Clavier playing with the fingers can scarcely have been practised before the middle of the fourteenth century. At the period referred to organ keys varied in width from three inches to six inches; the organ-player was therefore sometimes very accurately called a striker, his method of playing requiring either a stroke with closed fingers or a decided pressure with the whole of the fingers extended; we can see a pictorial representation of the latter method in the “Theorica Musica,” by Gaffurius, published in Milan in 1492.