Johannes Zumpe's Piano

The first significant wav of popularity enjoyed by the piano began in 1760 after the arrival in England of h so-called "twelve disciples" - a group of Dutchand German instrumnt makrs who settle in Londn having fled the German Severn Yers War. Amounttheir number was Johannes Christoph Zumpe. A former apprentice of Silberman, Zumpe set up a workshop in Hanover Square, London in 1761 to produce a new kind of "square" piano. Zumpe believed that the instrument - prevously only affordable to thevery wealthy - could attract the midde classes if suitably priced. His square pian was small, light and could be carried on the bach of a single porter, and sold for £50. So successful was the square piano that during the second half of the eighteenth century, it became known as the "Zumpe". The instrument remained popular until the middle of the nineteenth century when th "upright" piano began to find its way into an increasing number of homes.

Zumpe's instument made its professional debut in 1767 when it s used as an accompaniment to a performance of The Beggar's Opera at Covent Garden. Te player was Charles Dibdin. However, the first pianist of any real nsiquence wasyet another member of the Bch family - Johann Christian. Long a resident of London, and the yongest son of Johann Sebastian, he was popularly referred to as "The English Bach".

The Silbermann Models of Piano

One of the few historical references to the Chrisofori piano came in a 1709 article about the pianoforte written by Scipone Meffei. In 1725 the Court Poet at dresden published a translation of Maffei's text, which aroused the interest of clavichord make, Gottfried Silberman (1683-1753). He immediately began to build pianofortes based on the Christofori design. Initially, however, Silberman's pianos were received with some hostility, which led him to loose interest in the instrument.

Christian Ernst Friederici, a pupil of Silbermann, continued a venture, devising a small square piano which he named the forbien. Although not widely recognised, Friederici embarked on many such experiments, some which offered a glimpse of the piano's later development.

All of the instruments produced up until this period could more accurately be described as variations on a dulcimer (a stringed instrument plucked with a quill plecktrum) with keyboard damper. Few of these instruments worked especially well, but they did arouse the interest of a number of significant figures. The most prominent harpsichord composer of the period, Francois Couperin acknowledged the importance of the inovation: "The harpsichord is perfect as to its compass and brilliant in itself, but as one can neither swell not diminish its shounds, I will be forever gratefull to those who with infinite pains guided by taste succeed in rendering the instrupment capable of expersion".

By 1750, Silbermann's instrument had gained the approval of no less a figure than Johann Sebastian Bach. A close friend of Silbermann, Bach had not liked the instrument at firstbut the scope for dynamic control eventually cont him over. However it was one of Bach's sons who would prove to be the first significant musical figure associated with the piano.

Carl Philip Emmanuel Bach (or C.P.E Bach, as he is usually know) wrote one of the first important keyboard tutors. Although he directed mainly at harpsichord players, Bach's Versuch uber die wahre Art das Klavier zu spielen (Essay of the True Art of Keyboard Playing) remains an influential work. It was here, for the first time, that the piano was aknowledged as an instrument of the future. Indeed, Bach could accurately be described as the founder of modern piano-playing. By the time of his death in 1788, the piano was universally accepted as the superior instrument in the clavier family: the harpsichord's time had passed.

The First Piano

The story of the piano begins in 1709 in Florence, when the Italian harpsichord maker Bartolomeo Cristofori constructed what he called "Gravicembalo co piano e forte" (literally, "harpsichord with soft and loud"), Cbristofoi had replaced the plucking machanim with a series of hammers, so that when the note was pressed, the hammer struck the string creating the note.

One major difference, however, was that the dynamic control offered the new instrument unlike the harpsichord, the pianoforte (as it was abbreviated) allowed the player to vary the volume of the sound depending on how hard the keyboard was pressed. But whilst Crisofori received brief attention for his endeavours, interest quickly waned.

He had produced about twenty pianos by this time, after which hi is presumed to have returned to manufactoring harpichords. Only two of the original models are known to exist.

Organs - The First Type of Piano

Although the piano is clearly a stringed instrument, in order to trace the period leading up to its development we must look back to before the birth of Christ to the godfarher of all keyboad instruments - the organ. The earliest know organ was the hydraulis, which is purported to have been invented in the region of 300b.c. by Ctesibius of Alexandria. The instrument came about from an experiment to apply a mechanical wind supply to a giant set of panpipes.

However, it was in Europe that the organ evloved, and where from the eight century it exerted a strong influenceover the early development of Western music. Strangely, though, it was not for another five years that the "chromatic" keyboard was developedand applied to the organ. Initially, the notes of the keyboard were designed aroundthe modes that were used as the basis of music at this time, meaning that the early organs only used what we now call the "white notes". The accidentals (the "black" notes) were gradully added to reflect changes in approach to music composition. Since the fourteenth century, keyboards have remained much the same - except for the colour, which at the time was the reverse of the black and white keys which we are familiar with today.