History of the Piano

17th Century

The Piano was invented around 1700 by an Italian from Padua called Bartolomeo Cristofori a keyboard instrument designer who was employed by the Medici family of Florence. The predecessor instruments to the piano are the clavichord and harpsichord.

The three instruments differ in the mechanism of sound production. In a harpsichord, strings are plucked by quills or similar material, in the clavichord, strings are struck by tangents which remain in contact with the string and in a piano, the strings are struck by hammers but immediately rebound, leaving the string to vibrate freely.

Cristofori's piano action served as a model for the many different approaches to piano actions that followed and strings used thickness increased over time producing considerably louder sounds whilst having more sustaining power

The Pianoforte as it was then known remained relatively unknown until an Italian writer, Scipione Maffei, wrote an enthusiastic article about it in 1711, including a diagram of the mechanism. This article was widely distributed, and most of the next generation of piano builders started their work read it.

18th Century

Gottfried Silbermann, an organ designer/builder in Germany, took Cristofori's exact pianoforte design and added the Damper pedal (also known as the sustaining pedal or loud pedal) which removes all the dampers from the strings and allows them to freely vibrate. A modernized version of this pedal is still a major component of today's pedals. Silbermann damper addition in the 1730s was not liked by Bach, he thought that the higher notes were too soft to allow a full dynamic range. Though this resulted in some animosity between Bach and Silbermann, the later did apparently acknowledge the criticism. Bach did approve of a later instrument he saw in 1747, and apparently even served as an agent to help sell Silbermann's pianos.

The Viennese makers (Johann Andreas Stein who worked in Augsburg, Germany, his daughter Nannette Stein and Anton Walter) redesigned the piano to have two strings per hammer, leather coverings on the hammers
and a wood frame. It was with this style of pianoforte that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart preferred to play and compose his concertos and sonatas. The piano of Mozart's day had a softer, clearer tone than today's pianos, with less sustaining power. The term fortepiano is nowadays often used to distinguish the 18th-century style of instrument from later pianos.

Composer and pianist preferences for a more powerful sustained sound plus technological advances from the industrial revolution resulted in a series of changes. These included : -

The strings being replaced with high-quality steel,
Iron replacing the wood framing
Instruments notes range increased from five octaves to seven and a quarter

To separate the design differences between the eras, all pianofortes designed after the 18th century were given the truncated name "Piano."

19th - 20th Century

Technological progress lead by British firm Broadwood built instruments progressively larger, louder and more robustly constructed. The Broadwood firm built pianos for both Haydn and Beethoven and was the first to build pianos with range of five octaves and a fifth during the 1790s, six by 1810 (in time for Beethoven to use the extra notes in his later works), and seven by 1820.

The Viennese makers followed the Broadwood trends. The two schools used different piano actions: the Broadwood piano more robust, the Viennese more sensitive. The centre of innovation shifted to Paris in the 1820’s, where the Pleyel firm manufactured pianos used by Frédéric Chopin and the Érard firm manufactured
those used by Franz Liszt.

In 1821, Sébastien Érard invented the double escapement action, which incorporated a repetition lever (also called the balancier) that permitted a note to be repeated even if the key had not yet risen to its maximum vertical position.
This facilitated rapid playing of repeated notes, and this musical device was pioneered by Liszt. When the invention became public, as revised by Henri Herz, the double escapement action gradually became standard in grand pianos, and is still incorporated into all grand pianos currently produced.

Other important technical piano innovations of the during the 19th Century include : -

The use of Felt Hammer coverings instead of layered leather. The Felt was first introduced by Henri Pape in 1826 and was a more consistent material, permitting wider dynamic ranges as Hammer weights and string tension increased.

The use of three strings rather than two for all except the lower notes

The Sostenuto Pedal which allowed a wider range of effects was invented in 1844 by Jean Louis Boisselot and improved by the Steinway firm in 1874.

The use of a strong Iron frame that helped to create the sound of the modern piano. Also called the "Plate", this sits on top of the soundboard, and serves as the primary protection against the force of string tension. The increased structural integrity of the Iron frame allowed the use of thicker, tenser, and more numerous strings. In a modern grand the total string tension can exceed 20 tons. The single piece cast Iron frame was patented in 1825 in Boston by Alpheus Babcock, culminating an earlier trend to use ever more iron parts to reinforce the piano. Babcock later worked for the Chickering & Mackays firm who patented the first full iron frame for grand pianos in 1843. Composite forged metal frames were preferred by many European makers until the American system was fully adopted by the early 20th century.

The Over strung Scale, also called "Cross-Stringing". This is a special arrangement of strings within the case: the strings are placed in a vertically overlapping slanted arrangement, with two bridges on the soundboard instead of just one. The purpose of the over strung scale was to permit longer strings to fit within the case of the piano. Over stringing was invented by Jean-Henri Pape during the 1820s, and first applied to the grand by Henry Steinway Jr. in 1859.

The use of Duplex Scaling, invented by Theodore Steinway in 1872. This enables the parts of the string near its ends, which otherwise would be damped with cloth to vibrate freely, thus increasing resonance and adding to the richness of the sound. Aliquot stringing, which serves a similar purpose in Blüthner pianos, was invented by Julius Blüthner in 1873.

The many changes and evolution of the Piano have had its impact for musical performances. A huge proportion of the most widely admired music of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin and Schumann was composed for a type of instrument that is rather different from the modern instruments on which this music is normally performed today.

The view frequently taken is that some of these composers wrote visionary "music of the future" with a more robust sound in mind.

On the other hand, some music often seems to require the resources of the early Piano.

Beethoven sometimes wrote long passages in which he directs the player to keep the damper pedal down throughout (a famous example occurs in the last movement of the "Waldstein" sonata, Opera. 53). These come out rather blurred on a modern Piano if
played as written but work well on (restored or replicated) pianos of Beethoven's day. Similarly, the classical composers sometimes would write passages in which a lower violin line accompanies a higher piano line in parallel; this was a reasonable thing to
do at a time when piano tone was more penetrating than violin tone; today it is the reverse.

Currently, a few pianists simply ignore the problem; others modify their playing style to help compensate for the difference in instruments an example being using less pedal. Participants in the authentic piano performance movement have constructed new copies of the old instruments and used them in performance; this has provided important new insights and interpretations of the piano music of the past.