1598

Paladino describes an instrument he has made in letters to the Duke of Modena, calling it "Pian e Forte." Although this instrument was capable of soft and loud, it is not clear if it is a type of harpsichord fitted with a device or a true hammered piano.

1682

On July 14, 1682, Henry Purcell was appointed organist of the Chapel Royal, London. Purcell is famous for more than a hundred baroque compositions, including the miniature opera "Dido and Aeneas," and his musical version of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, called "The Fairy Queen." As the spinet was more popular in the UK than the virginal at this time, mainly because of its larger compass and more powerful tone, Purcell would have used one to compose some of his music.

1709

The year 1709 is the one most sources give for the appearance of an instrument which can truly be called a "Pianoforte." The writer Scipione Maffei wrote an article that year about the pianoforte created by Bartolomeo Cristofori (1655-1732), who had probably produced four "gravicembali col piano e forte" or harpsichords with soft and loud. This instrument featured the first real escapement mechanism and is often called a "hammer harpsichord." The small hammers were leather covered. It had bichords throughout, and all the dampers were wedge-shaped. By 1726 he seems to have fitted a stop for the action to make the hammers strike only one of two strings. He had produced about twenty pianos by this time and then he is presumed to have gone back to making harpsichords, probably from the lack of interest in his pianos. Three of his pianos remain extant today: one with four octaves, dated 1720, is in New York; one with four and a half octaves, from 1726, is in Leipzig, Germany; and there is one in Rome from 1722. There are approximately ten plucked instruments surviving today with the name Cristofori on them. For photos of the New York Cristofori click here.

1711

John Shaw was the inventor of the tuning fork. He became a royal trumpeter in 1688 and rose to sergeant trumpeter in 1708. He was also lutenist to the Chapel Royal, appointed in 1706. A lute is a guitar-like instrument with a long neck and a pear-shaped body, much used in the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries. The instrument is notoriously difficult to keep in tune, and Shaw devised the tuning fork to help him tune his lute. He died in 1752.

For more information on pitch see the History of Pitch.

1725

Johann Ulrich von König, the court poet at Dresden, published a translation of Maffei's article on Cristofori's piano, and within a year the clavichord maker Gottfried Silberman (1683-1753) made two such pianos. Here again however, the piano was not received with great enthusiasm. Bach, a close friend of Silberman, did not like his pianos at first, but his opinion changed later. Christian Ernst Friederici, a pupil of Silberman, continued with experiments on the piano and made a small square piano, which was a success; he named his piano a "Fortbien". Later on Friederici began producing "pyramid" pianos, which were grand-shaped pianos set vertically, with the treble curve side up and the wrest pins at the bottom, not to be confused with the upright piano.

Not until after the end of the Seven Years' War in Germany in 1760 did the piano become really popular. This was because twelve instrument makers came to England, the "twelve apostles," as they became known. Johann Christoph Zumpe was one of them, known for his simple but extremely successful "square" pianos for which his name became virtually a synonym in the second half of the eighteenth century. It is not known exactly when. Buntebart, who was also a pupil of Silberman, came to England, and he worked at first with Shudi the famous maker of harpsichords.

1730

The firm of Kirkman piano makers was founded in 1730, according to the Pierce Piano Atlas. However, Kirkman inherited the business from Tabel's wife, whom he married one month after Tabel's death. Tabel was a harpsichord maker who trained with Ruckers. He came to London in 1680 and set up making harpsichords. Abraham Kirkman, who was born in 1710 in Bischweiler near Strasbourg, came to work for Tabel. In 1742 he moved to Great Pulteney Street. These are some later dates and locations for him: