History of Piano

The year 1709 was a harsh one in most of Europe, it was when an event known as the great frost was happening, the coldest days that the continent had seen in the last 500 years, with temperatures as low as -15º C.

Although, amidst the darkness of this ruthless winter, an Italian man was working on a very special craft, something that would bring warmth to the souls of people in the whole world forevermore.

That man, Bartolomeo di Francesco Cristofori, was not the inventor of the heater as you may have imagined – he was the father of the piano.

From plucking to striking

Cristofori was a harpsichord maker, an instrument similar to the piano designed in the 15th century, that eventually was completely substituted by its younger brother, for it was a rather limited instrument, unlike the piano that can play tones of varying volumes.

The harpsichord may resemble it visually, but it has two or more sets of strings and two keyboards. The uniqueness of the piano comes from the addition of hammers, that strike the strings to make the sounds, and a mechanism called “action” that links each of the hammers to a key lever.

The first pianos had a range of 49 notes (four octaves), they were made almost entirely of wood and each string was held at a tension rather weak when compared to the modern pianos, that have a range of 88 notes (7,33 octaves, approximately), with its strings held at a force more than 9 times stronger, and is encased in iron for it to be able to tolerate the much greater tension of the strings.

The first name the piano received was… rather exotic – not to say inconvenient, it was precise, indeed, but slightly overcomplicated – “Arpicembalo del piano e forte” was how Cristofori baptized it, referencing the fact that one could play soft and loud notes. Fortunately, the gracefulness of this name gave place to the practicality of pianoforte, and then to simply piano that translates to “soft”. The first exhibition of this new instrument happened in the same year, in Florence.

The upright piano

Cristofori’s pianos were designed to fit inside an average house, differently from the grand ones of nowadays. One of the first models made for home usage was the “square grand piano”, although their cases were rectangular; this shape allowed a layout where the strings ran parallel to the keyboard, in a fashion similar to plucked string instruments (like the harpsichord). The whole structure was more compact but limited the number of octaves, having only five.

Later, they evolved to a bulkier version with seven octaves, albeit they proved to be too big, and were not convenient for home use – which resulted in the new design where the soundboard lies in a vertical plane, the upright piano. They were much more practical, occupying less than half of the space that its predecessor required, however, it was quite hard to design an adequate action.

In the older models, gravity was always there to help, bringing the hammers back in place after the press of the key launched them towards the string, but that did not happen in the upright piano since the strings are set vertically, a whole new action design was needed to kick the hammers towards the strings and them back to the initial position. Only around 1820 an efficient action was designed and is essentially what we use today in modern upright pianos.

The evolution

After three centuries, the part of the piano that changed the most is the action. The cities of London and Vienna were the first to develop great schools of piano-making by the year of 1760. The crafts made by these two schools were quite similar, with the exception of the mechanism of the action. The Viennese action had each hammer on an axel and they were attached to a key lever individually.

The English action had its hammers mounted on a rail that sits atop the key lever, not being connected to them, nor the rest of the action. This last one is the action found in the modern pianos.

The hammers also saw improvements, Cristofori’s models had a slim cylinder of parchment on a wooden shaft, covered by a layer of felt at the side that faced the strings. These primordial hammers were quite fragile and by 1750, hammers covered by layers of leather took their place. Around 1850 the tension of the strings in the pianos was increasing, so the hammers had to be more durable and the layers of leather were substituted by layers of felt – by this year the technology for fabricating felt had evolved, it was easier to make and more consistent.

Felt covered hammers are the ones we use today, with more layers than its first version used, and the quality of the felt is greatly superior.

I think it might be a good idea to clarify what are these hammers inside the pianos. Maybe you know about them, but maybe you do not, and if the latter is the case, it might be a little confusing and you may picture several nail hammers hitting strings inside the thing – and yes, that would look weird.

The concept is simple and resembles a hammer in every way, its made of wood (most of the times), and its head is covered by a softer material, usually felt, that is what hits the strings. The image below will show an example of what a hammer looks like (Yes, it is broken where it should be attached to a rail, but it showcases the head well).

The strings changed too. In the first models, the strings were made of either brass or iron – back then iron was already the better option for it could resist a greater tension than brass, and with a greater tension the quality of the sound increases, the strings can be hit harder and they are more harmonical, expanding the range that the sounds can reach.

In the early 1800s, strings of iron mixed with carbon were the new go-to, as this made them even stronger. From 1860 and beyond steel strings began to be used. But in this transition from brass to steel, they couldn’t simply change the strings, as mentioned before the tension of modern pianos is more than 9 times higher, and the whole instrument must resist this pressure – so in order to change the strings, the wooden case also had to be substituted. They began by reinforcing it with metal rods, then metal plates were used to fortify key areas, and eventually, the full metal plate was invented and an iron case now assured that the instrument would withstand the steel string’s mighty force.

Electrification

Curiously, not much has changed in the structure of the grand piano since the late 1800s, it saw frequent and substantial changes up until that point, but in the last century, the modifications were a lot more subtle. The stop in the expansion of the number of notes happened due to our own auditory limitations.

Also, musicians create some resistance as they don’t want extreme modifications happening to such a classical instrument. And this might not be a bad thing at all. Regardless, that didn’t stop people from combining technology with a piano.

The electric piano saw its first version in 1929 with the Neo-Bechstein. By late 1939, the Vierlang-Forster electric piano was introduced, it had strings and hammer action, but no soundboard. Electromagnetic pickups, speakers and circuitry would amplify the sound.

The primordial models made the sounds by striking strings, however, subsequent models used different methods, replacing the strings with reeds and tuning-forks. These are different instruments but did have considerable influence on modern music. Its popularity increased substantially in the 1950s with Ray Charles and is quite common in Soul and Jazz music in general. Eventually, they were almost entirely replaced by the digital piano in the 1990s.

Legends

Needless to say that the piano was a great success from the beginning, musicians loved it back in the 1700s and love it now. It is worth to mention briefly the first two people to master it: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven. You may have heard of them. It is a fact that Mozart was a great pianist, although history remembers him mostly from his skill with the violin, the main instrument of what is perhaps his most famous work, the unfinished Requiem (it was finished after his death by students and friends).

Born in 1770, Beethoven made his first public performance in 1778, five years later he already had three piano sonatas published. Truly, Beethoven was born for it, and even after he became deaf he kept composing. He passed away at the age of 56, having composed 32 pianos sonatas, five piano concertos and the nine symphonies must be mentioned. There are several other legendary musicians, of course, like Fréderic Chopin and Johann Sebastian Bach, but Mozart and Beethoven were the first ones and their influence is undeniable.

It has been 310 years after the first time that the world heard the mesmerizing melodies coming from the piano’s strings. It didn’t do much to ease the ferocity of the frostbites from that merciless winter, but to imagine how much it influenced the world with its timeless music across these years is quite interesting – how many waltzes were danced, presentations attended, emotions translated to notes and shared to millions of people – to envision that is surely heartwarming.

The three oldest known pianos, made by Cristofori himself in the 1720s, can be found in museums around the world, like the Musikinstrumenten Museum in Leipzig (Germany), the Museo Nationale degli Strumenti Musicali in Rome and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.