Dulcimer
Clementi had one of the last harpsichords made. The date upon the case was 1802. Beethoven's famous "Moonlight Sonata" was written for either harpsichord or piano. It was published in 1802. Hummel played on the harpsichord as late as 1805, but it had to give way, though most reluctantly, to the new invention called the pianoforte. Just how slow the public was in accepting the innovation and improvement upon the instruments mentioned, the following quotation from a folio gotten out by Thomas Mace, who was one of the clerks of Trinity College, at the University of Cambridge, testifies. He was pleased to call his booklet "Musick's Monument," and it was printed in 1676 in London.
He scorned the new invention but warmly upheld the lute and viol. He explained that the lute was once considered difficult to play because it had too few strings, only ten to fourteen, while at the time of his writing it had sixteen to twenty-six. He makes the statement that he never spent more than a shilling a quarter for strings. The care of a lute he describes quaintly:
"And that you may know how to shelter your lute in the worst of ill weathers (which is moist) you shall do well, ever when you lay it by in the day time, to put It into a Bed that is constantly used, between the Rug and Blanket, but never between the Sheets, because, they may be moist. This is the most absolute and best place to keep It in always, by which doing, you will find many Great Conveniences. Therefore, a Bed will secure from all these inconveniences and keep your Glew as Hard as Glass and all safe and sure; only to be excepted, that no Person be so inconsiderate as to Tumble down upon the Bed whilst the lute is there, for I have known several Good lutes spoiled with such a Trick."
Again we are indebted to Italy for the invention and name of the pianoforte. It is a strange fact that, entirely unknown to one another, three men were working out the same principle—namely, the hammer action—at the same time. Marius in France, Schroeter in Germany, and Bartolomeo Christofori (often called Christofali) in Italy worked secretly and simultaneously, and for a long time it was undecided to whom the honor really belonged. A careful examination of all records, however, establishes beyond a doubt the priority of Christofori's claim. The hammer action was what all previous instruments lacked, and it seems strange that it took nearly two thousand years for this principle to be discovered and applied. Many times the inventors appeared to be almost upon it. They worked all around it, but the idea seemed illusive and they never grasped it.
Christofori Piano from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
At this point it might be well to enumerate in order the instruments which preceded the piano, if only to fasten them clearly in memory: the lyre and harp of the ancients; the dulcimer, played by means of the plectra and to which, as the hand could use but one plectrum, there was a keyboard added to use all the fingers, thus moving the plectra faster; the clavichord, with tangents of brass to strike the strings; the virginal and the spinet, in reality the same; the harpsichord, with its crow quills to half rub, half strike the strings, still far away from the hammer action of the present-day piano. It seems almost unaccountable that the manufacturers who so greatly improved the mechanism of the harpsichord at this stage failed to discover the hammer action. But at last, after the quest of centuries, the quill, thorn, and ivory were discarded and a small hammer struck the string, giving a clear, precise, but delicate tone hitherto unheard. The "scratch with a sound at the end" was gone forever. The harpsichord had been changed into an instrument of percussion, and it only remained for man to perfect that primitive creation into the superb piano of today.