piano

piano (It.). Soft, quiet.
1. Instruction to play softly (abbreviation p, or pp, pianissimo, very softly). Opposite of forte, loud.

2. Eng. term for kbd. instr. whose full name is pianoforte (It.), soft-loud. This instr. is, with regard to its str. and hammers, a descendant of the dulcimer, and, to its kbd., a descendant of the harpsichord and clavichord. The modern pf. has an iron frame and is either grand (str. horizontal) or upright (str. vertical). It normally has 88 keys, with a standard compass of 71/3 octaves, but some models by Bösendorfer have a compass of 8 octaves.

 Although there are other claimants to the invention of the instrument, it is generally accepted that the earliest instr. of its type was made in Florence, c.1698–1700, by Bartolomeo Cristofori, who prod. what he called a gravicembalo col piano e forte, i.e. a ‘harpsichord with loudness and softness’: for the hpd.'s plucking of the str. he had substituted the blows of a series of hammers, and it was this that gave the players of his instr. their new power of control of degrees of force. The Cristofori pfs. had a range of 4 to 4 1/2 octaves.

 Cristofori's idea was taken up in Ger. by the org.-builder Gottfried Silbermann, who in 1726 made 2 pfs. which he submitted to Bach, whose opinion of them was unfavourable and perhaps led to the improvements which apparently were introduced. In 1747 Bach, on a visit to the court of Frederick the Great at Potsdam, played the Silbermann pfs. there. All pfs. up to this point were of the hpd. shape—rather like what we now call the grand pf., with the str. horizontal and in line with the relevant finger-keys. The first pf. in clavichord shape, known as the square pf., was made by Frederici of Gera, but he was closely followed by one of Silbermann's apprentices, Johannes Zumpe, who went to London and introduced there the popular rectangular form of the instr. Further impetus to the pf. was given by J. C. Bach, when he settled in London, and by Clementi. Developments in the ‘action’ of the instr. were made by Backers, John Broadwood, and Stodart. Broadwood made changes in the square pf. In Fr., Érard made the square, and later grand pfs., while the Austrian Andreas Stein found a way of giving extra lightness of touch to the grand. The first Amer.-built pfs. were by J. Behrent in Philadelphia, 1775.

 The upright pianoforte, in which the str. run perpendicularly, was developed by John Isaac Hawkins of Philadelphia (1800) and Robert Wornum, jun., of London (1811, perfected 1829): the existing model is largely founded on that of Wornum. From the middle of the 19th cent. it superseded the square form, but was itself almost ousted in the 20th cent. by the ‘baby’, i.e. small-sized, grand.

Hawkins also introduced the iron frame. One advantage was the possibility of using str. at higher tension than the wooden frame allowed, so making possible the use of thicker wire, producing a fuller tone. The tension of a single str. today may be 180–200 lb., the varying stress of the different sizes of str. being more or less equally distributed by overstringing, i.e. by one group of str. passing more or less diagonally over another: this principle as applied to the pf. dates from c.1835, but there had previously been occasional overstrung clavichords.

 18th-cent. hpds. had more than 1 str. to each note and Cristofori's pf. had 2 throughout: the modern pf. has 1 string for a few of the very lowest notes, 2 for the middle register, and 3 for the highest (on account of the decrease of resonance with the shorter str.): the lowest str. are wrapped with a copper coil to increase their mass without too greatly decreasing their flexibility.

 The sound-board of a pf. (lying behind the str. in an upright and below them in a grand) fulfils the same function as the body of a vn.: without it the tone of the instr. would be very faint and thin. The sustaining pedal, when depressed, removes the whole series of dampers from the str.: thus any note or chord played can be given some duration, even though the finger or fingers have been removed from the keys, and also the harmonics of the str. sounded are enriched by the sympathetic resonance of those derived from other freely-vibrating str., resulting in a fuller tone. (It is a mistake to call this pedal the ‘Loud Pedal’ as it is as much used in soft passages as in loud.) This pedal must of course normally be lifted at a change of harmony, as otherwise confusion will result. There is in most instr. manufactured in the USA and Canada a sostenuto pedal. It ingeniously enables the player to make (within limits) a selection as to the notes he wishes to be held over. It was introduced by the Steinway firm and perfected in 1874. The soft pedal may act in one of several ways: (a) in grands by moving the kbd. and set of hammers sideways, so as to leave unstruck 1 str. of each note (see corda); (b) in uprights by moving the whole set of hammers nearer to the str., so that the force of their blows is diminished, or by interposing a piece of felt between hammer and str. (a crude method now little used). Many contemporary pianos are made in Japan.

 Experiments in the construction of the pf. have been frequent; these have included pfs. with double kbd.; pfs. with indefinitely prolonged sounds (by means of a revolving wheel or other imitation of the vn. bow, or of a current of air tending to keep the str. in vibration, or by some electrical device); pfs. with tuning-forks in place of str. (incapable of getting out of tune); combinations of the pf. principle with that of some other instr. (e.g. fl., organ, hpd., clavichord); quarter-tone pfs. (see microtone); various applications of electricity, etc. See keyboard for experimental kbds.; see prepared piano; see aliquot and duplex scaling.

 The pf. is, of course, principally used as a solo instr., or as the solo instr. in a conc. with orch., or in chamber mus. (pf. trio, pf. qt., etc.). But many composers in the 20th cent. have used it as an orch. instr., e.g. Stravinsky in Petrushka, Vaughan Williams in Sinfonia Antartica, Bartók in Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta, and numerous other works. Stravinsky's Les Noces is scored for 4 pf. used as perc. instrs. Later composers, from Cage onwards, have conjured new sounds from the pf. by making adjustments to the str. (see prepared piano), having them plucked by hand, or used as resonators.

 Since its first appearance, the pf. has called forth executants of varying styles and techniques. C. P. E. Bach was among the first to develop the new methods of playing so different from those required for hpd. and clavichord, followed by Clementi. Absolute evenness of touch was his ideal, inculcated also in his pupil Cramer. The Viennese-made pf. was lighter, with less sonorous tone, than the heavier English type. Mozart's playing was attuned to the Viennese action. His most famous pupil was Hummel. But Beethoven used an Eng. pf., suitable to his energetic and dynamic playing. He was the first fully to profit by the opportunities afforded by the sustaining pedal. His example was followed by Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, and Mendelssohn, whose works would be unimaginable on a pedal-less instr. John Field developed the ‘singing touch’ of legato playing and his exploitation of the nocturne influenced Chopin whose playing and comps. for the pf. opened up new possibilities of tone-colour. Liszt was the first of the virtuosi whose technique rivalled Paganini's on the vn., expanding it beyond all previous bounds, and pointing the way to the harmonic experiments of Debussy and Ravel and even to the percussive effects of Stravinsky and Bartók. Other great 19th-cent. executants were Rubinstein, Thalberg, and Bülow, while among the great composer-pianists born in the 19th cent. were Busoni, Rachmaninov, and Bartók. The 20th cent. has been rich in superb virtuosi. One need name only Arthur Rubinstein, Arrau, Horowitz, Michelangeli, and Richter as exemplars.