The keys connect to hammers that strike a graduated set of metal (usually steel) plates or bars suspended over wooden resonators.

The original French instrument had a five-octave range, but because the lowest octave was considered somewhat unsatisfactory, it was omitted from later models before eventually being added back when technology improved.

The standard French four-octave instrument is gradually being replaced in symphony orchestras by a larger, five-octave German model.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky is usually cited as the first major composer to use this instrument in a work for full symphony orchestra.

71, 1892), most notably in the Variation de la Fée Dragée (commonly known as the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy), in response to instructions from the Balletmaster Marius Petipa that the music should resemble "...drops of water shooting out of fountains...".

[3] However, Ernest Chausson preceded Tchaikovsky by employing the celesta in December 1888 in his incidental music, written for a small orchestra, for La tempête (a French translation by Maurice Bouchor of William Shakespeare's The Tempest).

Erich Wolfgang Korngold featured it in many of his works, from Marietta's lied in act 1 of his opera Die tote Stadt, through his film career, to his Violin Concerto (particularly in the second movement), and beyond.

The celesta is used in Carl Orff's cantata Carmina Burana (1936),[5] and in some 20th-century operas such as the Silver Rose scene in Der Rosenkavalier (1911).

Other notable jazz pianists who occasionally played the celesta include Memphis Slim, Meade "Lux" Lewis, Willie "The Lion" Smith, Art Tatum, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Buddy Greco, Oscar Peterson, McCoy Tyner, Sun Ra, Keith Jarrett, and Herbie Hancock.

[15] The band A-ha used, among other instruments, a Jenco celesta during their MTV Unplugged: Summer Solstice performances, recorded and released in 2017.

In addition to supplementing numerous soundtrack orchestrations for films from the 1930s through to the 1960s, the celesta has occasionally been spotlighted to invoke a whimsical air.

Celesta also provides the signature opening of Pure Imagination, a song (sung by Gene Wilder) from the 1971 film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.

It was most famously heard in the intro to the theme song of the programme, "Won't You Be My Neighbor", which began with a dreamy sequence on the instrument.

A celesta is used in the full orchestral version of the theme song from the TV series The West Wing, composed by W. G. Snuffy Walden.