Jankó, Paul Von
Jankó, Paul Von
Jankó, Paul Von, Hungarian pianist and inventor; b. Totis, June 2, 1856; d. Constantinople, March 17, 1919. He studied at the Vienna Polytechnic and at the Vienna Cons, with Bruckner, Krenn, and H. Schmitt. He then studied mathematics as well as piano with Ehrlich at the Univ. of Berlin (1881–82), and then settled in Constantinople. His keyboard, invented in 1882, is a new departure in piano mechanics, though standing in distant relationship to the older “chromatic” keyboard advocated by the Chroma society. It has six rows of keys; each pair of rows consists of two mutually exclusive whole-tone scales; the fingering of all diatonic scales is alike; chromatic scales are played by striking alternative keys in any two adjoining rows. A full description of the keyboard was publ, in pamphlet form by its inventor (1886). The “Jankó keyboard” was espoused by quite a few enthusiastic souls, but like many similar “inventions” it soon lapsed into innocuous desuetude.
Bibliography
F. Boyes, Das J.-Klavier (Vienna, 1904); H. Munnich, Materialenför die J.-Klaviatur (1905)
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire