Piano recital

Abstract

Since the invention of the pianoforte in the early 1700s by the Italian Bartolomeo Cristofori in Florence, the piano evolved through the decades, reaching new sonorities and power. The first pianos invented in the early 1700s were mentioned in an inventory by the Medici and described as an arpicimbalo, which was an instrument resembling a harpsichord but with dampers and hammers, with two keyboards having a range of four octaves. Cristofori's instrument, the gravicembalo col piano, e forte was thus described by poet and journalist Scipione Maffei in 1711. An inscription made by Federigo Meccoli states that another instrument called arpi cimbalo del piano e forte was made by Bartolomeo Cristofori in 1700. Cristofori's survived pianos are in different countries, with one built in 1720 now in New York City's Metropolitan Museum; the one built in 1722 in Rome at the Museo Strumenti Musicali and another built in 1726 at the Musikinstrumenten-Museum, of Leipzig, Germany. The one in New York is the oldest existing piano. The piano's shape is close to that of an Italian harpsichord with a single keyboard. The other piano in the same museum contains a mechanism which is similar to the una corda as we know it today, in which the action is shifted laterally so that only one of the two strings will be struck. The piano built in 1720 has 54 keys, thiimer strings and harder hammers which has a timbre closer to a harpsichord rather then a modem Steinway piano.