In The Beginning
We tend to take the piano for granted these days. It's no surprise to see someone sit down and rip through a Beethoven sonata. Or caress the keys for a delicate bit of Schumann. Or create some unusual and startling sounds by playing the insides of the piano while carefully manipulating the pedals. But it wasn't always like that.
As instruments go, the piano is relatively new. Its present form is the result of hundreds of years of development that's still continuing. And with the impact of digital technology, there's no telling what it might become in the future.
It's all a bit different from what the first piano would have looked and sounded like. But why bother? What prompted the need for yet another keyboard instrument, when there were so many available at the time?
For the answers, we have to go back 300 years.
Where the Piano Came From
Before the piano came along, the most important keyboard instrument was the harpsichord. It was quite versatile in its own right, able to be used as a solo instrument, as an accompanying instrument or as part of an orchestra. Its distinctive sound quality made it a popular choice for small ensembles. But it did have its limitations.
That's what inventions are all about. Someone finds a way to overcome a device's shortcomings or improve on a product's design. And that's what happened with the keyboard.
For all its charm and popularity, the harpsichord wasn't able to sustain notes for very long. When you press a key on a harpsichord, the strings are plucked by a quill. You can hold the key down for as long as you like, but the plucking action is over in a second and the sound soon fades away.
Then there's the dynamic aspect; and this really falls into two categories. First, because of the plucking action, the player has no control over how loud or soft the notes will be. It's true that the more notes you play the louder the sound you'll make. But you can’t create a thunderous chord by simply pressing the keys with all your might.
Second, there's the orchestral factor. Imagine playing in a large orchestra with strings, brass and drums, and not being able to be heard in the loud passages. That must have been frustrating. It also explains why composers wrote music in the Concerto Grosso style, where small groups of players are pitted against larger ones. It gave the quieter instruments like the harpsichord a chance to shine.
Of course some of these problems were addressed by instrument makers. They created harpsichords with dampers that lifted away from the strings when keys were pressed. Some form of sustain was now possible, but the nature of the plucking mechanism still made it weak and unimpressive.
Next, they tried building two sets of keyboards, one for the quiet passages and another for the louder ones. This was helpful, especially in ensemble work, but it didn't solve the problem with dynamics entirely.
A New Approach
That's when Bartolomeo Cristofori took over. He saw what was going on and decided to address the problem from another angle. He figured the crux of the matter was in the playing mechanism. If you could change the way the strings were struck, you could solve all the problems at once.
Cristofori's stroke of genius was to design the first true piano action, the hammer mechanism that's still in use today. By making a hammer strike the strings and then fall away, you make the strings ring on for as long as you like. Every key pressed releases a damper, which helps sustain even more. And the harder (or softer) you strike the strings, the louder (or quieter) the sound you produce.
You can imagine the impact this had on the music of the time. Suddenly it was possible to play a chord, hold the keys down and let the sound echo throughout the building. Or to produce the softest notes imaginable. This put control of the sound back into the hands of the performer, and gave composers a whole new way of looking at keyboard music.
But Cristofori's idea didn't catch on immediately. It took a few years before real piano music was written. Let's see if we can trace its path throughout the various stages of musical history, starting in the Baroque era.
