One of the most beloved, one of the most expensive and one of the most versatile and influential instruments in the world, the piano has been part of our lives for the past three hundred years. It has shaped Western music in innumerable ways and has influenced endless genres of music from classical to jazz to rock and roll, filmscore music and classic pop. But what is the history of the piano? Where did it come from? Who made it? And what does the name ‘piano’ actually mean? This article will cover the history and influence that one of the most famous musical instruments in the world, has had on Western civilisation from the start of the Stuart Period, up to the modern day.

Before the Piano.

Keyboard instruments have existed for centuries. Before the piano, there was the harpsichord and clavichord. Before the harpsichord, there was the hurdy-gurdy. Of these three instruments, the piano most closely resembled the harpsichord, which could be considered the modern piano’s birth-instrument. Before the piano came along, keyboard instruments worked by pressing on the keys, which moved a series of wooden pegs (called ‘jacks’) which sprung upwards, pluckng strings inside the instrument-case. Clavichords and harpsichords worked like this. There was one jack for each key, and each jack had a small spike or ‘quill’ in it, which plucked (and vibrated) the string as it went up, and which dampened (or dulled) the string as it came down again. Instruments such as the harpsichord and clavichord produced very twangy, metallic-sounding music, a cross between a piano and a guitar, lute or a harp. The sound of harpsichords is commonly associated with grand, European royal courts in the 17th and 18th centuries.

An 18th century harpsichord. Note the lack of pedals underneath the keyboard.

While such instruments as harpsichords and clavichords looked very much like pianos, and while they worked similarly to a piano, they differed greatly in the sounds they produced. Harpsichords, as I said, produce sound by plucking the strings, not striking them, like a modern piano. This plucking sound creates a sharp, metallic ‘twang!’, a bit like a guitar-string. Furthermore, as the harpsichord-jack fell the moment you removed your finger from the key, the damper in the jack immediately dulled the the string, preventing harpsichordists from holding notes for very long. This limited the kind of music which people could produce on these instruments. Sooner or later, someone was going to get fed up with all this stuff, and do something about it…and that someone was an Italian instrument-maker…

The Birth of the Pianoforte.

As we’ve seen, while keyboard instruments existed before the piano, they had deficiencies in how they produced sound and how well that sound could be manipulated and used by the musician, to create music. Something better and more conducive to musical creativity was needed. Something with more variety and possibilities. Something that could allow the instrumentalist to control every facet of how he played the instrument and that would allow him to get the most out of his playing. That something, was a newfangled invention, called, in its native Italian, the clavicembalo col piano e forte. Literally: Clavichord with soft and loud (capabilities). It was called this because it was the first keyboard instrument (a clavichord), which allowed the instrumentalist to control how hard or how softly he desired to strike the keys and how loud, or how soft the resultant notes would sound. It was an incredible invention!

So…who invented the piano?

Thorough musical historical research has attributed the invention of the fortepiano (later changed to the pianoforte and later still, to just ‘piano’) to one man. This one man was an Italian instrument-maker who lived in the 17th and 18th centuries. His name was Bartolomeo Cristofori. Signor Cristofori was born in the Republic of Venice (modern day Venice, Italy), in 1655. By the time of his death in 1731, he had created one of the most legendary instruments ever known.

Reliable historical documents date the first mention of Sig. Cristofori’s new instrument to the year 1700. By that stage, he had invented a keyboard instrument which worked by having hammers strike the strings, instead of having jacks which plucked them. The inclusion of pedals allowed musicians who tried out Sig. Cristofori’s new toy, to regulate how long a note hung in the air for, before releasing their foot (and lowering the damper), to muffle the vibrating piano-strings.

The piano was an incredible success. By the time a young man named Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart appeared on the scene, Europe had been living with the piano for some fifty-six years. Indeed, by 1728, the first commercial piano-manufacturer had set itself up in business. John Broadwood & Sons is the oldest piano-manufacturer in the world…and nearly 300 years later…it’s still making pianos!

Piano made by John Broadwood & Sons, dated 1799. Note the two pedals jutting out of the two front legs.

Such was the piano’s popularity that by the 1790s, Mr. Broadwood and his sons had given up making harpsichords entirely. Prior to that date, they manufactured both pianos and harpsichords, but the Broadwood family must’ve been pretty brainy, for they saw rather quickly that the piano was the new thing that everyone wanted. The harpsichord’s days were now numbered and in 1793, the firm stopped making harpsichords altogether and concentrated on creating the best pianos that they possibly could. As of the year 2000, J. Broadwood & Sons holds a Royal Warrant from the British Royal Family, as official supplier (and tuner) of pianos provided to the Queen’s court and household.

