The Early Pianoforte

This is the first comprehensive study of the history and technology of the early piano.

The first comprehensive study of Bartolomeo Cristofori's working life, featuring detailed technical documentation about his instruments.

Award-winning biographer Elizabeth Rusch and two-time Caldecott Honor–recipient Marjorie Priceman team up to tell the inspiring story of the invention of the world’s most popular instrument: the piano. Bartolomeo Cristofori coaxes just the right sounds from the musical instruments he makes. Some of his keyboards can play piano, light and soft; others make forte notes ring out, strong and loud, but Cristofori longs to create an instrument that can be played both soft and loud. His talent has caught the attention of Prince Ferdinando de Medici, who wants his court to become the musical center of Italy. The prince brings Cristofori to the noisy city of Florence, where the goldsmiths’ tiny hammers whisper tink, tink and the blacksmiths’ big sledgehammers shout BANG, BANG! Could hammers be the key to the new instrument? At last Cristofori gets his creation just right. It is called the pianoforte, for what it can do. All around the world, people young and old can play the most intricate music of their lives, thanks to Bartolomeo Cristofori’s marvelous creation: the piano.

David Rowland traces the history of piano pedaling from its beginnings in the eighteenth century to its first maturity in the middle of the nineteenth century and beyond. Pedaling technique was a major feature of nineteenth-century piano performance and, coupled with new developments in piano structure, inspired many composers to write innovative works for the literature. Rowland examines this through the technique and music of composer-pianists such as Beethoven, Liszt, and Chopin and follows the transition from harpsichord and clavichord to piano. The book also includes an appendix of translated extracts from three well-known piano-pedaling tutors.

A beautifully illustrated, totally engrossing celebration of the piano, and the composers and performers who have made it their own. With honed sensitivity and unquestioned expertise, Stuart Isacoff—pianist, critic, teacher, and author of Temperament: How Music Became a Battleground for the Great Minds of Western Civilization—unfolds the ongoing history and evolution of the piano and all its myriad wonders: how its very sound provides the basis for emotional expression and individual style, and why it has so powerfully entertained generation upon generation of listeners. He illuminates the groundbreaking music of Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt, Schumann, and Debussy. He analyzes the breathtaking techniques of Glenn Gould, Oscar Peterson, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Arthur Rubinstein, and Van Cliburn, and he gives musicians including Alfred Brendel, Murray Perahia, Menahem Pressler, and Vladimir Horowitz the opportunity to discuss their approaches. Isacoff delineates how classical music and jazz influenced each other as the uniquely American art form progressed from ragtime, novelty, stride, boogie, bebop, and beyond, through Scott Joplin, Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, Bill Evans, Thelonious Monk, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Cecil Taylor, and Bill Charlap. A Natural History of the Piano distills a lifetime of research and passion into one brilliant narrative. We witness Mozart unveiling his monumental concertos in Vienna’s coffeehouses, using a special piano with one keyboard for the hands and another for the feet; European virtuoso Henri Herz entertaining rowdy miners during the California gold rush; Beethoven at his piano, conjuring healing angels to console a grieving mother who had lost her child; Liszt fainting in the arms of a page turner to spark an entire hall into hysterics. Here is the instrument in all its complexity and beauty. We learn of the incredible craftsmanship of a modern Steinway, the peculiarity of specialty pianos built for the Victorian household, the continuing innovation in keyboards including electronic ones. And most of all, we hear the music of the masters, from centuries ago and in our own age, brilliantly evoked and as marvelous as its most recent performance. With this wide-ranging volume, Isacoff gives us a must-have for music lovers, pianists, and the armchair musician.

English keyboard art from Robertsbridge Codex (c. 1325) to John Field. Illuminating coverage of organ, harpsichord, pianoforte, other instruments; works of Tallis, Byrd, Gibbons, Tomkins, many others. Bibliography.

Originally published in 1933, this book provides a detailed history of the piano-forte from its invention in Italy in the eighteenth century until the presentation of the first European cast-iron frame for a piano at the 1851 Great Exhibition. Harding also analyses the role of the piano as a replacement for a chamber orchestra and its history as a domestic instrument. The text is richly illustrated with images of pianos produced by a variety of makers over time, as well as with images of piano machinery taken from patent registrations. This thoroughly-researched book will be of value to anyone with an interest in one of the most ubiquitous instruments in the Western world and the history of its development.