An inventory of the Medici family in 1700 records a large arpicembalo made by Bartolomeo Cristofori. It is stated that this is a new invention that produces soft and loud or as it states in the Italian original -che fa’ il piano, e il forte. This was the first time such an instrument was recorded and the word gradually came into English as a mixture of piano and forte – soft and loud. In English it is mentioned for the first time in 1772 in a New York paper in an advertisement “John Sheiuble, Organ Builder, from Philadelphia, Makes and repairs all Kinds of Organs, Harpsichords, Spinnets, and Piano”.
There was quite an evolution from the original instrument to today’s version. The biggest changes were the addition of pedals by the organ maker Silbermann who sold the idea to Bach. It was a similar piano that Mozart wrote for. The industrial revolution resulted in stronger wires and iron frames as perfected by the piano-making company Broadwood (which still exists) and which sent pianos to Haydn and Beethoven.
The word came into general play in the 1840s with such compounds as piano duet, piano lesson and piano practise, although the first piano teacher was recorded in 1807. At the beginning of the 20th century, Camden Town in London alone had 100 small factories and workshops making pianos employing 6,000 people. Now the whole of Great Britain has only three manufacturers. Today, only about 4,000 acoustic pianos are sold in Britain each year, around 800 grands and 3,000 or so uprights, compared with 14,000 in the late 1960s. And with the price from Chinese pianos being so low, hardly any are made in Britain. But the real move is to digital, which outsell acoustic pianos by an increasing factor, most recently 3 to 1, not surprising when one considers that the price here is something like a third of the cheapest Chinese piano.
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