History of the Piano

The piano is unique among keyboard instruments. Only the piano has hammers that strike tuned strings and rebound away from them.

 
Bartolomeo Cristofori built the first piano that could be played either softly or loudly, with an escapement mechanism for the hammers, in the early 1700's.
The name piano is an abbreviation of Cristofori's original name for the instrument piano et forte, or soft and loud.

The dramatic expressive capabilities of the piano set it apart from other keyboard instruments of Cristofori's time, including the harpsichord, in which the mechanism plucks the strings, and the clavicord, in which small brass tangents mounted directly on the back ends of the keys touch the strings lightly to produce a very soft, delicate tone. Because of its versatility, the piano has remained popular to this days as the fundamental keyboard instrument of both home and concert hall.

The period beginning with the invention of the piano in the 1700's and ending in the late 1800's saw much experimentation and frequent design change. Early pianos of one maker radically different from those of another. By the late 1800's, these early designs had evolved toward an instrument whose basic features were similar to those of the modern piano. It is unusual today to find a piano manufactured prior to the 1860's or 1870's outside of a museum.