Fortepiano - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Fortepiano designates the early version of the piano

Piano

The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...

, from its invention by the Italian instrument maker Bartolomeo Cristofori

Bartolomeo Cristofori

Bartolomeo Cristofori di Francesco was an Italian maker of musical instruments, generally regarded as the inventor of the piano.-Life:...

around 1700 up to the early 19th century. It was the instrument for which Haydn

Joseph Haydn

Franz Joseph Haydn , known as Joseph Haydn , was an Austrian composer, one of the most prolific and prominent composers of the Classical period. He is often called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet" because of his important contributions to these forms...

, Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...

, and the early Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...

wrote their piano music. Starting in Beethoven's time, the fortepiano began a period of steady evolution, culminating in the late 19th century with the modern grand. The earlier fortepiano became obsolete and was absent from the musical scene for many decades. In the 20th century the fortepiano was revived, following the rise of interest in historically informed performance

Historically informed performance

Historically informed performance is an approach in the performance of music and theater. Within this approach, the performance adheres to state-of-the-art knowledge of the aesthetic criteria of the period in which the music or theatre work was conceived...

. Fortepianos are built for this purpose today in specialist workshops.

Construction

The fortepiano has leather

Leather

Leather is a durable and flexible material created via the tanning of putrescible animal rawhide and skin, primarily cattlehide. It can be produced through different manufacturing processes, ranging from cottage industry to heavy industry.-Forms:...

-covered hammers and thin, harpsichord

Harpsichord

A harpsichord is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It produces sound by plucking a string when a key is pressed.In the narrow sense, "harpsichord" designates only the large wing-shaped instruments in which the strings are perpendicular to the keyboard...

-like strings. It has a much lighter case construction than the modern piano and, except for later examples of the early nineteenth century (already evolving towards the modern piano), it has no metal frame or bracing. The action and hammers are lighter, giving rise to a much lighter touch, which in good fortepianos is also very responsive.

The range of the fortepiano was about four octave

Octave

In music, an octave is the interval between one musical pitch and another with half or double its frequency. The octave relationship is a natural phenomenon that has been referred to as the "basic miracle of music", the use of which is "common in most musical systems"...

s at the time of its invention and gradually increased. Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

(1756–1791) wrote his piano music for instruments of about five octaves. The piano works of Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven

(1770–1827) reflect a gradually expanding range; his last piano compositions are for an instrument of about six octaves. (The range of most modern pianos, attained in the 19th century, is 7⅓ octaves.)

Fortepianos from the start had devices similar to the pedals of modern pianos, but these were not always pedals; sometimes hand stops or knee levers were used instead.

Sound

Like the modern piano, the fortepiano can vary the sound volume of each note, depending on the player's touch. The tone of the fortepiano is quite different from that of the modern piano however, being softer with less sustain

Sustain

In music, sustain is a parameter of musical sound over time. As its name implies, it denotes the period of time during which the sound remains before it becomes inaudible, or silent.Additionally, sustain is the third of the four segments in an ADSR envelope...

. Sforzando accents tend to stand out more than on the modern piano, as they differ from softer notes in timbre as well as volume, and decay rapidly.

Fortepianos also tend to have quite different tone quality in their different registers — noble and slightly buzzing in the bass, "tinkling" in the high treble, and more rounded (closest to the modern piano) in the mid range. In comparison, modern pianos are rather more uniform in sound through their range.

Cristofori

What we now call the fortepiano was invented by harpsichord

Harpsichord

maker Bartolomeo Cristofori

Bartolomeo Cristofori

Bartolomeo Cristofori di Francesco was an Italian maker of musical instruments, generally regarded as the inventor of the piano.-Life:...

in Florence

Florence

Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....

around the turn of the 18th century. The first reliable record of a fortepiano appears in the inventory of the Medici

Medici

The House of Medici or Famiglia de' Medici was a political dynasty, banking family and later royal house that first began to gather prominence under Cosimo de' Medici in the Republic of Florence during the late 14th century. The family originated in the Mugello region of the Tuscan countryside,...

family (who were Cristofori's patrons), dated 1700. Cristofori continued to develop the instrument until the 1720s, the time from which the surviving three Cristofori instruments date.

Cristofori is perhaps best admired today for his ingenious fortepiano action, which in some ways was more subtle and effective than that of many later instruments. However, other innovations were also needed to make the fortepiano possible. Merely attaching the Cristofori action to a harpsichord would have produced a very weak tone. Cristofori's instruments instead used thicker, tenser strings, mounted on a frame considerably more robust than that of contemporary harpsichords. As with all later pianos, in Cristofori's instruments the hammers struck more than one string at a time; Cristofori used pairs of strings throughout the range.

Cristofori was also the first to incorporate a form of soft pedal

Soft pedal

The soft pedal is one of the standard pedals on a piano, generally placed leftmost among the pedals. On a grand piano this pedal shifts the whole action including the keyboard slightly to the right, so that hammers which normally strike all three of the strings for a note strike only two of them....

into a piano (the mechanism by which the hammers are made to strike fewer than the maximum number of strings; Cristofori's was a hand stop). It is not clear whether the modern soft pedal descends directly from Cristofori's work or arose independently.

Cristofori's invention soon attracted public attention as the result of a journal article written by Scipione Maffei and published 1711 in Giornale de'letterati d'Italia of Venice. The article included a diagram of the action, the core of Cristofori's invention. This article was republished 1719 in a volume of Maffei's work, and then in a German translation (1725) in Johann Mattheson

Johann Mattheson

Johann Mattheson was a German composer, writer, lexicographer, diplomat and music theorist.Mattheson was born and died in Hamburg. He was a close friend of George Frideric Handel, although he nearly killed him in a sudden quarrel, during a performance of Mattheson's opera Cleopatra in 1704...

's Critica Musica. The latter publication was perhaps the triggering event in the spread of the fortepiano to German-speaking countries (see below).

Cristofori's instrument spread at first quite slowly, probably because, being more elaborate and harder to build than a harpsichord, it was very expensive. For a time, the fortepiano was the instrument of royalty, with Cristofori-built or -styled instruments played in the courts of Portugal and Spain. Several were owned by Queen Maria Barbara of Spain

Barbara of Portugal

Barbara of Portugal was an Infanta of Portugal and later Queen of Spain as wife of Ferdinand VI of Spain.-Life in Portugal:...

, who was the pupil of the composer Domenico Scarlatti

Domenico Scarlatti

Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti was an Italian composer who spent much of his life in the service of the Portuguese and Spanish royal families. He is classified as a Baroque composer chronologically, although his music was influential in the development of the Classical style...

. One of the first private individuals to own a fortepiano was the castrato

Castrato

A castrato is a man with a singing voice equivalent to that of a soprano, mezzo-soprano, or contralto voice produced either by castration of the singer before puberty or one who, because of an endocrinological condition, never reaches sexual maturity.Castration before puberty prevents a boy's...

Farinelli

Farinelli , was the stage name of Carlo Maria Broschi, celebrated Italian castrato singer of the 18th century and one of the greatest singers in the history of opera.- Early years :...

, who inherited one from Maria Barbara on her death.

The first music specifically written for fortepiano dates from this period, the Sonate da cimbalo di piano (1732) by Lodovico Giustini

Lodovico Giustini

Lodovico Giustini was an Italian composer and keyboard player of the late Baroque and early Classical eras. He was the first known composer ever to write music for the piano.-Life:...

. This publication was an isolated phenomenon; James Parakilas conjectures that the publication was meant as an honor for the composer on the part of his royal patrons. Certainly there could have been no commercial market for fortepiano music while the instrument continued to be an exotic specimen.

It appears that the fortepiano did not achieve full popularity until the 1760s, from which time the first records of public performances on the instrument are dated, and when music described as being for the fortepiano was first widely published.

