(Fr.céleste ).
A keyboard instrument (in the form of a small upright piano) invented by Auguste Mustel in 1886; metal plates (usually steel) suspended over resonating boxes are struck by hammers and sustained after the manner of the piano action. (It is classified as an idiophone: set of percussion plaques; such instruments of metal are known as metallophones.) Mustel’s celesta was probably inspired by an instrument known as the typophone (or dulcitone), which he or his father Victor constructed some 20 years earlier. In the typophone a series of tuning-forks is operated by a keyboard (see Tuning-fork instruments).
As an orchestral instrument the celesta has been used by a large number of composers in operas, ballets and mystic pieces where its special quality of tone is required. It is normally played by the keyboard player (the part written as for the piano, but an octave below sounding pitch), though some composers mistakenly include it in the percussion parts. Ernest Chausson was one of the first to use it (La tempęte, 1888). Tchaikovsky was impressed by the tone of the instrument while on a visit to Paris, and included it in the Dance of the Sugar-Plum Fairy in The Nutcracker (1892). Bartók gave the instrument a prominent part in his Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta (1936).
The usual compass of the modern celesta is five octaves from c, but Yamaha has made instruments of five and a half octaves, which are essential for some works.
JAMES BLADES/JAMES HOLLAND