The piano is a stringed keyboard musical instrument, derived from the harpsichord and the clavichord. Also called the Pianoforte or Klavier, it has wire strings that sound when struck by felt covered hammers operated from a keyboard. The modern piano contains 88 black and white keys.
The tone of the piano is produced by the striking of strings. The vibration of the strings is transmitted to a soundboard by means of a bridge over which the strings are stretched; the soundboard amplifies the sound and affects the tone quality. The modern piano has a cast iron frame capable of withstanding the tremendous tension of the strings. Of the three pedals found on most pianos, the damper pedal on the right lifts all the felt dampers above the strings, allowing them to vibrate freely. The left pedal shifts the keyboard and action sideways to enable the hammer to strike only one of the two or three unison strings of each tenor and treble key.
The middle pedal usually holds up the dampers only of those keys depressed when the pedal is depressed. Click the grand piano above to hear Mozart's sonata in a-minor, played by Christian Zacharias.
The piano was the invention of Italian harpsichord maker Bartolomeo Cristofori. In 1698, he began work on a special new keyboard instrument. His aim was to build an instrument that could play both loud and soft (unlike the popular harpsichord which could only play one volume). In 1709, the new instrument was finished and was called 'garvicembalo col piano e forte' - 'harpsichord with soft and loud.' In 1732, the composer Lodovico Giustini published twelve sonatas for Cristofori's piano. On the score, the composer marks where the music is to be played loud and soft.
The earliest pianos were grand pianos, large instruments with their strings stretching away from the player. They were elegant pieces of furniture in their own right, but were cumbersome and took up a lot of space. German builders began to make smaller instruments which they called square pianos. This was a lighter, less-expensive instrument with a softer touch.
By about 1860, the upright piano had virtually replaced the square piano for home use. It is a piano in which the soundboard and plane of the strings run vertically, perpendicular to the keyboard, thus taking up less floor space. Other types of pianos include, the 'player piano' (a piano that plays music recorded by means of perforations on a paper roll or digital memory on a computer disc) and the recent development in the twentieth century, the 'electric piano' (a piano which relied on electroacoustic or digital methods of tone production and amplified by a loudspeaker).
The piano has always been an instrument for virtuosos and interestingly enough is the most common first instrument of children nowadays. Composers played their own compositions in the 18th and 19th centuries, among them, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Frederic Chopin and Franz Lizst. Noted German pianist Clara Schumann played the compositions of her husband, Robert Schumann. Other eminent pianists include Russian Anton Rubinstein, Polish Ignance Paderwski and American Authur Rubinstein, Sergey Rachmaninoff and Vladimir Horowitz.
The piano has come a long way since Cristofori's first instrument. Many makers, famous in their day, are now known only by their nameplate on their surviving instruments. Some famous companies, founded in the 19th century are still very much alive today. These include the famous German firm Bechstein, the Austrian firm Bösendorfer, and the American firm of Steinway - names which are seen regularly in the best concert halls in the world.
