moor pianos.  If you are interested, make a comment, and I’ll post some more.