The Black Piano

The piano was founded on earlier technological innovations. Centuries of work on the mechanism, the construction of the case, soundboard, bridge, and keyboard have resulted in the piano we know today.

Originally the piano was first known as the fortepiano, from the original Italian name for the instrument, clavicembalo [or gravicembalo] col piano e forte (literally harpsichord with soft and loud), and was created by Bartolomeo Cristofori.

It is not known exactly when Cristofori first built a piano. An inventory made by his employers, the Medici family, indicates the existence of a piano by the year 1700; another document of doubtful authenticity indicates a date of 1698. The three Cristofori pianos that survive today date from the 1720s. Bartolomeo Cristofori, of Padua, was the keeper of instruments in the court of Prince Ferdinand de Medici of Florence.

The piano has had a central place in music since the middle of the eighteenth century. Around 1780, the upright piano was created by Johann Schmidt of Salzburg, Austria and later improved in 1802 by Thomas Loud of London whose upright piano had strings that ran diagonally.

Some of the most widely admired repetoires where written for pianos, for example, thet of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, Chopin, Johannes Brahms, all though the piano at the time were substantially different from the ones that are widely known today.

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