The dawn of the (forte)piano
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.35699/2317-6377.2009.54510Keywords:
Piano, Fortepiano, Cristofori, Tangentflügel, Tangent pianoAbstract
This article reviews the dawn of the fortepiano, an instrument central to music making from the second half
of Eighteenth century to the middle of the Twentieth century. It presents documents that describe the beginning of
Cristofori’s invention as well as non-Cristofori documents on the same subject.
References
AUT VAR. Bologna, Civico museo bibliografico musicale, MS DD/53 ; Florence, Biblioteca del Conservatorio di musica Luigi
Cherubini, MS D. 2534. 17th Century Keyboard Music, v.10. New York: Garland, 1987.
BADURA-SKODA, Eva. “Prolegomena to History of Viennese Fortepiano”. Israel Studies of Musicology, n.2, p.77-99, 1980.
BADURA-SKODA, Eva & Paul. Interpreting Mozart on the Piano. London: Barrie & Rockliff, 1962.
BELT, Philipp R., Maribel Meisel, et. al. The Piano. New York: W. W. Norton, 1988.
BILSON, Malcolm. The Viennese Fortepiano of the Late 18th Century. Early Music, v.8, n.2, p.158-162, April 1980.
BLOCH, Joseph. “Lodovico Giustini and the first published piano sonatas.” The Piano Quarterly, 22, p.20-24, 1974.
BRUNELLI BONETTI, B. e A. Damarini. “Bartolomeo Cristofori e il mondo musicale padovano” in: Bartolomeo Cristofori,
inventore del pianoforte, Publicazione ufficiale del comitato per la celebrazione del III centenario della nascità di
Bartolomeo Cristofori. Padua: a cura dell’ Ente provinciale per il Turismo, 1955.
CASELLI, Ala Botti. “Le ‘Sonate da Cimbalo di Piano, e Forti’ di Lodovico Giustini – L’ Opera di un prete galante agli albori
della sonata per pianoforte”. Nuova Rivista Musicale Italiana, v.12, p. 34-66,1978.
CLINKSCALE, Martha Novak. Makers of the piano, 1700-1820, vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.
COLE, Michael. The Pianoforte in the Classical Era. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
DAVID, Hans Theodore & Arthur Mendel. The Bach reader – A life of Johann Sebastian Bach in letters and documents. New
York: W. W. Norton, 1972.
FABBRI, Mario. “La collezione medicea degli strumenti musicali in due sconosciuti inventari del primo seicento.” Note d’Archivio per la Storia Musicale, supplemento 1, p.51-62, 1983.
________. “Nuova luce sull’attività fiorentina di Giacomo Antonio Perti, Bartolomeo Cristofori e Giorgio F. Haendel.”
Chigiana, v.21, p.143-90, 1964.
FANELLI, Jean Grundy. Giustini, Lodovico (Maria) in New Grove Dictionary, 2nd Edition. London: Macmillan, 2001, v.IX, p.915.
_______. A chronology of Operas, oratorios, Operettas, Cantatas, and miscelaneous stage works with music performed in
Pistoia – 1606-1943. Bologna: Pendragon, 1998.
_______. ”La musica per la chiesa e l’oratorio di San Prospero nel Sei-Settecento.” Bulletino Storico Pistoiese, v.XCII,
(Terza Serie, XXV), p.59-76, 1990.
_______. “La musica patrocinata dai Rospigliosi: Il Colegio dei Nobili.” Bulletino Storico Pistoiese, v.XCVIII, (Terza Serie
XXXI), p.113-28, 1996.
_______. “The Manfredini family of musicians of Pistoia, 1684-1803.” Studi Musicali, v.XXVI, n.1, p.187-232, 1997.
_______. The Oratorios of Giovanni Carlo Maria Clari. Bologna: Pendragon, 1998.
FERGUSON, Howard. Keyboard Interpretation from Fourteenth to Nineteenth Century: An Introduction. London: Oxford
University Press, 1979.
FREEMAN, Daniel E. “Lodovico Giustini and the emergence of the keyboard sonata in Italy.” Anuario Musical, v.58,
p.111-38, 2003.
FRUM, Bernard. An early example of dramatic procedures in 18th-century keyboard music. Musical Quarterly, v.56,
p.230-46, 1970.
GOOD, Edwin M. What did Cristofori call his invention? Early Music, v.33, n.1, p.95-7, February 2005.
HARDING, Rosamund Evelyn Mary. “The earliest pianoforte music”. Music and Letters, v.13, p.194-9, 1932.
HUBER, Alfons. Was the ‘Viennese Action’ Originally a Stossmechanik? The Galpin Society Journal, v.55, p.169-182, April 2002.
KIRBY, Frank E. A short history of keyboard music. New York: Free Press, 1966.
KOMLÓS, Katalin. Fortepianos and their Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
LATCHAM, Michael. Franz Jakob Spath and the Tangentenflüegel, an Eighteenth-Century Tradition. The Galpin Society
Journal, v.57, p.150-70, May 2004.
_______. The check in some early pianos and the development of piano technique around the turn of the 18th century.
Early Music, v.21, n.1, p.28-42. February 1993.
_______. Mozart and the Pianos of Johann Andreas Stein. The Galpin Society Journal, v.51, July 1998, p.114-153.
_______. Swirling from one level of the affect to another: the expressive Clavier in Mozart’s time. Early Music, v.30, n.4,
p.502-520. November 2002.
