Essay about History of the Piano

Centuries of anthropological evolution has led to the piano manufacturing and design seen to this day. Prior to the industrial revolution and the increasing technological advancements since then, the evident influence of technology and modern manufacturing has paved the way for the development of instruments. Bartolomeo Cristofori’s piano became the leading instrument of Western art music towards the end of the eighteenth century. This versatile instrument creates all musical styles, sustaining melodies in a lyrical fashion and contains enough volume to be present in any musical orchestras. Additionally, the rise in market shares and uptakes have increased due to the mass production and use of different kinds of pianos. This complex, mechanical device continues to be the most popular instrument seen in the homes, providing expression, volume and duration of tone.

The first modern piano (pianoforte) was invented by Bartolomeo Cristofori (1655-1730) in Padua, Italy. Cristofori was a well-paid craftsman and an expert harpsichord maker for his wealthy patron Ferdinando de Medici, Grand Prince of Florence. The development of the pianoforte was derived from the combinations of ideas from earlier technological innovations, the clavichord and harpsichord. Both were widely used during this era, with their own strengths, allowing it to be used for specific venues and music styles (Merriam, 2016). The strings in a clavichord were struck by the tangents, while in a harpsichord they were plucked by the quills, essentially resulting in similar sounds (Cazaubon, 2019). The overall structure and systems of the strings and soundboard of a Harpsichord resembled those of a piano, however, Cristofori had discovered restrictions and was unsatisfied with the limited, unvarying volume of the instrument. It did not allow performing artists to evoke the same degree of emotion to other instruments as the softness and loudness could not be adjusted while playing. This led to the invention of the clavichord in the 14th century where pressing a key would send a brass rod (tangent) to hit the string and which emitted sounds from the vibrations (Yamaha, 2019). However, the volume still remained discontent to the Italian inventor to which he created the ‘gravicembalo col piano e forte’, roughly meaning soft and loud keyboard instrument’, which was eventually shortened to the pianoforte. The pianoforte allowed the user to vary the volume and tone through the pressure on the keys (NPF, 2014). The greater velocity projected onto the key, the greater force of the hammer hitting the strings resulting in a louder sound. His earliest surviving instrument dates from 1720 and is on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City as well as the museum in Leipzig, Germany with a 1726 model (Yamaha, 2019).

Not only did pianos expel musical influence, it created large debate between gender stereotypes and the living standards of middle-class families. It began before the first grand piano was invented, where the earliest dates recorded of experimenting with the sound waves that strings produced were by the Chinese in 2650 BC called ‘ke’ and Pythagoras in 582 BC through the connection of musical sounds and mathematics (Groves, 2017). Since then, there have been an array of innovations that similarly resonate to the earliest inventions, gradually leading to the introduction of the piano. During the mid-18th century, romanticism in the arts through piano pieces rose sharply. Romanticism is the expression of emotions portrayed through the expressive characteristics of instruments, which is highly-expressed on piano using the varied volumes it produces. Due to the increase of pianos in American middle-class families at this time, this movement progressed alongside of the development of the piano (Yamaha, 2019). Towards the end of the 19th century, it was a necessity to have this instrument in every household as it was also easy to store with the functional upright design. Sooner enough, there was a deeper connection between pianos and women as they were highly encouraged to learn to play the delicate instrument. Society had constructed an expectation for women to play it to be perceived as a refined and mature young woman. Additionally, with this talent, they were expected to know how to cook and sew to be considered ‘marriageable’. However, it was unheard of for women to obtain a career as a concert musician, typically playing for their husbands only. Men were generally the ones who performed in front of large crowds (Cazaubon, 2019). Eventually, during the course of the same century, the growth of pianos started to be common in public institutions such as schools and hotels. The sudden growth of the Western middle-class lifestyles began to spread in other countries such as Japan, where a new wave of pianos occurred in the eastern part of the world (Cazaubon, 2019). The outsiders’ diverse perspectives and inputs further developed the technical mechanisms and overall design of the piano.

