Piano
Piano (gravicembalo col piano e forte)
- Date
- c. 1700 · confidence high
- Place
- Florence, Italy
- Credited to
- Bartolomeo Cristofori (Medici inventory of 1700)
- People
- 👤 Bartolomeo Cristofori1655–1731
- Field
- Tools
What it is
A keyboard instrument in which hammers with an escapement mechanism strike the strings, allowing the volume to be controlled by touch, something impossible on the harpsichord. Its escapement mechanics underlie every piano that followed.
Maffei published the description in 1711; three of Cristofori's pianos survive (1720–1726).
What it led to
- Bourgeois domestic music-making and the classical and romantic style for keyboard
- The piano industry (Silbermann, Broadwood, Steinway)
- An aesthetic of dynamic expression in music
Built on
- Harpsichord
- Clavichord
- Hammered dulcimer
Made possible
- Silbermann's and Stein's fortepiano
- Modern grand piano
- Érard's double escapement (1821)