Harp & Keyboards · Keyboards
Celesta
A small keyboard instrument in which felt hammers strike steel plates over wooden resonators, giving a soft, bell-like sound.
- Family
- Harp & Keyboards · Keyboards
- Classification
- Idiophone · struck plates
- Transposition
- Written an octave lower
- Clefs
- Grand staff (treble and bass)
- Sounding range
- C4 – C8
Parts of the celesta
Photo: Schiedmayer Celesta GmbH, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Labels added by Musicians Tools.
Range
C1C2C3C4C5C6C7C8
Written C3 to C7 on a four-octave instrument, sounding an octave higher. Five-octave celestas reach lower. Playback uses a neutral tone, not the instrument's own sound.
Writing for the celesta
- Written on a grand staff an octave below the sounding pitch.
- It is quiet and easily covered; keep the orchestration around it light.
- Usually played by the orchestra's keyboard player, often the pianist.
- A damper pedal lets notes ring; without it they are short.
History
Auguste Mustel patented the celesta in Paris in 1886. Tchaikovsky heard it there and wrote the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy in The Nutcracker (1892) for it.
Listen
Key works featuring the celesta. Each link opens a YouTube search, so you can pick the recording you like.
- Tchaikovsky – The Nutcracker, Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy
- Holst – The Planets, Neptune
- Bartók – Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta
Useful tools
Relatives
Pages coming:Keyboard glockenspiel