Piano Forte

It looked like an English harpsichord, but inside it had a new type of hammer mechanism which was so easy to adjust that any musician could attend to the 'regulation' of the action — the only tool needed being a standard tuning hammer, supplied with the instrument. Also, of great historical importance, this was the earliest fortepiano to have a pedal at the right for raising the dampers the 'loud pedal' as so many people now say , and another to the left often called the 'soft pedal'.

Pressing this made the keyboard move about 3mm to the right so that each hammer struck only one string, leaving the other unisons to vibrate sympathetically. This produces a novel tone colour, not available on any modern piano - or indeed on Viennese fortepianos. Backers 'Forte Piano' was produced with two strings per note, or three, at various prices.

After Backers' untimely death in January his designs were replicated by Scotsman Robert Stodart, who had formerly made harpsichords with John Broadwood , but left to set up his own workshop in Wardour Street in Later, about , Broadwood himself recognised that these newly improved instruments had a great future: Perhaps this was made by someone else. The oldest known survivor bearing Broadwood's name is dated From this point on Broadwood's production of such instruments took off at a phenomenal rate, so that from his sales ledgers suggest that he was selling a hundred every year. There must have been much out-sourcing to make such phenomenal sales possible.

All known John Broadwood grand pianos from the 18th century have three strings for each note, and their hammer mechanism is very similar to that invented by Backers.

pianoforte | Definition of pianoforte in English by Oxford Dictionaries

They also have the same two pedals. These instruments had a higher string tension than those of Cristofori or his imitators, so they have a stronger and richer tone, but they continued to rely on a wholly wooden construction. An example of this latter type, made in , was presented by Thomas Broadwood to Beethoven. There he immediately began to adapt and develop the designs he saw in Broadwood's grand pianos. He was a great thinker and practical instrument maker and the instrument he developed, the French grand piano, had truly wonderful musical resources which unhappily are rarely heard today.

His return to Paris marked the beginning of a golden period for pianoforte development and manufacture in that city. He presented grand pianos from his workshop to Haydn in , and to Beethoven three years later. Though very similar to English pianos in their construction, their array of pedals placed a great variety of sonorities at the player's disposal.

French treatises of the period explain how to use the pedals in various combinations so as to create sonorities to suit the given music. Besides these extra sonorities Erard's pianos also included many subtle changes to the mechanism, making them among the most sophisticated works of craftsmanship ever produced. This culminated in Erard's invention and eventual perfection of a very complicated 'repetition action' which forms the basis of modern concert grand actions today.

The most commonly encountered fortepianos today are of the German or Viennese type, of which a great many modern replicas have been made. Their origin is to be found in the instruments made by Johann Andreas Stein in Augsburg Southern Germany from the early s. Joining Mozart for this piece were J.

Demmler cathedral organist and Stein himself playing the simpler third part. Using Stein's fortepianos the concerto was a great success. Understandably, Mozart was very enthusiastic about Stein's new invention. Count Wolfegg, from Salzburg, who must have heard young Wolfgang dozens of times before, exclaimed excitedly 'I never heard anything like this in my life! Externally, these instruments looked like typical south German harpsichords, with a double-curved i. S-form bentside and sloping cheeks, usually standing on four lathe-turned legs. But inside they had a novel hammer mechanism, very different from Cristofori's.

During the s square piano makers in western Germany had devised a system wherein each key had a small hammer mounted on the far end, pivoted in a little wooden fork Kapsel in German ; thus each hammer was attached directly to its key with the hammer head pointing towards the player. These hammers were activated on a see-saw principle. They were in effect 2-armed levers. As your finger pressed the key the little hammer was lifted until the back end the beak or Schnabel was caught by an overhanging bar; this flipped up the head of the hammer to impact the strings.

To this simple 'flip-action', common in German square pianos by , Stein added a spring-loaded pawl replacing the flip bar which meant that the hammer could 'escape' just before it hit the strings: This clever improvement gave Stein's pianos a very easy and expressive touch. His apprentices, Schiedmayer, Schmidt, Dulcken, Conrad, Schauz, and others took this very successful design and produced similar fortepianos all over the German-speaking territories, and beyond. Stein did not as a rule fit any pedals or handstops to his fortepianos, excepting for a knee-lever to disengage the dampers.

But some of his pupils added a 'moderator', originally operated by hand, on later examples by knee. This produced a softer, veiled tone by interposing strips of soft leather or finely woven cloth between the hammers and strings, but no authentic Stein fortepiano has this as an original fitment. Stein's fortepianos generally have two strings per note, but later examples have three strings per note in the top octave, to strengthen the tone. In Vienna Stein's concept was further developed by Anton Walter.

He it was who built, in the early s, the only piano Mozart ever owned. However, students need to be aware that this instrument was refurbished and modified internally for Mozart's widow, Constanze, c. For a special exhibition in it was returned to Mozart's appartment on the Domgasse in Vienna, but has since returned to Salzburg. Silbermann is credited with the invention of the forerunner of the sustain pedal , which removes the dampers from all the strings at once, permitting them to vibrate freely.

Silbermann's device was in fact only a hand stop, and thus could be changed only at a pause in the music. Throughout the Classical era , even when the more flexible knee levers or pedals had been installed, the lifting of all the dampers was used primarily as a coloristic device.

Product Comparison

The fortepiano builders who followed Silbermann introduced actions that were simpler than the Cristofori action, even to the point of lacking an escapement the device that permits the hammer to fall to rest position even when the key has been depressed. Such instruments were the subject of criticism particularly, in a widely quoted letter from Mozart to his father , but were simple to make and were widely incorporated into square pianos.

One of the most distinguished fortepiano builders in the era following Silbermann was one of his pupils, Johann Andreas Stein , who worked in Augsburg , Germany. Stein's fortepianos had what we, or Cristofori, would call "backwards" hammers, with the striking end closer to the player than the hinged end. This action came to be called the "Viennese" action, and was widely used in Vienna, even on pianos up to the mid 19th century.

The Viennese action was simpler than the Cristofori action, and very sensitive to the player's touch. According to Edwin M.

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Ripin see references below , the force needed to depress a key on a Viennese fortepiano was only about a fourth of what it is on a modern piano, and the descent of the key only about half as much. Thus playing the Viennese fortepiano involved nothing like the athleticism exercised by modern piano virtuosos, but did require exquisite sensitivity of touch. Stein put the wood used in his instruments through a very severe weathering process, and this included the generation of cracks in the wood, into which he would then insert wedges.

This gave his instruments a considerable longevity, on which Mozart commented, and there are several instruments still surviving today. Stein's fortepiano business was carried on in Vienna with distinction by his daughter Nannette Streicher along with her husband Johann Andreas Streicher. The two were friends of Beethoven, and one of the composer's pianos was a Streicher. Later on in the early 19th century, more robust instruments with greater range were built in Vienna, by for example the Streicher firm, which continued through two more generations of Streichers.

Another important Viennese builder was Anton Walter , a friend of Mozart's who built instruments with a somewhat more powerful sound than Stein's. Although Mozart admired the Stein fortepianos very much, as the letter mentioned above makes clear, his own piano was a Walter.

The fortepianos of Stein and Walter are widely used today as models for the construction of new fortepianos, discussed below. Still another important builder in this period was Conrad Graf — , who made Beethoven's last piano.

Fortepiano in England

Graf was one of the first Viennese makers to build pianos in quantity, as a large business enterprise. The English fortepiano had a humble origin in the work of Johannes Zumpe , a maker who had immigrated from Germany and worked for a while in the workshop of the great harpsichord maker Burkat Shudi.

Starting in the middle to late s, Zumpe made inexpensive square pianos that had a very simple action, lacking an escapement, sometimes known as the 'old man's head'. Although hardly a technological advancement in the fortepiano, Zumpe's instruments proved very popular they were imitated outside England , and played a major role in the displacement of the harpsichord by the fortepiano. These square pianos were also the medium of the first public performances on the instrument in the s, notably by Johann Christian Bach.

This English grand action with an escapement and check enabled a louder, more robust sound than the Viennese one, though it required deeper touch and was less sensitive. The early English grand pianos by these builders physically resembled Shudi harpsichords; which is to say, very imposing, with elegant, restrained veneer work on the exterior. Unlike contemporary Viennese instruments, English grand fortepianos had three strings rather than two per note.

Fortepiano

John Broadwood married the master's daughter Barbara Shudi, and ultimately took over and renamed the Shudi firm. The Broadwood company which survives to this day [5] was an important innovator in the evolution of the fortepiano into the piano. Broadwood, in collaboration with Jan Ladislav Dussek , a noted piano virtuoso active in London in the s, developed pianos that gradually increased the range to six octaves.

From the late 18th century, the fortepiano underwent extensive technological development and thus evolved into the modern piano; for details, see Piano. The older type of instrument ceased to be made. In the late 19th century, the early music pioneer Arnold Dolmetsch built three fortepianos. However, this attempted revival of the fortepiano was evidently several decades ahead of its time, and did not lead to widespread adoption of the instrument. In the second half of the 20th century, a great upsurge of interest occurred in period instruments , including a revival of interest in the fortepiano.

Old instruments were restored, and many new ones were built along the lines of the old. This revival of the fortepiano closely resembled the revival of the harpsichord , though occurring somewhat later in time. The reintroduction of the fortepiano has permitted performance of 18th- and early 19th-century music on the instruments for which it was written, yielding new insights into this music; for detailed discussion, see Piano history and musical performance. People's opinions about fortepiano sound vary widely, both from person to person and from instrument to instrument. Here are three representative opinions about fortepianos:.

Both are abbreviations of Cristofori's original name for his invention: The term fortepiano is somewhat specialist in its connotations, and does not preclude using the more general term piano to designate the same instrument. Thus, usages like "Cristofori invented the piano" or "Mozart's piano concertos" are currently common and would probably be considered acceptable by most musicians.

Fortepiano is used in contexts where it is important to make the precise identity of the instrument clear, as in for instance "a fortepiano recital by Malcolm Bilson". The use of "fortepiano" to refer specifically to early pianos appears to be recent. Even the authoritative Oxford English Dictionary does not record this usage, noting only that "fortepiano" is "an early name of the pianoforte". During the age of the fortepiano, "fortepiano" and "pianoforte" were used interchangeably, as the OED's attestations show.

Jane Austen , who lived in the age of the fortepiano, used "pianoforte" also: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This article is about the early version of the piano. For the musical dynamic, see Fortepiano musical dynamic. Not to be confused with Pianoforte.

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