PIANO OF ABOUT 1777.
Well, then, from this pretty, picturesque harpsichord period, we find ourselves by slow degrees in that of the piano, and I suppose the first thing you will wish to know is how a piano-forte differs from these other instruments of which I have been writing. The principal difference is that the strings are struck with a hammer. About the beginning of the eighteenth century this idea had originated with three men at once—an Italian named Cristofali, a Frenchman named Marius, and a German named Schröter; but all investigators seem convinced that Cristofali was the real originator. His ideas were the best. So, later in the century, when harpsichords began to be thought incomplete, different makers tried to produce something better, and the result was the primitive piano-forte.
At this time the composer Sebastian Bach was in Berlin. Frederick the Great was eager to hear him play, and as that famous sovereign possessed several of the new piano-fortes (or forte-pianos, as they then were called), Bach came one evening to the palace, where a crowd of gay ladies and gentlemen were assembled.
The composer had to go from room to room, trying first one of the new pianos, then another. These instruments were manufactured in Germany, but, later, English and French pianos took the palm, and about the beginning of this century American ladies were growing proficient in the art of piano-playing—proficient at least for that day. Have you not all seen your grandmammas' music-books, in which "The Battle of Prague" is an honored "piece"? True, there were hundreds of nobler works, but only public performers seem to have attempted them.
As time went on, and the interest in the instrument grew, the mechanism of the piano-forte was improved, and at this date (1881), it is considered perfect. Here and there as you play, as you listen to the sounds of the little hammer falling on the strings, let your thoughts wander back to Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth of England, with their virginals and spinets—indeed, farther into the' realm of poetic, dreamy sound, for beyond these were clavicytheriums, citoles and citherns, dulcimers and psalteries, and in the East, among the people whom we see now in sculpture, a whole line of lyres and harps and lutes.
It may not seem that so far away as early Egyptian days was the first idea of our piano, yet certainly such is the case. In some far Eastern country you might see, graven in stone of centuries gone by, a figure holding an instrument dimly shadowing that on which you now may play all written music.