Cristofori pianoforte

The collection of musical instruments belonging to the Florence Conservatory, housed today at the Galleria dell’Accademia, includes a piano action known as the Gatti-Kraus action, ostensibly by Bartolomeo Cristofori, that belonged to the Florentine collector Alessandro Kraus. Around 1900, Kraus was held to be the expert on Cristofori; he owned five Cristofori instruments: the spinetta ovale of 1693, the spinettone da orchestra, the harpsichords of 1722 and 1726 and, most importantly here, the piano of 1726. These he sold in 1908 to Georg Heyer in Cologne.
Kraus appears to have acquired the Gatti-Kraus action at about the time he sold his Cristofori instruments. After the sale, he expressed his pride in owning the only remaining witness of Cristofori’s work as a piano maker in Italy: the Gatti-Kraus action. The action has been shown to comprise only a few items by Cristofori and that most of it is concocted, copied from the action of the 1726 piano. Authentic parts, including a key lever and a damper, must have been taken from the 1726 piano before it left Florence. Kraus must have commissioned the new action and the incorporation in it of the parts from the 1726 piano.
In the 1870s, Kraus was one of those involved in what may be seen as an intellectual fight to establish Cristofori as the piano’s inventor. The background to this was the growing sense of nationalism after the consolidation of the unification of Italy in 1861. The invention of the piano had been ascribed by others to the ‘German’ Schröter and the French Marius. To establish the ‘Italian’ Cristofori was clearly a matter not only of Kraus’s personal pride but also of national pride.
The 1720 piano by Cristofori had already been sold to the USA and the one of 1722 had not yet surfaced when Kraus decided to sell his 1726 piano to Heyer. For Kraus, this decision to renounce the last remaining vestige of a Cristofori piano would have needed compensation. This must have been the reason he had the Gatti-Krauss action made. Perhaps by retaining parts of the 1726 action and using them in a copy, he could tell himself that he still owned something of a Cristofori piano. His story to the world was a different fairy-tale: he had found the action in a dilapidated instrument at an antique dealer’s shop.

This paper draws the following conclusions: 1. Michele Feroci might have been Cristofori's first assistant in Florence. 2. The Russell Collection's Italian harpsichord (cat. no. EUCHMI 4302) was rebuilt in around 1722. 3. Ferrini's 1746 piano action shows a development of the action which we do not find in Gottfried Silbermann's copy. 4. Cristofori pianos could be bought in Florence around 1730 without having to be commissioned.

Although Giovanni Ferrini is known to be the second and better of Cristofori's two scolari, the first may have been Michele Feroci. His son's spinet is linked with the Cristofori workshop in an as yet unknown way, but helps reveal that the rebuilding of the anonymous Italian harpsichord in the Russell Collection was undertaken in around 1722.

Giovanni Ferrini's harpsichord-piano is a valuable document yielding many points of comparison. It shows a development of the Cristofori action as regards the intermediate lever, which occurred some time between 1726 and 1746.

Gottfried Silbermann copied a Cristofori action of around 1726. Zedler's account of a piano being delivered to the Elector of Saxony is dated by Ahrens to no later than 1729. Thus, Silbermann's source was probably an instrument made in the Cristofori workshop in 1726-1728.

Through the sales of pianos in 1726, 1727, 1730 and 1732 it becomes clear that the Cristofori workshop was producing pianos continually in this period so that customers did not have to order an instrument in advance. Two instruments were even shipped to London. Sutherland's view of a series production of the Cristofori piano is thereby supported.

Through the work of Paul Everett and Michael Cole it has been known for some time that Charles Jennens, Handel's librettist of "The Messiah", acquired a pianoforte from the Bartolomeo Cristofori workshop in Florence, and had it shipped to London in 1732. Only more recently, in a publication by Amanda Babington and Illias Chrissochoidis have additional details been made more widely known from the Jennens-Holdsworth correspondence, which indicate that Jennens' instrument was not the first Cristofori pianoforte in England, Willoughby Bertie having bought a piano in 1727. Through the research of Brenda Sumner, and Ruth Smith's publication on Charles Jennens, we now know a little more of his instrument. It may be possible to explain why Charles Burney was unaware of it in his summary of the early pianoforte in England. We further gain an insight into the activity of the Cristofori workshop in the last years of the inventor's life and during the transition at Cristofori's death in January 1732 when his assistant Giovanni Ferrini continued the piano building. Some of the details of Jennens' purchase also indicate how Gottfried Silbermann might have been able to acquire knowledge of the Cristofori action, which he then incorporated with success in his own pianos.

Although many publications provide a drawing (disegno) of Cristofori's piano action and describe it as from the 1711 edition of Maffei's article, most are in fact from altered versions: three altered from the 1711 edition and five from the 1719 edition. The original version has only been re-produced (albeit incompletely) by Rattalino. The 1711 drawing shows an action which is feasible, whereas some versions are functionally impossible. An examination of the text, and of surviving actions, strengthens the argument, already advanced by Och, that Maffei did not write the technical description of the action, but received a report from Cristofori. It is argued here that the other details concerning the nature of the newly-invented Gravecembalo col piano, e forte and its use were also provided by Cristofori. Thus, these testify to the maker's intentions, which are significant for us now in understanding the first piano. Maffei's unpublished notes for the article give some insight into Cristofori's early days in Florence, but do not support the interpretation that Cristofori initially declined to work for Prince Ferdinando de' Medici.

Keywords: Cristofori, piano action, Maffei, disegno, Rattalino, Och, Gravecembalo, Ferdinando de' Medici.