Over the last few weeks we’ve turned our focus to the origins of music and the instruments that produce it. We started by looking at musical notations. These simple little lines, dots, and squiggles have a long and storied history, changing and evolving throughout the centuries and cultures that have used them. Today we have a fairly standardized set of notations that are used and recognized throughout the world, but there are still a few holdouts using different symbols, like tablature for guitar for example. And speaking of guitars, last week we took a stroll through one of the Western world’s most enduring and popular musical instruments’ history. With Islamic and Spanish roots, guitars have come a long way from the lutes of the past.

So, in keeping with this theme I’ve found myself in, this week we’re going to take a look at the evolution and history of another of the world’s most popular instruments. This instrument has inspired musicians of all genres for centuries; from the classic genius of Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart, to the pop-rock of Sir Elton John, the spectacle that was Freddie Mercury and Queen, and even the driving force of Metallica. This week we’re going to explore the history of the piano.

Technically a stringed instrument, the piano uses hammers to strike its strings, producing the desired tone. But, just like the guitar the modern piano did not spring into existence fully formed as we know it today, and like most modern devices that have ancient roots, the piano was eventually built using earlier technologies. It was during the Middle Ages that master craftsmen first started experimenting with creating stringed instruments with struck strings, resulting in the first hammered dulcimers. It took a few hundred years, but by the 17th century keyboard instruments like the clavichord and the harpsichord were well known. Early ancestors of the modern piano, clavichords use a keyboard with a tangent to strike the strings, and harpsichords use a quill to pluck the strings when a key is pressed. After generations of tinkering, the harpsichord’s mechanism proved to be the most effective.

When exactly the first modern piano was invented is subject to some debate. An inventory made by the Medici family shows one’s existence in the year 1700, another, less trusted document puts the year at 1698, and yet a third claims 1709. Regardless of the confusion over the exact year, we do know that we can thank the acclaimed Italian harpsichord maker Bartolomeo Cristofori for its creation. Cristofori was employed by Ferdinando de’ Medici, the Grand Prince of Tuscany, as the “Keeper of the Instruments.” As a maker of harpsichords, he was well versed in the mechanics of stringed instruments, and as such, Cristofori took it upon himself to solve a musical dilemma: the clavichord gave the performer control over volume, but was far too quiet for larger performances, and the harpsichord produced an adequately loud sound, but it lacked the clavichord’s expressiveness. Cristofori’s new instrument combined the benefits of both, producing a loud sound with dynamic control over each note. He called his creation “un cimbalo di cipresso di piano e forte,” Italian for “a keyboard of cypress with soft and loud.” Not the most graceful of names, over time it was abbreviated to “pianoforte,” “fortepiano,” and eventually, “piano.”

What made Cristofori’s invention so impressive was that, without a preexisting example, he had solved the most basic difficulty of piano design: the hammer needs to strike a string, but drop away from the string so as not to dampen the sound; the tangent in a clavichord remain in contact with the string. In addition to this problem, when the hammer drops away from the string it needs to fall into its resting position without bouncing, and notes need to be repeated rapidly. Cristofori’s solution was so elegant and efficient it became the model for nearly all future approaches to piano actions that would follow through the years.

Despite solving a remarkably difficult problem, Cristofori’s new instrument toiled in obscurity until an Italian writer name Scipione Maffei wrote an article praising the new creation, and included a diagram of the mechanism. The article was translated into German and saw a wide distribution, resulting in the next generation of piano makers starting their work after reading it. The most notable of this next generation was an organ builder named Gottfried Silbermann. Silbermann’s pianos were nearly identical copies of Cristofori’s, with one fundamental addition. He had added something that would become the forerunner of today’s piano’s sustain pedal: a contraption which lifts all the dampers from the all the strings at the same time. Despite an early snub by Bach, Silbermann continued to improve on his design, and apparently won Bach over a few years later. But, popularity leads to innovation, so the evolution of the piano continued.

So many changes came to the piano between 1790 and 1860 that all pianos developed before this period have come to be known as fortepianos to distinguish them from the more advanced models to come. This time of change for the piano was inspired by a preference by composers and performers for a more powerful, sustained piano sound, and was facilitated by the conveniently timed Industrial Revolution, which allowed for high-quality piano wire, and precision iron casting for frames. This period of 70 years or so also saw pianos increase from the five octaves of the early 1700s to the seven or more range of today.

This increase in octaves began with the piano building firm Broadwood. John Broadwood, fellow Scot, Robert Stodart, and Americus Backers set out to design a piano in a harpsichord case. They were successful in about 1777, giving birth to the first “grand piano.” This new style quickly gained popularity for its glamour and powerful tones, which grew progressively louder, larger, and more potent with each generation. After sending pianos to Joseph Haydn and Beethoven, Broadwood began building pianos with a wider range of octaves, starting with a piano with five octaves and a fifth interval during the 1790s. They followed this with a piano with six octaves by 1810, which was favoured by Beethoven in his later works, and then seven octaves by 1820.

During the 1820s and beyond the piano saw a number of rapid-fire changes, starting with a French invention by Sebastien Erard that allowed a note to be repeated even if the key had not risen to its resting spot yet. This allowed for more rapid repetition of notes, and gradually became the standard for grand pianos. Next came the switch from leather or cotton to felt for the hammer coverings. Felt, being a more consistent material, gave pianos the ability to produce a wider dynamic range as string tension and hammer weight both increased.

There are a number of different styles of modern piano, but all of them follow a similar lineage. The complicated quagmire of strings and hammers hidden beneath the case is a work of art all itself, working and dancing together to create some of the most varied and versatile tones of any instrument in the entire orchestra. The Industrial Revolution gave us the ability and the materials to create this masterpiece that creates masterpieces, and the Electronic Revolution has brought some similar improvements, granting portability and the tones from countless other instruments at our finger tips. The next few hundred years should be an exciting time for the evolution of the humble piano.