News from Italy
Inventor of the piano
City lights: Bartolomeo Cristofori
by Angela Maria
The piano is one of the most popular and influential instruments ever invented. So you’d think the inventor would be a household name – like Alexander Graham Bell or Thomas Edison.
But no. The inventor of the keyboard instrument that inspired Beethoven, Rachmaninov, and Liszt is a man you’ve probably never heard of.
Now, meeting the man who invented the most popular instrument in the world: Bartolomeo Cristofori.
Bartolomeo was born in Padua on 4 May 1655 to Francesco and Laura, as shown in the baptismal certificate (6 May 1655) preserved in the registers of the parish of S. Luca Evangelista in via XX Settembre.
He lived vaguely close to the palaces of the Papafava counts. He soon began working in a harpsichord maker’s workshop. In a short time, Bartolomeo had built a good reputation as a good young craftsman who made highly regarded instruments.
An event occurred that would change his life: in 1688, Prince Ferdinando de Medici, a great patron of the arts, humanist, and excellent harpsichordist, son of the then Grand Duke of Tuscany Cosimo III, passed through their territory. He was lucky enough to know him. He proposed to enter his service in Florence as a court harpsichordist.
At this point, he was already a musical instrument maker and technician. Ferdinand hired Cristofori to care for his menagerie of musical instruments. Because he had heard that Cristofori was also a genuinely exceptional inventor.
He frequented one of the numerous Medici workshops near the Uffizi in Florence. He remained near the Uffizi until the end of his life, first in the canto of the Alberti in the people of San Remigio and then in the people of San Jacopo tra Fossi.
One of his rare portraits was done in the Florentine period. It was discovered in 1934 and purchased by the Berlin Musical Instrument Museum.
It belongs to the Florentine school, dated 1726, by an unknown author, in which he was portrayed standing near a keyboard instrument.
In 1690, he served the Medici family as a court harpsichordist. His activity as a designer and manufacturer of instruments sold in Pitti and Pratolino remains documented.
He also made other instruments, such as a spinet, a cypress harpsichord, an organ, and even a double bass, which we can still see today in the Cherubini Museum in Florence, as evidence of his activity as a luthier.
He had a mental propensity for designing different instruments. His patron, Prince Ferdinand, noticed this characteristic and strongly encouraged himself to study the possibility of creating a new instrument by making substantial changes to the mechanics of the harpsichord, transforming it from a plucked string instrument to an instrument with struck strings.
This adventure began in 1698. A certain Mannucci wrote that in his inventory of instruments, for the first time, the existence of an instrument designed and defined by Bartolomeo was reported: “an Arpicimbalo that plays the piano and the forte,” which is the first piano.
His patron, Ferdinando, died in 1711. Bartolomeo remained at the Medici court as an instrument maker. From 1700 to 1732, he left a legacy of 173 catalogued instruments.
The piano built in 1722 belonged to the very famous Benedetto Marcello, then to his brother Alessandro, who bequeathed it to Countess Lucia Cittadella Rapti, and then to the Paduan counts Giusti del Giardino. We now find it preserved in the Museum of Musical Instruments in Rome. The example built in 1726 was part of the Florentine collection of Baron Kraus and his son Alexander, was exhibited together with 1720 one at the Paris EXPO of 1878, and is now preserved in Leipzig. Death came on January 27, 1732.
How did the piano get its name?
The phrase “produce piano e forte” in Italian is “che fa” il piano, e il forte. “This is where the piano gets its name: it can play both piano and forte.
The first pianos looked very different from modern instruments: there were no pedals, the keyboard was much shorter, and the entire instrument was much smaller. Listening to one of these early pianos would also sound very different: much quieter and much less resonant than a modern piano, such as a Steinway.
How does a piano make a sound?
Unlike the harpsichord, an earlier keyboard instrument, the piano’s sound is generated by hammers striking the tuned strings.
When a musician presses a key, a damper releases the string, and the hammer strikes the string, creating the sound. When the player releases the key, the damper returns to the string, interrupting its vibration.
The modern piano’s damper pedal keeps the dampers raised so that even when a pianist releases a note, the string continues to vibrate, and the sound lasts longer.
Today’s pianos use essentially the same hammer action as Cristofori’s first instrument, made centuries ago.
