Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/81

Rh PIANOFORTE 71 a publication conducted by Apostolo Zeno. The date of Maffei s paper was 1711. Rimbault reproduced it, with a technically imperfect translation, in his History of the Piano forte. We learn from it that in 1709 Cristof ori had completed four &quot; gravecembali col piano e forte&quot; keyed-psalteries with soft and loud three of them being of the long or usual harpsichord form. A synonym in Italian for the original cembalo (or psaltery) is &quot; salterio,&quot; and if it were struck with hammers it became a &quot;salterio tedesco&quot; (the German hackbrett, or chopping board), the latter being the common dulcimer. Now the first notion of a pianoforte is a dulcimer with keys, and we may perhaps not be wrong in supposing that there had been many attempts and failures to put a keyboard to a dulcimer or hammers to a harpsichord before Cristofori successfully solved the problem. The sketch of his action in Maffei s essay shows an incomplete stage in the invention, although the kernel of it, the principle of escapement or the controlled rebound of the hammer, is already there. He obtains it by a centred lever (linguetta mobile) or hopper, working, when the key is depressed by the touch, in a small projection from the centred hammer butt. The return, governed by a spring, must have been un certain and incapable of further regulating than could be obtained by modifying the strength of the spring. More over, the hammer had each time to be raised the entire distance of its fall. There are, however, two pianofortes by Cristofori in Florence, dated respectively 1720 and 1726, which show a much improved, we may even say a perfected, construction, for the whole of an essential piano movement is there. The earlier instrument has undergone some re storation, but the 1726 one, which is in the Kraus Museum, retains the original leather hammerheads. Both instru ments possess alike a contrivance for determining the radius of the hopper, and both have been unexpectedly found to have the &quot;check&quot; (Ital. paramartello) which regulates the fall of the hammer according to the strength of the blow which has impelled it to the strings. After this discovery of the actual instruments of Cristofori, there can be no longer doubt as to the attribution of the invention to him, in its initiation and its practical completion with escapement and check. To Cristofori we are indebted not only for the power of playing piano and forte, but for the infinite variations of tone, or nuances, which render the in strument so delightful. But his problem was not solved by the devising of a working action ; there was much more to be done to instal the pianoforte as a new musical instrument. The reson- FIG. 13. Cristofori s Escapement Action, 1720. ance, that most subtle and yet all-embracing factor, had been experimentally developed to a certain perfection by many generations of spinet and harpsichord makers, but the resistance structure had to be thought out again. Thicker stringing, rendered indispensable to withstand even Cristofori s light hammers, demanded, in its turn, a stronger framing than the harpsichord had needed. To make his structure firm, he considerably increased the strength of the block which holds the tuning-pins, and, as he could not do so without materially adding to its thick- -Cristofori s Piano e Forte, 172(1 ; Kruu&amp;gt; Museum Florence. ness, he adopted the bold expedient of inverting it, driving his wrest-pins, harp-fashion, through it, so that tuning was effected at their upper, while the wires were attached to their lower ends. Then to guarantee the security of the case he ran an inde pendent string-block round it of stouter wood than had been used in harpsichords, in which block the hitch-pins were driven to hold the farther ends of the strings, which were spaced at equal distances (unlike the harpsi chord), the dampers lying between the pairs of unisons. Cristofori died in 1731. He had pupils, but did not found a school of Italian pianoforte making, perhaps from the peculiar Italian con servatism in musical instruments we have already remarked upon. The essay of Scipione Maffei was translated into German in 1725, by Konig, the court poet at Dresden, and friend of Gottfried Silbermann, the renowned organ builder and harpsichord and clavichord maker. 1 Incited by this publication, and perhaps by having seen in Dresden one of Cristofori s pianofortes, Silbermann appears to have taken up the new instrument, and in 1726 to have manufactured two, which J. S. Bach, according to his pupil Agricola, pronounced failures. The trebles were too weak ; the touch was too heavy. There has long been another version to this story, viz., that Silbermann borrowed the idea of his action from a very simple model contrived by a young musician named Schroeter, who had left it at the electoral court in 1721, and, quitting Saxony to travel, had not afterwards claimed it. It may be so ; but Schroeter s letter, printed in Mitzler s Bibliothek, dated 1738, is not supported by any other evidence than the recent discovery of an altered German harpsichord, the hammer action of which, in its simplicity, may have been taken from Schroeter s diagram, and would sufficiently account for the condemnation of Silbermann s earliest pianofortes if he had made use of it. In either case it is easy to distinguish between the lines of Schroeter s interest ing communications (to Mitzler and later to Marpurg) the bitter disappointment he felt in being left out of the practi cal development of so important an instrument. But, whatever Silbermann s first experiments were based upon, it has been made certain by the personal investiga tions of the present writer that he, when successful, adopted Cristofori s pianoforte without further alteration than the compass and colour of the keys, and the style of joinery of the case. In the Silbermann grand pianofortes, in the three palaces at Potsdam, known to have been Frederick the Great s, and to have been acquired by that monarch prior to J. S. Bach s visit to him in 1747, we find the Cristofori framing, stringing, inverted wrest-plank, and action complete. Fig. 15 represents the instrument on which J. S. Bach palyed in the Town Palace, Potsdam. It has been repeatedly stated in Germany that Frederic! of Gera in Saxony, an organ builder and musical instrument 1 This translation, reproduced in extenso, may be read in Dr Oscar Paul s Geschichte des Claviers, Leipsic, 1868.