Silbermann fortepianos

It was Gottfried Silbermann

Gottfried Silbermann

Gottfried Silbermann was an influential German constructor of keyboard instruments. He built harpsichords, clavichords, organs, and fortepianos; his modern reputation rests mainly on the latter two.-Life:...

who brought the construction of fortepianos to the German-speaking nations. Silbermann, who worked in Freiberg

Freiberg, Saxony

Freiberg is a city in the Free State of Saxony, Germany, administrative center of the Mittelsachsen district.-History:The city was founded in 1186, and has been a center of the mining industry in the Ore Mountains for centuries...

in Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

, began to make pianos based on Cristofori's design around 1730. (His previous experience had been in building organ

Organ (music)

The organ , is a keyboard instrument of one or more divisions, each played with its own keyboard operated either with the hands or with the feet. The organ is a relatively old musical instrument in the Western musical tradition, dating from the time of Ctesibius of Alexandria who is credited with...

s, harpsichord

Harpsichord

s, and clavichord

Clavichord

The clavichord is a European stringed keyboard instrument known from the late Medieval, through the Renaissance, Baroque and Classical eras. Historically, it was widely used as a practice instrument and as an aid to composition, not being loud enough for larger performances. The clavichord produces...

s.) Like Cristofori, Silbermann had royal support, in his case from Frederick the Great of Prussia

Prussia

Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...

, who bought many of his instruments.

Silbermann's instruments were famously criticized by Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...

around 1736, but later instruments encountered by Bach in his Berlin visit of 1747 apparently met with the composer's approval. It has been conjectured that the improvement in Silbermann's instruments resulted from his having seen an actual Cristofori piano, rather than merely reading Scipione Maffei's article. The piano action Maffei described does not match that found in surviving Cristofori instruments, suggesting that Maffei either erred in his diagram (he admitted having made it from memory) or that Cristofori improved his action during the period following Maffei's article.

Silbermann is credited with the invention of the forerunner of the damper 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.

Viennese school of builders

The fortepiano builders who followed Silbermann introduced actions that were simpler than the Cristofori action, even to the point of lacking an escapement

Escapement

In mechanical watches and clocks, an escapement is a device that transfers energy to the timekeeping element and enables counting the number of oscillations of the timekeeping element...

(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 1777 letter from Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

to his father

Leopold Mozart

Johann Georg Leopold Mozart was a German composer, conductor, teacher, and violinist. Mozart is best known today as the father and teacher of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and for his violin textbook Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule.-Childhood and student years:He was born in Augsburg, son of...

), but were simple to make and were widely incorporated into square piano

Square piano

The square piano is a piano that has horizontal strings arranged diagonally across the rectangular case above the hammers and with the keyboard set in the long side. It is variously attributed to Silbermann and Frederici and was improved by Petzold and Babcock...

Stein

One of the most distinguished fortepiano builders in the era following Silbermann was one of his pupils, Johann Andreas Stein

Johann Andreas Stein

Johann Andreas Stein, was an outstanding German maker of keyboard instruments, a central figure in the history of the piano...

, who worked in Augsburg

Augsburg

Augsburg is a city in the south-west of Bavaria, Germany. It is a university town and home of the Regierungsbezirk Schwaben and the Bezirk Schwaben. Augsburg is an urban district and home to the institutions of the Landkreis Augsburg. It is, as of 2008, the third-largest city in Bavaria with a...

, 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. 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.

Other builders

Stein's fortepiano business was carried on in Vienna with distinction by his daughter Nannette Streicher

Nannette Streicher

Nannette Streicher née Stein was a German piano maker, composer, music educator and writer.-Life:...

along with her husband Johann Andreas Streicher

Johann Andreas Streicher

Johann Andreas Streicher was a German pianist, composer and piano maker. In 1793 he married Nannette Streicher , another piano maker and the daughter of Augsburg piano maker Johann Andreas Stein. In 1794 they moved to Vienna...

. 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

Anton Walter

Anton Walter was a builder of pianos. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians describes him as "the most famous Viennese piano maker of his time".-Life:...

, 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 1777 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

Conrad Graf

Conrad Graf was an Austrian-German piano maker. His pianos were used by Beethoven, Chopin, and Clara Schumann, among others.-Life and career:...

(1782–1851), who made Beethoven's last piano. Graf was one of the first Viennese makers to build pianos in quantity, as a large business enterprise.

