The Piano History Essay Example for Free

The Piano History Essay In the 1700’s the piano was invented by Bartolomeo Cristofori in Florence, Italy first introduced to the world as the pianoforte meaning â€Å"Soft loud†. â€Å"In the last quarter of the 18th century the piano had become the leading instrument of the western art of music that still lives on till today as an exotic instrument played by talented people in the world.† (Wendy Powers, 2003) Music has lived on from the beginning of time by all cultures and races for decades. Music is known to make the heart, soul, and brain one. Without this invention Beethoven would have not made the music that lives on till today and many other talented famous throughout the world. The piano reaches out to the most inner deepest soul all the way to keys that charge up chakras for well-being. A piano has 8 white keys c,d,e,f,g,a,b,c and 5 black known as the Chromatic scale which is 13 including next count which correlates with the 8, 11, 13 chakras. Bartolomeo Cristofori was born on May 4 on 1655 and passed away in 1731. Bartolomeo Cristofori’s occupation was a harpsichord maker and a designer. By 1688, Prince Ferdinando de Medici of Florence, son of the Grand Duke of Tuscany got Bartolomeo Cristofori because of his talent and reputation. The princes owned forty harpsichords and spinets, and hired Cristofori at the age of 33 to both curate the collection, and build new ones. Cristofori became the custodian of the instruments in the court in starting from 1690. Around 1700, he began to work on an instrument on which the player could achieve changes in loudness just by changing the force with which the keys were struck. Instead of the quill jacks used to pluck the string on the harpsichord, Cristofori’s innovation was to devise a way in which the strings were struck from below by individual hammers covered in deer leather. He had created the first two harpsichords with the first real escapement mechanism. When Italian Renaissance spread throughout Europe, the upsurge of innovation in art, culture and science was developing todays known as culturally rich. The 17th and the 18th centuries, decades from when the piano was invented the history of Italy is considered part of the early modern period. However this period, at least the first half, is often closely associated with the dominant artistic and architectural movement known as Baroque. The era of Italian Baroque was the birth of opera as a major form of entertainment. Unlike the plays popular up to this time, opera combined music and theatre into a spectacle that was designed to be a feast for the senses (Chakras). The origins of opera are credited to a Late Renaissance group of poets, musicians and humanist known as the Florentine Camerata, thanks to Bartolomeo Cristofori invention. This time also was marked the beginning of long foreign domination of Italy in the aftermath of the Italian Wars of the 16th century. After these wars were over, the Italian landscape was peaceful for a long time, expression with art talks during these time periods. The Renaissance in Italy was over by 1600 but Italy still made up a large portion of the European economy. However, the economic power of the country as a whole declined and none of the various Italian states did anything concrete to take advantage of the Industrial Revolution but they did however make other history in humanities. From the 14th century until the late 17th century, Italy grieved a very high death rate from many outbreaks of the plague. They are known as the Black Death and associated with medieval times; this plague did not come even come to a near end in the 13th century. The largest death toll had been in the early 1600s when an estimated 1,730,000 people died due to plague in Italy. Perhaps the pianos were some kind of good thing in the survivor’s lives’ to expression and create music. This was almost 14% of the population of the country at that time and also the time the piano had come around. There was an Economic decline; the powerful Habsburgs of Spain had dominated most of Italy in one form or another starting 1559 to 1713, and music and art continued to speak freely. In developing the piano Bartolomeo Cristofori had been working on getting a feel for the harpsichord to respond to touch. He developed a mechanical action that made it possible to sound simultaneously as many notes as one had fingers and do to this to be able to produce any work in the entire literature of Western music with variations of loud and soft according to the players touch at the keyboard. It included a complex mechanical action with a hammer that rose towards a string four times as fast as the finger, an escapement to allow the hammer to rebound from the freely vibrating string, a check for the hammer to prevent bouncing, and a shift so the hammer would play only one of the two strings to reduce volume. Cristofori’s hammer mechanism was so well designed, that no other of comparable sensitivity and reliability was developed as known for another seventy-five years. The highly compound accomplishment of the modern piano may be sketched directly to his original concepti on. Todays the piano sustains pitches in a lyrical fashion, creating all musical styles and moods and is universal all because of Bartolomeo Cristofori’s invention of the great musical instrument. This popular instrument has changed over the years (except for its hammers), and how its flexibility and expressiveness have inspired composers such as Beethoven, Schumann, Liszt, and Bartà ³k. It’s been pasted down for decades and artist today become best friends