MAFFEI, Scipione (1675-1755). “Nuova invenzione d’un gravicemablo col piano e forte.” Giornale de’letterati d’Italia, v.V
(Venezia, 1711), p.144-59.
MARSHALL, Robert Lewis. Eighteenth-Century Keyboard Music. New York: Schirmer, 1994.
MATTHESON, Johann (1681-1764). Critica Musica (Pars I-VIII. 1722-1725). Amsterdam: Frits Knuf, 1964.
MOBBS, Kenneth. A Performer’s Comparative Study of Touchweight, Key-dip, Keyboard Design and Repetition in Early
Grand Pianos, c. 1770 to 1850. The Galpin Society Journal, v.59, p.16-44, May 2001.
MONTANARI, Giuliana. Bartolomeo Cristofori – A list and historical survey of his instruments. Early Music, v.19, n.3,
p.383-396, August 1991.
O’BRIEN, Michael Kent. Bartolomeo Cristofori at court in late Medici Florence. Dissertation, Washington D.C.: The Catholic
University of America, 1994.
OORT, Bart van. Haydn and the English Classical Piano Style. Early Music, v.28, n.1, p.73-89, February 2000.
PARAKILAS, James. Piano roles: three hundred years of life with the piano. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999.
PEREIRA, Mayra. Do cravo ao pianoforte no Rio de Janeiro: Um estudo documental e organológico. Dissertação de Mestrado.
Rio de Janeiro: Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, 2005.
PERSONE, Pedro. The earliest piano music: Lodovico Giustini’s (1685-1743) Sonate da cimbalo di piano, e forte ditto
volgarmente di martelletti, Firenze, 1732. Dissertação de Doutorado. Boston: Boston University, 2006.
_______. The earliest piano music: Lodovico Giustini’s (1685-1743) Sonate da cimbalo di piano, e forte ditto volgarmente
di martelletti, Firenze, 1732. Saarbrücken: VDM-Verlag, 2008.
PINESCHI, Umberto. “Jacopo Melani e Ludovico Giustini, organisti della Congregazione dello Spirito Santo di Pistoia.”
Bullettino Storico Pistoiese, v.LXXV, p. 89-94, 1973.
POLLENS, Stewart. The Early Pianoforte. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
_______. The Bonafis spinet: an early harpsichord converted into a tangent piano. Journal of the American Musical
Instrument Society, v.11, p.5-21, 1985.
_______. Christoph Gottlieb Schröter, inventor or fraud? Early Keyboard Journal, v.18, p.139-53, 2000.
_______. The early Portuguese piano. Early Music, v.13, n.1, p.18-27, February 1985.
_______. The Gatti-Kraus piano action ascribed to Bartolomeo Cristofori. Galpin Society Journal, v.40, p.269-78, April 2002.
_______. Gottfried Silbermann’s pianos. Organ Yearbook, v.17, p.103-21,1986.
_______. The pianos of Bartolomeo Cristofori. Journal of the American Musical Instruments Society, v.10, p.32-68, 1984.
________. Three keyboard instruments signed by Cristofori’s assistant Giovanni Ferrini. Galpin Society Journal, v.44,
p.77-93, March 1991.
POWERS, Wendy. “The Pianofortes of Bartolomeo Cristofori (1655–1731)”. In: Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York:
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/cris/hd_cris.htm (October 2003)
RATTALINO, Piero. Storia del pianoforte: lo strumento, la musica, gli interpreti. Milano: Saggiatore, 1983.
ROSENBLUM, Sandra P. Performance Practice in Classic Piano Music. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1988.
ROWLAND, David. Early Keyboard Instruments – A Practical Guide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
RUSSEL, Raymond. The harpsichord and the clavichord, 2nd edition. New York: W. W. Norton, 1973.
SCHOTT, Howard. From the harpsichord to pianoforte: a chronology and commentary. Early Music, v.13, n.1, p.28-38,
February 1985.
SELFRIDGE-FIELD, Eleanor. The invention of the fortepiano as intellectual history. Early Music, v.33, n.1, p.81-94, February 2005.
SHEVELOFF, Joel Leonard. Domenico Scarlatti: Tercentenary Frustrations. Musical Quarterly, v.71, p.399-436, 1985.
_______. Domenico Scarlatti: Tercentenary Frustrations, part II. Musical Quarterly, v.72, p.90-118, 1986.
SILVESTRI, Giuseppe. Scipione Maffei (1675-1755) – Europeo del Settecento. Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 1968.
STEVENSON, Robert. Some Portuguese sources for early Brazilian music history. Inter-American Institute for Musical
Research, v.4, p.1-43, 1968.
_______. The Brazilian Benedictine Bishop who launched the first piano publication (1732). Inter-American Music
Review, v.1, p.211-15, 1978/79.
SUTCLIFFE, W. Dean. The Keyboard Sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti and the Eighteenth-Century Musical Style. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2003.
SUTHERLAND, David A. Domenico Scarlatti and the Florentine piano. Early Music, v.33, n.2, p.243-256, May 1995.
_______. Silberman, Bach, and the Florentine piano. Early Keyboard Journal, v.21, p.45-63, 2003.
TAGLIAVINI, Luigi Ferdinando. Giovanni Ferrini and his harpsichord ‘a penne e a martelletti’. Early Music, v19, n.3, p.399-
, August 1991.
WOLFF, Christoph. Johann Sebastian Bach, the learned musician. New York: W.W. Norton, 2000.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Per Musi
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Except where otherwise noted, contents on this site are licensed under a Creative Commons - Atribuição 4.0 Internacional.
