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piano is a keyboard
instrument with strings struck by wooden hammers coated with a softer material (modern hammers
are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using its keyboard,
which is a row of keys (small levers) touched by the performer with the fingers and thumbs of both
hands, causing the hammers to strike the strings. It was invented in Italy by Bartolomeo
Cristofori around the year 1700.
Description
The English word piano is a shortened form of the Italian pianoforte,[1] derived from clavicembalo col
piano e forte ("key cimbalom with soft and loud").[2] Variations in volume (loudness) are produced in
response to the pianist's touch (pressure on the keys): the greater the pressure, the greater the force
of the hammer hitting the strings, and the louder the sound produced and the stronger the attack.
Invented in the 1700s, the fortepiano was the first keyboard instrument to allow gradations of volume
and tone according to how forcefully or softly the player presses or strikes the keys, unlike the pipe
organ and harpsichord.[3]
A piano has a protective case surrounding the soundboard and metal strings, strung under great
tension on a heavy metal frame. Pressing one or more keys causes a hammer made of wood or
plastic, padded with firm felt, to strike the strings. The hammer then rebounds from the strings, which
vibrate at their resonant frequency.[4] The vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to
a soundboard that amplifies the sound by coupling the acoustic energy to the air. When the key is
released, a damper stops the string's vibration, ending the sound.
Most notes have three strings, except for the bass, which graduates from one to two. The strings are
sounded when keys are pressed or struck, and silenced by dampers when the hands are lifted from
the keyboard. Although an acoustic piano has strings, it is usually classified as a percussion
instrument rather than as a stringed instrument, because the strings are struck rather than plucked
(as with a harpsichord or spinet); in the Hornbostel–Sachs system of instrument classification, pianos
are considered chordophones. There are two main types of piano: the grand piano and the upright
piano. The grand piano has a better sound and gives the player a more precise control of the keys,
and is therefore the preferred choice for every situation in which the available floor-space and the
budget will allow, as well as often being considered a requirement in venues where skilled pianists will
frequently give public performances. The upright piano, which necessarily involves some compromise
in both tone and key action compared to a grand piano of equivalent quality, is nevertheless much
more widely used, because it occupies less space (allowing it to fit comfortably in a room where a
grand piano would be too large) and is significantly less expensive.
Notes can be sustained when the keys are released by the use of pedals at the base of the instrument,
which hold the dampers off of the strings. The sustain pedal enables pianists to play musical passages
that would otherwise be impossible, such as sounding a chord in the bass register and then shifting
both hands to the treble range to play a melody and arpeggios over the top of this sustained chord.
Most modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys: 52 white keys for the notes of the C
major scale (C, D, E, F, G, A and B) and 36 shorter black keys raised above the white keys and set
further back, for sharps and flats. This means that the piano can play 88 different pitches (or "notes"),
spanning a range of a bit over seven octaves. The black keys are for the "accidentals" (F♯/G♭, G♯/A♭,
A♯/B♭, C♯/D♭, and D♯/E♭), which are needed to play in all twelve keys. More rarely, some pianos have
additional keys (which require additional strings), an example of which is the Bösendorfer Concert
Grand 290 Imperial, which has 97 keys.[5]
During the 1800s, influenced by the musical trends of the Romantic music era, innovations such as
the cast iron frame (which allowed much greater string tensions) and aliquot stringing gave grand
pianos a more powerful sound, with a longer sustain and richer tone. In the nineteenth century, a
family's piano played the same role that a radio or phonograph played in the twentieth century; when
a nineteenth-century family wanted to hear a newly published musical piece or symphony, they could
hear it by having a family member play a simplified version on the piano. During the nineteenth
century, music publishers produced many types of musical works (symphonies, opera overtures,
waltzes, etc.) in arrangements for piano, so that music lovers could play and hear the popular pieces
of the day in their home. The piano is widely employed in classical, jazz, traditional and popular music
for solo and ensemble performances, accompaniment, and for composing, songwriting and
rehearsals. Although the piano is very heavy and thus not portable and is expensive, its musical
versatility, the large number of musicians –both amateurs and professionals– trained in it, and its
wide availability in performance venues, schools and rehearsal spaces have made it one of the
Western world's most familiar musical instruments.
History

1720 fortepiano by Italian maker Bartolomeo Cristofori, the world's oldest surviving piano,
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City

Early piano replica by the modern builder Paul McNulty, after Walter & Sohn, 1805
The piano was founded on earlier technological innovations in keyboard instruments. Pipe
organs have been used since antiquity, and as such, the development of pipe organs enabled
instrument builders to learn about creating keyboard mechanisms for sounding pitches. The
first string instruments with struck strings were the hammered dulcimers,[6] which were used since
the Middle Ages in Europe. During the Middle Ages, there were several attempts at creating
stringed keyboard instruments with struck strings.[7] By the 17th century, the mechanisms of
keyboard instruments such as the clavichord and the harpsichord were well developed. In a
clavichord, the strings are struck by tangents, while in a harpsichord, they are mechanically plucked
by quills when the performer depresses the key. Centuries of work on the mechanism of the
harpsichord in particular had shown instrument builders the most effective ways to construct the
case, soundboard, bridge, and mechanical action for a keyboard intended to sound strings.
Invention
The 1726 Cristofori piano in the Musikinstrumenten-Museum in Leipzig
See also: Bartolomeo Cristofori
The invention of the piano is credited to Bartolomeo Cristofori (1655–1731) of Padua, Italy, who was
employed by Ferdinando de' Medici, Grand Prince of Tuscany, as the Keeper of the Instruments.
[8] Cristofori was an expert harpsichord maker, and was well acquainted with the body of knowledge
on stringed keyboard instruments; this knowledge of keyboard mechanisms and actions helped him
to develop the first pianos. It is not known exactly when Cristofori first built a piano. An inventory
made by his employers, the Medici family, indicates the existence of a piano by the year 1700. The
three Cristofori pianos that survive today date from the 1720s.[9][10] Cristofori named the
instrument un cimbalo di cipresso di piano e forte ("a keyboard of cypress with soft and loud"),
abbreviated over time as pianoforte, fortepiano, and later, simply, piano.[11]
Cristofori's great success was designing a stringed keyboard instrument in which the notes are struck
by a hammer. The hammer must strike the string, but not remain in contact with it, because
continued contact would damp the sound and stop the string from vibrating and making sound. This
means that after striking the string, the hammer must quickly fall from (or rebound from) the strings.
Moreover, the hammer must return to its rest position without bouncing violently (thus preventing
notes from being re-played by accidental rebound), and it must return to a position in which it is
ready to play again almost immediately after its key is depressed, so the player can repeat the same
note rapidly when desired. Cristofori's piano action was a model for the many approaches to piano
actions that followed in the next century.
Cristofori's early instruments were made with thin strings, and were much quieter than the modern
piano, but they were much louder and with more sustain in comparison to the clavichord—the only
previous keyboard instrument capable of dynamic nuance responding to the player's touch, the
velocity with which the keys are pressed. While the clavichord allows expressive control of volume
and sustain, it is relatively quiet even at its loudest. The harpsichord produces a sufficiently loud
sound, especially when a coupler joins each key to both manuals of a two-manual harpsichord, but it
offers no dynamic or expressive control over individual notes. The piano in some sense offers the best
of both of the older instruments, combining the ability to play at least as loudly as a harpsichord with
the ability to continuously vary dynamics by touch.
Early fortepiano
Main article: Fortepiano
Cristofori's new instrument remained relatively unknown until an Italian writer, Scipione Maffei,
wrote an enthusiastic article about it in 1711, including a diagram of the mechanism, that was
translated into German and widely distributed.[10] Most of the next generation of piano builders
started their work based on reading this article. One of these builders was Gottfried Silbermann,
better known as an organ builder. Silbermann's pianos were virtually direct copies of Cristofori's, with
one important addition: Silbermann invented the forerunner of the modern sustain pedal, which lifts
all the dampers from the strings simultaneously.[12] This innovation allows the pianist to sustain the
notes that they have depressed even after their fingers are no longer pressing down the keys. As such,
by holding a chord with the sustain pedal, pianists can relocate their hands to a different register of
the keyboard in preparation for a subsequent section.
Grand piano by Louis Bas of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, 1781. Earliest French grand piano known to
survive; includes an inverted wrestplank and action derived from the work of Bartolomeo Cristofori
(ca. 1700) with ornately decorated soundboard.
Silbermann showed Johann Sebastian Bach one of his early instruments in the 1730s, but Bach did not
like the instrument at that time, saying that the higher notes were too soft to allow a full dynamic
range. Although this earned him some animosity from Silbermann, the criticism was apparently
heeded.[12] Bach did approve of a later instrument he saw in 1747, and even served as an agent in
selling Silbermann's pianos. "Instrument: piano et forte genandt"—a reference to the instrument's
ability to play soft and loud—was an expression that Bach used to help sell the instrument when he
was acting as Silbermann's agent in 1749.[13]
Piano making flourished during the late 18th century in the Viennese school, which included Johann
Andreas Stein (who worked in Augsburg, Germany) and the Viennese makers Nannette
Streicher (daughter of Stein) and Anton Walter. Viennese-style pianos were built with wood frames,
two strings per note, and leather-covered hammers. Some of these Viennese pianos had the opposite
coloring of modern-day pianos; the natural keys were black and the accidental keys white.[14] It was
for such instruments that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his concertos and sonatas, and
replicas of them are built in the 21st century for use in authentic-instrument performance of his
music. The pianos of Mozart's day had a softer tone than 21st century pianos or English pianos, with
less sustaining power. The term fortepiano now distinguishes these early instruments (and modern
re-creations) from later pianos.