with the piano as they have the talent to sing and play with the piano. People have talents and a musical part in their life because of the invention that was lead down for decades starting from Beethoven. Pianos have improved from the 1700s of course from sound, shape and functionality since Bartolomeo Cristofori’s invention but he was the Italian that brought a different sound of music into our world. We went from having 88 keys on the piano 36 black and 52 white to high performance grand pianos with 92 keys as of today. From 1790 to the mid-1800s, piano technology and sound was greatly improved due to the inventions of the Industrial Revolution, such as the new high quality steel called piano wire, and the ability to precisely cast iron frames. The tonal range of the piano increased from the five octaves of the pianoforte to the seven and more octaves found on modern pianos. Around 1780, the upright piano was created by Johann Schmidt of Salzburg, Austria and later improved in 1802 by Thomas Loud of London whose upright piano had strings that ran diagonally. In 1881, an early patent for a piano player was issued to John McTammany of Cambridge, Mass. John McTammany described h is invention as a mechanical musical instrument. It worked using narrow sheets of perforated flexible paper which triggered the notes. A later automatic piano player was the Angelus patented by Edward H. Leveaux of England on 27 February 1879, and described as an apparatus for storing and transmitting motive power. John McTammanys invention was actually the earlier one invented (1876), however, the patents dates are in the opposite order due to filing procedures. On March 28, 1889, William Fleming received a patent for a player piano using electricity. Although before all these important beings and Bartolomeo Cristofori a man named Johannes Spinctus made the Spinet when later followed Bartolomeo Cristofori and his invention of the Spinettone which means â€Å"Big Spinet†. Not all of the piano elements where invented by Bartolomeo, but he did built the first piano and made great improvements in his time. Musicians that we still listen to their creations to including Bach and Beethoven first played on Bartolomeo Cristoforiâ₠¬â„¢s Harpsichord and liked to do so because of the higher pitch! Bartolomeo Cristofori put the pieces of the puzzle together for the invention of the piano. â€Å"The modern piano keyboard was first established during the 13th century of Medieval Europe with black and white wooden keys as it was later invented by Cristofori.† N/A (Unknown) Title Of Source: Piano History: The Complete Story. For decades the piano has become part of a business and career, and great talent of musical art. My boyfriend is a producer and he plays the piano and it is also a proven fact that music is the best medicine, specially hearing a piano play, and it was all because of the invention of the original piano back in time that lead to improved ones as of today. People evolved and became smarter and had the sources to build improved pianos. The piano is something that can be passed down for decades to come, just as Bartolomeo’s pieces have and changed the universe. Looking deeper into the Piano, it was created as corresponding to the flower of life. The flower of life is the original perfect geometric cemetry that created the universe. It is not only the root of mathematical proportions but also the source of shape, light of photonic solids and the source to every musical system in the world both known and unknown to humans, yes the dearest piano too. Isn’t it just phenomenal to know that music notes are separated by 90 degrees so are our chakras. So we can thank the flower of life that gave us the piano. The piano is a beautiful instrument that makes harmonic music and good for the soul. Now, what I came to conclusion is the piano might has not been able to change the world because wars, starvation and injustice continued. In the world of musicians and music lovers the piano was an improvement over the harpsichord which was only able to play loud of soft when levers where pushed. Many people try to push their dreams, because of their piano perfection and that opens doors to the talented! It’s nice to have a piano around; it’s a different feel every time, a great field of sound. Today 3 creations of Bartolomeo Cristofori from the years 1720, 1722, and 1726 remain in Museum’s around the world, but are too old and not playable. References Arkenberg, Rebecca. (October, 2002) Title of Source: Music in the Renaissance† Retrieved From: 2000http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/renm/hd_renm.htm Bellis, Mary. (Unknown) Title of Source: The History of the Piano Bartolomeo Cristofori Retrieved From: http://inventors.about.com/od/pstartinventions/a/piano.htm Cipolla, Carlo M. (1981) Title of Source: Fighting the Plague in Seventeenth Century Italy. Retrieved From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_plague_of_1629%E2%80%931631 Duchnycz, Jordan. (May, 2012) Title Of Source: Spirit Of Science 1-15 full movie series Retrieved From: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaDOkMEK4ukfeature=related Powers, Wendy. (October, 2003) Title Of Source: The Piano: The Pianofortes of Bartolomeo Cristofori (1655–1731) Retrieved From: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/cris/hd_cris.htm N/A. (Unknown). Title of Source: Who Invented the Piano? Retrieved From: http://www.piano-play-it.com/who-invented-the-piano.html N/A (Unknown) Title Of Source: Piano History: The Complete Story Retrieved From: http://www.get-piano-lessons.com/piano-history.html