Piano

The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It produces sound by striking steel strings with felt hammers that immediately rebound allowing the string to continue vibrating at its resonance frequency. more...

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These vibrations are transmitted through the bridges to the soundboard, which amplifies them.

The piano is widely used in Western music for solo performance, chamber music, and accompaniment. It is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal. Although not portable and often expensive, the piano's versatility and ubiquity have made it one of the most familiar musical instruments. It is sometimes classified as both a percussion and a string instrument (in a loose sense of that term).

The word piano is a shortened form of the word pianoforte, which is seldom used except in formal language and derived from the original Italian name for the instrument, clavicembalo col piano e forte (literally harpsichord with soft and loud). This refers to the instrument's responsiveness to keyboard touch, which allows the pianist to produce notes at different dynamic levels by controlling the speed with which the hammers hit the strings.

Early history

See also: Fortepiano

Although there were various crude earlier attempts to make stringed keyboard instruments with struck strings, it is widely considered that the piano was invented by a single individual: Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, Italy, employed by Prince Ferdinand de Medici as the Keeper of the Instruments. It is not known exactly when Cristofori first built a piano, but an inventory made by his employers, the Medici family, indicates the existence of a piano by the year 1709. However, some writings indicate that there was a piano built in the year 1698, and a prototype built as early as 1694. The three Cristofori pianos that survive today date from the 1720s. Two of these pianos date from 1722; a piano now in Rome, and a harpsichord now in Leipzig.

Like many other inventions, the piano was founded on earlier technological innovations. The mechanisms of keyboard instruments such as the clavichord and the harpsichord were well known. In a clavichord the strings are struck by tangents, while in a harpsichord they are plucked by quills. Centuries of work on the mechanism of the harpsichord in particular had shown the most effective ways to construct the case, soundboard, bridge, and keyboard. Cristofori, himself an expert harpsichord maker, was well acquainted with this body of knowledge.

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