Thursday, January 1, 2009

Piano History: How Did the Piano Originate?

By J. Simon

For several hundred years, a series of small keyboard instruments have involved in what we call a piano today. This instrument is played by pressing keys with the fingers, which sound when the hammers inside the piano strike the steel strings. The vibration of the strings resonate beautifully after the keys are struck, which makes the piano a wonderful universal instrument for all kinds of music.

Another mechanism ensures that when the key is released that specific vibration is stopped by dampers. During the duration of each key note, the vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard for amplification and sound output. This enables the pianist to produce notes of differing sonority, duration, and dynamic levels by controlling the speed and force with which the keys are held and released.

Most Western style music use the piano for piano performances only, with other musicians and singers as an accompanist, or with orchestras inspired pieces. It is the main instrument that composers and conductors use to compose and convey melodies and pieces. It is one of the most universally accepted and revered instruments throughout the world today.

The term piano also means Pianoforte a more official term that translate from the Italian to the words soft and loud. The piano can have the capacity to be played from very soft to very loud, hence the name Pianoforte. The instrument piano developed from the old instrument Harpsichord by Bartolomeo Cristofori in Italy, and became a much loved musical instrument during the 18th century.

The modern day piano developed over the centuries from the harp an old instrument before Christ's time. Originally, the was and still is a plucked string instrument the gave birth to the piano. Keys were struck on the strings instead of being plucked in the very early keyboard instruments preceding the modern piano, which is the main difference between the harp and piano.

Musician and inventor Cristofori initiated the invention with designs of the harpsichord the instrument that preceded the piano. The instrument was far from perfect, but the harpsichord was the accepted instrument for music of the Baroque era and popular with composers like J.S. Bach and George Handel. The harpsichord evolved into the piano as we know it into the 19th century and made popular with virtuoso works by Chopin and Liszt.

Before the proper precursor to the modern piano was invented in the early 1700s, to be able to produce the keyboard music one needed to control three separate instruments all at once. Right from its inception, the principal challenge motivating the art of piano designing has been to make the high notes louder and brighter. To this end, several improvements have been made in the standard piano design: a precisely calibrated mechanisms to control hammer swing, high tensile steel strings in place of catgut, innovations in the shape and material of hammers, advancement in the designs of resonators and fret boards to extend the instrument's range, and other crucial inventions like the double key escarpment that enables a note to be repeated even if the hammer had not regained its full resting position.

The critical breakthrough in the evolution of the piano was reached in the 19th century with the development of felted hammers, which provided for greater string tension, improved steel wires, iron frames for the sounding board, etc. The upright piano was perfected late in the 19th century, which made the piano more portable, less unwieldy and above all more affordable. So the piano left the concert halls and into the living rooms of the middle class where distinction of the piano became a symbol of culture and artistic refinement. - 16747

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