History Of the Piano
If you play (or simply love to listen to) the piano, you have Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, Italy, to thank. The history of the piano begins with Cristofori and a passionate endeavour.
Although Bartolomeo Cristofori adored instruments, if he were not employed by Prince Ferdinand de Medici, he would not have been able to create the piano that we know today. Prince Ferdinand hired Cristofori to be the “keeper of instruments,” and it was during this time that Cristofori had the idea for the first piano. Some think that Cristofori constructed the first piano around the year 1700, though some believe it was actually during the year 1698. The history of the piano (as we know it) clearly began with Cristofori, though his ideas were based upon the clavichord and the harpsichord.
Cristofori wanted to create an instrument that was similar to both the clavichord and harpsichord, though he also wished to create something that could be struck rather than plucked. He knew that his string must be struck once, but that the hammers could not remain stuck to the strings (for this would cause a muffled sound). After many experiments, he also discovered that the hammers must return to their starting positions without violently bouncing back into place, and he knew that they would also have to be able to hit a note with consistency.
The piano that Cristofori originally concocted was made from very think strings that produced a sound quite unlike current pianos. In fact, it is thought that Cristofori named the instrument “piano” due to the soft sound that it created. Even though his invention was quite remarkable, the general public did not know that the piano existed until an Italian writer, Scipine Maffei, reviewed the instrument in an article that he wrote for a local supplement. Once the word got out, the history of the piano would be known to all, and everyone wanted their own piano.
Once instrument builders read Maffei’s article, they began to build pianos based upon the writer’s vivid description. One builder, Gottfried Silbermann, added the damper pedal to Cristofori’s invention, which enabled a player to lift all the dampers from the strings in one swift movement. Even though Silbermann tried to get Johann Sebastian Bach interested in one of his earlier piano models, Bach did not appreciate the instrument at the time, and he believed that it would not last long (little did he know, the piano would become the most popular instrument in the world).
From the piano’s humble clavichord and harpsichord cousins to the invention of the modern piano by Cristofori, and finally to the addition of the damper pedal by Gottfried Silbermann, the history of the piano has come a long way. This timeless instruments is still played in nearly every orchestra today, and it has more than withstood the test of time.