Zumpe/Shudi

The English fortepiano had a humble origin in the work of Johann Christoph Zumpe, a maker who had immigrated from Germany and worked for a while in the workshop of the great harpsichord maker Burkat Shudi

Burkat Shudi

Burkat Shudi was an English harpsichord maker of Swiss origin.-Biography:...

. Starting in the middle to late 1760s, 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 of 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 1760s, notably by Johann Christian Bach

Johann Christian Bach

Johann Christian Bach was a composer of the Classical era, the eleventh and youngest son of Johann Sebastian Bach. He is sometimes referred to as 'the London Bach' or 'the English Bach', due to his time spent living in the British capital...

Backers/Broadwood/Stoddard

Americus Backers

Americus Backers , sometimes described as the father of the English grand pianoforte style, brought the hammer striking action for keyboard instruments from his master Gottfried Silbermann’s workshop in Freiburg to England in the mid-18th century...

, with John Broadwood

John Broadwood

John Broadwood was the Scottish founder of the piano manufacturer Broadwood and Sons.-Life:Broadwood was born 6 October 1732 and christened 15 Oct 1732 at St Helens, Cockburnspath in Berwickshire, and grew up in Oldhamstocks, East Lothian...

and Robert Stodart, two of Shudi's workmen, produced a more advanced action than Zumpe's. 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.

Broadwood

John Broadwood married the master's daughter (Barbara Shudi, 1769) and ultimately took over and renamed the Shudi firm. The Broadwood company (which survives to this day) was an important innovator in the evolution of the fortepiano into the piano

Piano

. Broadwood, in collaboration with Jan Ladislav Dussek

Jan Ladislav Dussek

Jan Ladislav Dussek was a Czech composer and pianist. He was an important representative of Czech music abroad in the second half of 18th century and the beginning of 19th century...

, a noted piano virtuoso active in London in the 1790s, developed pianos that gradually increased the range to six octaves. Dussek was one of the first pianists to receive a 5½ foot piano, and in 1793 he wrote the first work for piano "with extra keys", a piano concert (C 97). The firm shipped a piano to Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven

in Vienna, which the composer evidently treasured.

Obsolescence and revival

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

Early music

Early music is generally understood as comprising all music from the earliest times up to the Renaissance. However, today this term has come to include "any music for which a historically appropriate style of performance must be reconstructed on the basis of surviving scores, treatises,...

pioneer Arnold Dolmetsch

Arnold Dolmetsch

Arnold Dolmetsch , was a French-born musician and instrument maker who spent much of his working life in England and established an instrument-making workshop in Haslemere, Surrey...

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

Harpsichord

, though occurring somewhat later in time. Among the more prominent modern builders have been Philip Belt, Paul McNulty

Paul McNulty (piano maker)

Paul McNulty was born 21 October 1953 in Houston, Texas. In 1976 he attended the , then became interested in historical instruments, studying lute performance, etc. In 1978 he entered “The New England School of Stringed Keyboard Instrument Technology” where he studied under Bill Garlick...

, and Regier. As with harpsichords, fortepianos are sometimes built from kits purchased from expert makers (1, 2).

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

Piano history and musical performance

The piano has evolved technologically more than any other musical instrument, giving rise to difficult issues involving the performance of music written for earlier pianos.-Background:The earliest pianos by Cristofori The piano has evolved technologically more than any other musical instrument,...

.

A number of modern harpsichordists and pianists have achieved distinction in fortepiano performance, including Paul Badura-Skoda

Paul Badura-Skoda

Paul Badura-Skoda is an Austrian pianist.He won first prize in the Austrian Music Competition in 1947. In 1949, he performed with distinguished conductors like Wilhelm Furtwängler and Herbert von Karajan...

, Malcolm Bilson

Malcolm Bilson

Malcolm Bilson is an American pianist specializing in performance on the fortepiano, which is the 18th century version of the piano. Bilson is the Frederick J...

, Hendrik Bouman

Hendrik Bouman

Hendrik "Henk" Bouman is a Dutch harpsichordist, fortepianist, conductor and composer of music written in the baroque and classical idioms of the 17th & 18th Century.- Biography :...