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Scipione Maffei was an Italian journalist and poet who emphasized the necessity of pianos and its technical benefits in a 1711 article, spreading more awareness of this new creation. An organ builder Gottfriend Silbermann had built two similar copies of Cristofori’s designs that were displayed within his article. His altered designs resulted in him inventing the forerunner of the damper pedal (lifts all the dampers from the strings at once), consequently continuing to be used on piano designs nowadays. He is an important figure in the history of piano making due to his successful additions to the original designs (Renner, 2018). The rapid development of the piano mainly focused on altering the sounds which is what made Gottfriend differ. For example, English pianos had heavier mechanisms and were louder, oppositely, the Austrian pianos had a lighter mechanism and softer timbre (Cazaubon, 2019). Ultimately, pressing a key on the piano causes a felted hammer to strike the string and when the hammer rebounds from the strings, the strings vibrate at their resonant frequency. However, it differs from past string instruments as Cristofori also added, what he called, the ‘escapement’ to his design, which allowed the hammer to freely hit the string in the last part of its travel, then escape or move away rather than staying at the strings. Thus, Cristofori was able to solve the fundamental mechanical problem where the hammer must hit the key but stick with it (NPF, 2014). He is credited for substituting the plucking mechanism with a hammer that strikes the strings instead (Yamaha, 2019). The evident inventions and improvements in the piano’s construction can be seen through the more defined sophistication and subtle playing techniques. For instance, experimenting with the string placements resulted in different outcomes such as stretching the strings diagonally in a sound box resulted in richer dynamics which Loud did in 1802. This moved on to the creation of the metal frame in 1815 by Broadwood, then in 1822 where Erard invented the double hopper and thicker strings (Qamar, 2018). The double hopper was a significant addition as it allowed the rapid repetition of notes with better control of the dynamics. In 1826, Pape substituted the felt for leather on the hammers and in 1842 he increased the range of the keys to eight octaves as the original model had only six and a half octaves. All of these innovations created a more balanced and responsive model to the user (Cazaubon, 2019).

Cristofori was a sophisticated inventor who solved many technical problems with the piano, confusing other piano designers throughout the seventy-five years of its evolution. His solutions were highly complex but expensive, meaning that many ideas were dropped and soon reinvented in later times (Powers, 2003). Once these piano parts were developed, the introduction and imports of pianos in Eastern countries such as Japan and Korea in the 80s put many American piano makers out of business. Due to the economy success for Korea, the piano production migrated to Indonesia and China, creating a new wave of low-priced, low-quality pianos in the U.S. during the early 2000s. These manufacturers began to combine low-cost Chinese and Indonesian labor with high-quality designs to increase the quality of these pianos. A third of pianos that are sold in the U.S. were made in China due to the significant improvements made to the low-quality pianos sold in Eastern countries (Fine, 2019). The grand piano rose in popularity due to the superior sound quality, volume and engineering. It became the most desired and preferred instrument for pianists, making it to the forefront of piano making in 1776. During the 1780s, there were two schools of piano-making: the Viennese and the English. The English simply added heft to the sounds using various methods (Merriam, 2016). Whereas in 1780, a Viennese manufacturer Johann Andreas Stein and his daughter, Nanette Stein-Streicher, had improved the original model to introduce an improved tone in which Mozart, Beethoven and other composers specifically wrote pieces for on that piano. The grand piano market share altered to Sebastian Erard in 1808, when he increased the volume of the Viennese piano with repetition (Pianoforte, 2019). He created a counter pressure to the hammer which also tightened the rigidity of the strings, resulting in more depth in the tone. His invention is now a standard part on the majority of grand pianos to this day (Groves, 2017). In recent days, it is evident that the digital piano sells more than the grand piano due to factors such as the higher cost of grand pianos, the portability of digital pianos, and the many different features and sounds embedded in digital pianos (Cazaubon, 2019). Digital pianos provide many different pre-set sounds that allow a layering affect when the piano is used and offer unique functions that the grand piano is not able to provide (NPF, 2014).

The piano is a significant invention that allows musicians to produce notes at different dynamic levels by controlling the inertia of the hammer hitting the strings. They operate by linking individual sounds to keys, allowing several sounds to flow simultaneously. Throughout the years, the evident development of Bartolomeo Cristofori’s pianoforte has influenced many different aspects in the musical industry, as well as reality. For centuries, it still remains as the most popular musical instrument and continues to be an important source of inspiration and pleasure for everyone. The advancement of improvements from the once simple string instrument, had changed musical history forever. The normalized sights of pianos within households and the popularity of piano lessons to this day demonstrates the successfulness of the decades of work put into this artefact. The social, technical and economic factors have affected the growth in and of pianos resulting in the effective use of this instrument to this day.