Comparison of piano sound

19th century piano sound
2:34
Frédéric Chopin's Étude Op. 25, No. 12, on an Erard piano made in 1851

Modern piano sound

3:13
The same piece, on a modern piano

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Modern piano
Further information: Innovations in the piano
In the period from about 1790 to 1860, the Mozart-era piano underwent tremendous changes that
led to the modern structure of the instrument. This revolution was in response to a preference by
composers and pianists for a more powerful, sustained piano sound, and made possible by the
ongoing Industrial Revolution with resources such as high-quality piano wire for strings, and
precision casting for the production of massive iron frames that could withstand the tremendous
tension of the strings.[15] Over time, the tonal range of the piano was also increased from the
five octaves of Mozart's day to the seven octave (or more) range found on today's pianos.

Broadwood square action (click for page with legend)

Early technological progress in the late 1700s owed much to the firm of Broadwood. John
Broadwood joined with another Scot, Robert Stodart, and a Dutchman, Americus Backers, to design a
piano in the harpsichord case—the origin of the "grand". This was achieved by about 1777. They
quickly gained a reputation for the splendour and powerful tone of their instruments, with
Broadwood constructing pianos that were progressively larger, louder, and more robustly
constructed. They sent pianos to both Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven, and were the first
firm to build pianos with a range of more than five octaves: five octaves and a fifth during the 1790s,
six octaves by 1810 (Beethoven used the extra notes in his later works), and seven octaves by 1820.
The Viennese makers similarly followed these trends; however the two schools used different piano
actions: Broadwoods used a more robust action, whereas Viennese instruments were more sensitive.

Erard square action (click for page with legend)

By the 1820s, the center of piano innovation had shifted to Paris, 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 repeating a note even if the key had not yet risen to its
maximum vertical position. This facilitated rapid playing of repeated notes, a musical device exploited
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 in the 2000s. Other improvements of the mechanism included the use of firm felt hammer
coverings instead of layered leather or cotton. Felt, which Jean-Henri Pape was the first to use in
pianos in 1826, was a more consistent material, permitting wider dynamic ranges as hammer weights
and string tension increased. The sostenuto pedal (see below), invented in 1844 by Jean-Louis
Boisselot and copied by the Steinway firm in 1874, allowed a wider range of effects.
One innovation that helped create the powerful sound of the modern piano was the use of a massive,
strong, cast iron frame. Also called the "plate", the iron frame sits atop the soundboard, and serves as
the primary bulwark against the force of string tension that can exceed 20 tons (180 kilonewtons) in a
modern grand piano. The single piece cast iron frame was patented in 1825 in Boston by Alpheus
Babcock,[16] combining the metal hitch pin plate (1821, claimed by Broadwood on behalf of Samuel
Hervé) and resisting bars (Thom and Allen, 1820, but also claimed by Broadwood and Érard). 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 increased structural integrity of the
iron frame allowed the use of thicker, tenser, and more numerous strings. In 1834, the Webster &
Horsfal firm of Birmingham brought out a form of piano wire made from cast steel; it was "so superior
to the iron wire that the English firm soon had a monopoly."[17] But a better steel wire was soon
created in 1840 by the Viennese firm of Martin Miller,[17] and a period of innovation and intense
competition ensued, with rival brand