, Ronald Brautigam

Ronald Brautigam

Ronald Brautigam is currently one of The Netherlands' most widely respected pianists.Born in Amsterdam, Brautigam studied with Jan Wijn and left to study in London and in the United States...

, Viviana Sofronitsky

Viviana Sofronitsky

-Biography:Viviana Sofronitsky - Russian-Canadian pianist, was born in Moscow, to the family of the distinguished Russian pianist Vladimir Sofronitsky...

, Jörg Demus

Jörg Demus

Jörg Demus is an Austrian pianist.At the age of six, Demus received his first piano lessons. Five years later, at the age of 11, he entered the Vienna Academy of Music, studying piano and conducting. He graduated in 1945, then 17 years old...

, Richard Fuller

Richard Fuller

Richard Fuller is an American classical pianist and interpreter of the fortepiano repertoire.-Early life and musical education:Born in Washington, Fuller initially studied piano with his mother, Georgette Fuller...

, Geoffrey Lancaster

Geoffrey Lancaster

Geoffrey Lancaster AM is an Australian classical pianist and conductor. Born in Sydney, he was raised in Dubbo, New South Wales before moving to Canberra. He attended the Canberra School of Music where he studied piano with Larry Sitsky...

, Gustav Leonhardt

Gustav Leonhardt

Gustav Leonhardt is a highly renowned Dutch keyboard player, conductor, musicologist, teacher and editor. Leonhardt has been a leading figure in the movement to perform music on period instruments...

, Robert Levin

Robert D. Levin

Robert D. Levin is a classical performer, musicologist, and composer, and is the Artistic Director of the Sarasota Music Festival.-Education:...

, Steven Lubin

Steven Lubin

Steven Lubin is an American pianist and musical scholar. He is best known for his performances on the fortepiano, the early version of the piano.-Studies:...

, Trevor Pinnock

Trevor Pinnock

Trevor David Pinnock CBE is an English conductor, harpsichordist, and occasional organist and pianist.He is best known for his association with the period-performance orchestra The English Concert which he helped found and directed from the keyboard for over 30 years in baroque and early classical...

, David Schrader, Peter Serkin

Peter Serkin

-Biography:He was born in New York City and is the son of pianist Rudolf Serkin, and grandson of the influential violinist Adolf Busch, whose daughter Irene had married Rudolf Serkin...

, Andreas Staier

Andreas Staier

Andreas Staier is a German pianist and harpsichordist.-Life:Staier studied piano and harpsichord in the Hochschule für Musik in Hanover, with Kurt Bauer and Erika Haase for piano and from Lajos Rovatkay for harpsichord, and also in Amsterdam. From 1983 until 1986 he was the harpsichord soloist for...

, Susan Alexander-Max

Susan Alexander-Max

Susan Alexander-Max is an American-born British fortepianist best known for her period performances of baroque and classical music. She graduated from the Juilliard School of Music and later studied with Ilona Kabos in London. She is a member of the period-instrument chamber group The Music...

, Bart van Oort

Bart van Oort

Bart van Oort is a Dutch classical pianist.-Biography:Van Oort was born in Utrecht. After completing his studies in modern piano in the Royal Conservatory in The Hague in 1983, he studied fortepiano there with Stanley Hoogland...

, Gary Cooper

Gary Cooper (musician)

Gary Cooper is an English conductor and classical keyboardist He is particularly known as an interpreter of the keyboard music of Bach and Mozart, and as a conductor of historically informed performances of music from the Renaissance, Baroque, Classical and Romantic periods.-Career:Gary Cooper...

and Melvyn Tan

Melvyn Tan

Melvyn Tan is a Singapore-born British classical pianist, noted for his study of historical performance practice....

Opinions

Opinions about fortepiano sound vary widely, both from person to person and from instrument to instrument. Michael Cookson, a reviewer from UK-based MusicWeb-International states that while he is "a lover of performances on authentic instruments", he considers the fortepiano to be "one of the least successful instruments and the most deserving of improvement." He argues that he is "not always comfortable with the sound made by many fortepianos and however fine a performance may be", he states that he "find[s] it difficult at times to get past the often unpleasant sound."

