The arrangement of the keys is the sacred tradition of centuries. It presents the tone-system, as it were, lengthways, and is the natural expression of a melodic musical concept. The separation of the black and the white keys has been introduced in accordance with a certain theoretical principle, which allows the difference of position in our scales over the black and white keys to appear somewhat complicated. Our keyboards are constructed entirely on the C major scale; the tones outside this scale are thrown into the black keys, and thus appear in a subordinate position: thus all other scales have a strange form and often a somewhat difficult fingering. But since the seventeenth century our conception of music has gradually, from melodic, become harmonic; we hear vertically as well as horizontally; we hear the beauty of all chords as sounded together, and, unconsciously, we fill in the harmonies to every melody we hear. It would have been natural if the keyed instruments had adapted themselves to this altered musical conception, and had resigned the original conception of the scale to make way for harmonic conveniences. Nothing, however, is slower to be reached than the determination to revolutionise from the foundation a technique adopted in the schools, since no one is willing to make the sudden break with the old and the sudden start with the new. Attempts had already been made to break the monopoly of the C major scale, and to form a regular chromatic scale of twelve similar keys. In our own day Paul von Janko has improved this system by repeating every regular chromatic series three times in terrace-style one above another, so that not only wider stretches, but also, without much movement of the hand, a surprising control of full chords and of rapid passages is attained. The tones are thus brought more narrowly together as the monopoly of the C major key is destroyed; and the result betokens a decisive advance in the conception of modern music. This conception still embodies a compromise between the old scale-keyboard and an arrangement of the keys, which, founded on harmonic ideas, has promise for the future. Janko’s keyboard is slowly gaining converts. Great houses, like those of Ibach, Duysen, Kaps, and Blüthner, are taking it up. Hausmann in Berlin, and Wendling in Leipzig, are the chief supporters of the scheme. In America we hear stories of remarkable results. Only by the development of such a new keyboard, which will have to answer the demands of the modern conception of music, will it be possible to draw new tone-effects from the piano. Its utmost capacities, in its present form, have been exhausted, it would seem, by Liszt.