The speaker makes it sound like a piano quickly became commonly owned by the masses, rich or poor. But wouldn't it still have been an expensive luxury item, only for the rich?

Because instruments were made individually by hand, the piano was still an expensive instrument. The speaker doesn't give a lot of details as to the timing of the spread of pianos and availability. There had to be improvements in automation and mechanization to make pianos more affordable for the average person, which took many years. You can check out some of the quantities of production and purchases, as well as the development of the piano over time in this book, which is available for free on Google play: "A Comprehensive History of the Development of the Piano from the Monochord to the Concert Grand Player Piano" by Alfred Dolge, published January 1, 1911 by the Covina Publishing Company.

When was the self playing piano invented and by whom?

The player piano was invented in 1863 by a Frenchman named Fourneux.

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Course: The Metropolitan Museum of Art > Unit 1

Lesson 2: Books, music, and literature

Cristofori, Grand Piano

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Met curator Bradley Strauchen-Scherer on intuition in Bartolomeo Cristofori’s Grand Piano, 1720.

Bartolomeo Cristofori was the first person to create a successful hammer-action keyboard instrument and, accordingly, deserves to be credited as the inventor of the piano. This example is the oldest of the three extant pianos by Cristofori. About 1700 he began to work on an instrument on which the player could achieve changes in loudness solely by changing the force with which the keys were struck. By 1700 he had made at least one successful instrument, which he called "gravicembalo col piano e forte" (harpsichord with soft and loud). His instrument still generally resembles a harpsichord, though its case is thicker and the quill mechanism has been replaced by a hammer mechanism. Cristofori's hammer mechanism is so well designed and made that no other of comparable sensitivity and reliability was devised for another seventy-five years. In fact, the highly complex action of the modern piano may be traced directly to his original conception.

View this work on metmuseum.org.

. Created by The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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Chuck Punk
Posted 9 years ago. Direct link to Chuck Punk's post “The speaker makes it soun...”
The speaker makes it sound like a piano quickly became commonly owned by the masses, rich or poor. But wouldn't it still have been an expensive luxury item, only for the rich?
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Answer
- L
  Posted 9 years ago. Direct link to L's post “Because instruments were ...”
  Because instruments were made individually by hand, the piano was still an expensive instrument. The speaker doesn't give a lot of details as to the timing of the spread of pianos and availability. There had to be improvements in automation and mechanization to make pianos more affordable for the average person, which took many years. You can check out some of the quantities of production and purchases, as well as the development of the piano over time in this book, which is available for free on Google play: "A Comprehensive History of the Development of the Piano from the Monochord to the Concert Grand Player Piano"
  by Alfred Dolge, published January 1, 1911 by the Covina Publishing Company.
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  (3 votes)
luckylushfromtheashes
Posted 9 years ago. Direct link to luckylushfromtheashes's post “When was the self playing...”
When was the self playing piano invented and by whom?
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(2 votes)
Answer
- Anna
  Posted 9 years ago. Direct link to Anna's post “The player piano was inve...”
  The player piano was invented in 1863 by a Frenchman named Fourneux.
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  (3 votes)

Video transcript

In the history of ideas I think the piano is one of the real standouts. This is the earliest surviving piano. It was made in 1720 by Bartolomeo Cristofori, who was the inventor of the piano. The harpsichord ruled the keyboard landscape of the Baroque, and no matter how much energy you put behind touching the keys of the harpsichord the volume of sound that it produces is always the same. Whereas, the piano is a touch-sensitive instrument: if the player touches the keys gently, it produces a soft sound; if you put the weight of your body into it, it really sings out. And that's the revolutionary part of the idea. Cristofori devised the escapement, which allows the player's finger to control the flight of the key until the last minute before it touches the string, and then it lets the key fall away so that the string can sing out freely. It's completely intuitive, it's very responsive, it's incredibly intimate. The piano becomes all things to all people, from the aristocratic drawing room right to the piano-pounders of Tin Pan Alley. It also becomes liberating for unmarried women, because teaching the piano got them out of the home and that helped them attain some financial independence. It's humbling to me to think that Cristofori didn't have any idea of what a phenomenon the piano was to become. It wasn't until some forty or fifty years after his death that the piano starts to flourish. In the days before recordings, in the days when it was quite expensive to attend concerts, by having a piano, all of a sudden, you're opening up a whole world of musical entertainment. And I think that's hard for us to remember today, because we live surrounded by sound. But the piano was the nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century music-on-demand system. It's there for anyone who can sit down in front of it.