Hello, this is Miss G with Little House of Music. I find the "History" of the piano very exciting and interesting. I have played the piano all my life and still to this day I'm not quite sure how the piano was invented. How it was done so masterfully and like a seamstress, the piano keyboard is a pattern. As the story goes, they think Bartalomeo Cristofori invented the piano in Italy sometime between 1655 & 1732 in the Baroque period. Some say he invented the piano in 1709. Bartalomeo Cristofori was a"GENIUS!" He called his new instrument 'Gravicembalo col piano e forte' or harpsichord with soft and loud sounds. How did he make the circle of fifths? To my knowledge none of it would have been possible without having no black keys between the group of two black keys and the group of three black keys! If you play every scale just like the C scale and start on any note and add your sharps of flats depending on the note you start on to play and put the half steps between the third and fourth notes you play and the seventh and eight notes you play, you have just played a scale in the key of the note you started in. How cool is that? If you know me, Miss G, I could go on for days about the theory of music but I'll get back to the first piano the Harpsichord!
The Harpsichords look like small pianos but actually work very differently. When you press a key on a piano, a hammer hits a string, but when you play a harpsichord, a quill plucks the string (much like plucking a guitar or harp sting). Because harpsichord strings are plucked rather than struck, and the force used to press the keys does not change the dynamics, the instrument cannot produce crescendos and diminuendos as the piano does.
Many harpsichords have two rows of keys, called manuals. The range of the harpsichord is about 4 and a half octaves while the piano has 7 octaves. The harpsichord's sound is crisp but delicate and much softer than a piano.
I teach all my students at Little House of Music about the first piano built, the Harpsichord. My students ask a million question, some that I can't answer!
Enjoy, now you are smart!
Miss G Little House of Music
The Harpsichords look like small pianos but actually work very differently. When you press a key on a piano, a hammer hits a string, but when you play a harpsichord, a quill plucks the string (much like plucking a guitar or harp sting). Because harpsichord strings are plucked rather than struck, and the force used to press the keys does not change the dynamics, the instrument cannot produce crescendos and diminuendos as the piano does.
Many harpsichords have two rows of keys, called manuals. The range of the harpsichord is about 4 and a half octaves while the piano has 7 octaves. The harpsichord's sound is crisp but delicate and much softer than a piano.
I teach all my students at Little House of Music about the first piano built, the Harpsichord. My students ask a million question, some that I can't answer!
Enjoy, now you are smart!
Miss G Little House of Music
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