The Invention of the Pianoforte

Cristofori's hammer and escapement gave the keyboard a true crescendo and diminuendo.

Related

BaroqueClassicalPianoClavichord

Time and place

Florence, around 1700. Bartolomeo Cristofori, keeper of instruments at the Medici court, left an inventory entry for a keyboard that could play soft and loud; in 1711 Scipione Maffei described its action in Venice.

What happened

Cristofori kept the keyboard's shape but rebuilt the strike. A hammer rises, strikes, and escapes the key mechanism at once, so the string vibrates freely and the weight of a finger becomes a weight of sound. Leather covers the hammer head to soften the tone; double strings add resonance and dampers control the aftermath. The early instrument spanned about four octaves and produced little volume, yet its mechanism was more complex than a plucked keyboard's.

What changed

A keyboard could now make a real crescendo and diminuendo, and touch became a way of driving a mechanism rather than merely pressing a key. A player could shape a single note, and the sonata gained dynamic contrast. The piano did not displace the harpsichord at once, however; cost, touch and maintenance kept it in courts and salons until manufacturing improvements carried it to a wider public late in the eighteenth century.

Listen to the turn

Begin with C. P. E. Bach's keyboard sonata, poised between clavichord and early piano, where tiny differences of touch are magnified. Then the slow movement of Mozart's K. 332, its breath depending on the finger's control of the hammer. Finally the allegro of Haydn's Hob. XVI:52, whose wide range and fast runs need a sturdier new instrument. Hear the sound after the attack, the space a plucked keyboard cannot give.

Related

This turn moves from Baroque into Classical; see Piano and Clavichord.

Sources

• Grove Music Online, entry "Pianoforte" — Cristofori and early mechanism checked, not quoted
• Stewart Pollens, The Early Pianoforte (Cambridge University Press) — organology checked, not quoted

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.