The Rise of the Piano.

Such was the popularity of Sig. Cristofori’s new invention that by the early 1800s, the harpsichord was more-or-less obsolete. Nobody wanted them, and new piano-manufacturers were popping up almost overnight. While Mr. Broadwood and his family paved the way, being the first commercial manufacturer of pianos, they would not be alone for very long. Following closely behind the Broadwoods were the manufacturies of Erard (France, 1777), Challen (England, 1804), Chappell (England, 1811) and eventually, one of the most famous piano-manufacturers of all…Steinway & Sons, in 1853.

The impact of the piano on society was immense. Once the toys of only the rich, famous and powerful, towards the middle and end of the 19th century, the piano, now produced in significant quantities in factories and workshops around the world, started being made available to the upper and middle-classes of society, which were formed with the rise of the Industrial Revolution.

By the early 19th century, piano had firmly cemented its place in Western music. By this time, there were three distinct styles of pianos…

The Upright Piano. The most common, domestic piano today, the upright piano is characterised by having the soundboard and strings placed vertically, perpendicular to the keyboard.

The Grand Piano. This style of piano had its origins in the 17th and 18th centuries. Early pianos copied the case-styles of pre-existing harpsichords which were similarly shaped. Grand pianos are generally associated with larger homes or with institutions such as concert halls, schools and musical academies.

The Square Piano. Also called a square grand. The square piano was a style of piano manufactured in the earlier days of the piano’s existence and this case-style was made from the 1700s until the first half of the 1800s, when it finally died out. Very few, if any people, still make square pianos, and the majority you see today would all be antiques at least 150 years old.

The Influence of the Piano.

The rise of the piano was fast and phenomenal, and its influence on Western popular culture and the musical scene was just as intense. For the first time, an instrument with almost endless musical possibilities, was placed within the reach of ordinary men and women. Prior to the 19th century, pianos were expensive and carefully made, meant only for the wealthy and powerful. The rise of the Industrial Revolution, however, allowed pianos to be made more rapidly and more cheaply, and people started buying them and putting them in their homes, their schools, community halls and other places of social gathering. The range of notes on the piano allowed for endless musical possibilities and this saw the rise of the popular song during the last quarter of the 19th century.

The Rise of Popular Music.

With pianos now becoming more abundant and more accessible to the average man and woman, people began to see that there could be a booming music industry just over the horizon, that clever composers could make millions out of. And so, the first mass-produced, popular songs started coming onto the market.

The center for popular piano sheet-music in the United States (at least), from around 1880 until the 1950s, was a small section of Manhattan on West 28th Street, between 5th and 6th Avenues…colloqually called…Tin Pan Alley.

The name was originally a derrogatory one, and reflected the sounds of dozens of pianos being played on, all at once, which supposedly sounded like a bunch of idiots beating away at a heap of tin pans. Despite the fact that people passing through Tin Pan Alley might not have liked the din of all the clashing pianos, Tin Pan Alley produced and published some of the most famous songs of late 19th century and early 20th century popular music. These are all Tin Pan Alley songs…how many do you know?

In the Good Old Summertime.
Give My Regards to Broadway.
There’ll be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight.
Danny Boy.
Alexander’s Ragtime Band.
Hello Ma Baby.
Come Josephine in my Flying Machine.
Yes! We have no Bananas.
Under the Bamboo Tree.
Chinatown, My Chinatown.
Daisy Bell (A Bicycle Built for Two).
Take Me Out to the Ball Game.

You may recognise a few of them. These were all popular songs of the late 19th and early 20th century, and they all came from Tin Pan Alley. None of this would have been possible without the invention of the piano. Without the piano, popular music as we know it today, simply could not, and never would have existed. Tin Pan Alley’s popularity was assured in the turn of the century because the middle-class people of New York, who had pianos in their apartments, were always on the lookout for new and better and more interesting songs to play. Broadway musicals and vaudeville shows, together with popular ragtime music (which was the mainstay of American popular music from the 1880s until the 1910s), kept Tin Pan Alley in business for years. It wasn’t until the rise of Rock and Roll in the early 50s that classical popular music began to gradually slide away, out of the public consciousness.

The Piano Today.

But, none of this stuff. Not the jazz, the ragtime, the pop music, rock and roll, classical, classic pop, classic rock or showtunes would be possible today, if not for that one instrument…the piano, which was invented over 300 years ago, by an Italian keyboard-manufacturer known as Bartolomeo Cristofori. The piano remains an immensely popular instrument today, both for commercial and private residential musical enjoyment.