When I was a little girl, I started playing the piano. My grandma played, my mom played, and my favorite aunt played. It is said that the day I was born my dad saw my long fingers and told my mom, "I think we've got a piano player on our hands." When I was four years old, my dad's words came true.
The piano is one of the most popular instruments in music. The word piano comes from the Italian word pianoforte which means soft and loud. It evolved from the clavichord and the harpsichord. The clavichord is a keyboard instrument with a soft sound produced by small brass wedges striking horizontal strings. It is a combination of the Latin words clavis meaning key and chorda meaning string.# The harpsichord is an instrument that looks much like a grand piano, but its strings are plucked instead of hit by a hammer. The word harpsichord comes from the Latin words harpa meaning harp and chorda meaning keys.#.
It is not certain when the first harpsichords were built. However, the oldest survivng harpsichords date back to 1521 in Italy. # The harpsichord was more desirable than the clavichord, because the clavichord played very soft. The clavichord was rarely ever used in public performance. .
INVENTION OF PIANO.
The piano was developed by Italian, Cristofori. It was first exhibited in 1709 under the name gravicembalo col piano e forte, meaning harpsichord with soft and loud tone. The piano took the place of the harpsichord, because the harpsichord could not vary in volume. The piano was called the pianoforte, because the volume could be varied by the touch of the fingers.# The first surviving piano is from 1720. It can be seen at the New York Metropolitan Museum.# The first public performance given on the piano was by J. S. Bach's son, Johann Christian Bach in London in 1768. In the late eighteenth, early nineteenth century construction of the piano developed rapidly. In 1777, when Mozart was twenty-one, he adopted the piano; it determined the future of piano playing and composing.