Piano Replaces Harpsichord
Hammers, pedals and dynamic marks teach keyboard music to breathe.
Related
Time and place
London, Vienna and Paris, 1760s to 1790s. Cristofori built the first hammer-action keyboard around 1700, but the harpsichord was displaced by manufacturing improvement and composers writing for the new instrument.
What happened
The harpsichord plucks: press harder and it stays as loud. The piano strikes with hammers, so light and heavy touches open a range of dynamics, and a sustain pedal lets sound continue. Broadwood and Viennese makers lengthened cases and strengthened frames, extending range and volume. C. P. E. Bach, Clementi and Mozart wrote sonatas for a breathing instrument; dynamic and pedal marks entered the score.
What changed
Keyboard music moved from playing the notes clearly to shaping the tone. Composers could build paragraphs with dynamics, register and pedal, and sonata form gained dramatic contrast. The piano entered middle-class homes and became the centre of domestic music-making; the harpsichord retreated to continuo and the early-music revival.
Listen to the turn
Start with the aria of the Goldberg Variations, harpsichord repertory later moved wholesale onto the piano and turned into a laboratory of colour. Then C. P. E. Bach's keyboard sonata, where the clavichord's sensitive touch asks for tiny dynamic shades. Finally Mozart's K. 332, whose theme and accompaniment exploit the piano's levels; the harpsichord can no longer hold this writing.
Related
This turn belongs to Classical; see the Piano, Harpsichord and Clavichord.
Listen in the library
All tracks from midicn-lib — inline badge is the license tier (C1 commercial / C2 non-commercial / C3 study only).
Sources
- Grove Music Online 的 Piano 与 Harpsichord 条目，用于核对克里斯托福里、布罗德伍德与维也纳机械
- Taruskin, Music in the Eighteenth Century（Oxford, 2005），用于核对键盘奏鸣曲与力度记号的变化
Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.