Chapter 6Preventing Back Pain
When the harpsichord came into wide use in the seventeenth century, many musicians were uncertain about the proper technique to use when playing it. They weren’t sure where to sit on the bench, how high the bench should be, and how far from the keyboard they should position their bodies. Even worse, most musicians accepted that they had to tolerate a great deal of pain to become master keyboardists.
This began to change in 1753 when Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (the son of Johann Sebastian Bach) published his Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments [Bac49]. He addressed many aspects of technique, including the positioning and fingering issues that had been a source of confusion to most players. It ...
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