However, one of Cookson's colleagues from MusicWeb, Gary Higginson, disagrees with this negative view. In a CD review, Higginson argues that a performance on a "...reproduction of a 1730 Cristofori - the greatest of all makers and often the most underrated...makes a gorgeous sound. Yes it can be metallic and subdued in climaxes but it has a marvellous delicacy and, especially in the expressive sonatas, a profoundly beautiful sound."

Howland Auchincloss acknowledges that listeners' first reaction to the sound of a fortepiano may be to view it as a less attractive sound than that of a grand piano. However, he argues that "such a reaction will usually be changed if the player listens to good recordings." He states that the "clear sound and relatively short sustain of the fortepiano tends to favor the special elements of style in the music of Haydn and Mozart. The sound is different but not inferior."

Etymology and usage

"Fortepiano" is Italian

Italian language

Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

for "loud-soft", just as the formal name for the modern piano, "pianoforte", is "soft-loud". Both are abbreviations of Cristofori's original name for his invention: gravecembalo col [or di] piano e forte, "harpsichord with soft and loud".

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

Oxford English Dictionary

The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...

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. English novelist Jane Austen

Jane Austen

Jane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature, her realism and biting social commentary cementing her historical importance among scholars and critics.Austen lived...

, who lived in the age of the fortepiano, used "pianoforte" (also: "piano-forte", "piano forte") for the many occurrences of the instrument in her writings.

Sources

Craw, Howard (1964) A Biography and Thematic Catalog of the works of J.L. Dussek, Los Angeles: University of Southern California.
Good, Edwin M. (1982) Giraffes, black dragons, and other pianos: a technological history from Cristofori to the modern concert grand, Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press.
Marshall, Robert (2003) 18th Century Piano Music, Routledge.
Parakilas, James (1999) Piano roles: three hundred years of life with the piano. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Pollens, Stewart (1995) The Early Pianoforte. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ripin, Edwin M. (1986) "Piano", 1986 Encyclopædia Britannica
Encyclopædia Britannica
The Encyclopædia Britannica , published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia that is available in print, as a DVD, and on the Internet. It is written and continuously updated by about 100 full-time editors and more than 4,000 expert...
Ripin, Edwin M. (2001). "Fortepiano (i)". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. S. Sadie and J. Tyrrell. London: Macmillan. Also in Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (Accessed 19 June 2008), (subscription access)
Ripin, Edwin M., Stewart Pollens, Philip R. Belt, Maribel Meisel, Alfons Huber, Michael Cole, Gert Hecher, Beryl Kenyon De Pascual, Cynthia Adams Hoover, Cyril Ehrlich, And Edwin M. Good (2001). "Pianoforte I: History of the Instrument". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. S. Sadie and J. Tyrrell. London: Macmillan. Also in Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (Accessed 19 June 2008), (subscription access)

External links

10-minute video crash course introduction to the Viennese 5-octave fortepiano
Photo and discussion of the action of Viennese fortepianos, from Carey Beebe Harpsichords
One of Arnold Dolmetsch's late 19th century fortepianos, from Dolmetsch Online
Image and discussion of 1795 Dulcken fortepiano, from the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies
Images of fortepianos in the Abell Gallery, National Music Museum, Vermillion, South Dakota
The Pianofortes of Bartolomeo Cristofori, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Other historic pianos at The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Fortepianos in the Museum of the University of Leipzig
Cobbe Collection, UK
Finchcocks, UK (developing link)
Fortepiano Audio Sample Library & MP3 Demos
fortepiano - photoarchive Photos of historical pianos and their parts / discussion in the forum
Fortepiano.eu homepage of fortepiano builder Paul McNulty
R.J. Regier Keyboard Instruments Fortepianos and Harpsichords by R.J. Regier
More information on early keyboard instruments
The website of builder Gerard Tuinman include sound files of three of his Anton Walter replicas, illustrating the evolution of fortepiano sound during the career of this builder.

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