The Piano

The piano is a stringed keyboard musical instrument. It was the first instrument to introduce a hammer-and-lever action that lets the player modify the intensity of sound by the stronger or weaker touch of the fingers. The earliest known model was created in 1709 and was called a gravicembalo col pian e forte. It was built by harpsichord designer Bartolomeo Cristofori, of Florence, Italy.

The next major developments of the piano took place in Germany. Perhaps the most important contribution was made by Johann Andreas Stein of Augsburg, who invented a better escapement that became the foundation of the “Viennese” piano. At this time artisans in all Western nations were working to perfect the pianoforte. Many drastic improvements in design and construction are still being made today.

The modern pianoforte has six major parts:

(1) The frame is made of iron. At the rear end a string plate is attached, where the strings are then fastened. In the front is the wrest plank, where the tuning pins are set. By turning these pins the tension of the strings is regulated.
(2)A thin piece of fine-grained spruce, also known as the soundboard, is placed under the strings. This reinforces the tone by means of sympathetic vibration.
(3) The stringsare made of steel wire and increase in length and thickness from the treble to the bass. The higher pitches are each given two or three strings tuned alike. The lower ones are single strings made heavier by being wound around with a coil of thin copper wire.
(4) The action is the mechanism required for propelling the hammers against the strings. The most visible part of the action is the keyboard. The keys corresponding to the natural tones are made of ivory or plastic.
(5) The pedals are levers pressed down by the feet. The damper raises all the dampers so that all the strings struck continue to vibrate even after the keys are released, and it is also know as the loud pedal. The soft pedal throws all the hammers nearer to the strings so that the striking distance is diminished by one-half, or it shifts the hammers a little to one side so that only a single string instead of the two or three is struck. The use of these pedals can produce changes in tone quality.
(6) Pianos are classified as grand, square, and upright. The square form is no longer built. For use in private homes it has been entirely superseded by the upright, because it takes up far less room. Grand pianos are built in various sizes. In the upright pianos the strings run vertically, or diagonally, from the top to the bottom of the instrument.

When a piano key is pressed down, its tail pivots upward. This action lifts a lever that throws a hammer against the strings for that key's note. This causes a damper to be raised from these strings, which allows them to vibrate more loosely.

Pianos were used and praised by such famous composers as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Frederic Chopin.

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