Other manufacturers followed suit, and Steinway’s model has been the standard ever since. An 88-key piano has seven octaves plus three lower notes (B, B flat and A) below the bottom C. It has 52 white ...

Why are there 88 keys on a piano? Why not 44, or 200? Let’s go back to the days before the piano, when composers wrote for the harpsichord, which has just 60 keys, and each key is ...