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In the second, Cristofori had obtained his escapement with an undivided key, reconciling his depth of touch, or keyfall, with that of the contemporary harpsichord, by driving the escapement lever through the key. He had contrived means for regulating the escapement distance, and had also invented the last essential of a good pianoforte action, the check.
It has been my privilege to assist in proving that Bartolommeo Cristofori was, in the first years of the 18th century, the real inventor of the pianoforte, but with a wide knowledge and experience of how long it has taken to make any invention in keyed instruments practicable and successful, I cannot believe that Cristofori was the first to attempt to contrive one.
Gottfried Silbermann, an ingenious musical instrument maker, of Freyhurg, Saxony, was the first to give the new principle adequate expression, about the year 1740, and his pianos excited a great deal of curiosity among musicians and scientific men. He followed the mechanism of Cristofori, the Italian, rather than of his own countrymen.
At Florence he produced the invention of the pianoforte, in which he was assisted and encouraged by this high-minded, richly-cultivated, and very musical prince. Scipione Maffei tells us that in 1709 Cristofori had completed four of the new instruments, three of them being of the usual harpsichord form, and one of another form, which he leaves undescribed.
The name of pianoforte was given about a century and a half ago to an instrument constructed by the Italian Cristofori, who devised a mechanism for striking the strings with hammers. In the older instruments the clarichords and harpsichords the strings were either snapped by means of crow's quills, or pushed with a tangent.
If the workshop tradition can be relied upon that several of Silbermann's workmen had come to London about that time, the so-called "twelve apostles," more than likely owing to the Seven Years' War, we should have here men acquainted with the Cristofori model, which Silbermann had taken up, and the early grand pianos referred to by Burney would be on that model.
But there are Cristofori grand pianos preserved at Florence, dated respectively 1720 and 1726, in which an improved construction of action is found, and of this I also exhibit a model. There is much difference between the two.
An advance shown by these instruments of Stein and Stein's followers is in the spacing of the unisons; the Huhn grands having two strings to a note in the lower part of the scale, and three in the upper. The Cristofori Silbermann inverted wrest-plank has reverted to the usual form; the tuning pins and downward bearing being the same as in the harpsichord.
When the sensibility of the player's touch is lost in the mechanical action, the corresponding sensibility of the tone suffers; the resonance is not, somehow or other, sympathetically excited. Erard rediscovered an upward bearing, which had been accomplished by Cristofori a hundred years before, in 1808.
At last during the eighteenth century, some time between 1709 and 1720, Bartolomeo Cristofori made a "clavier" which allowed the performer to play both loudly and softly or as it was said in Italian, "piano" and "forte." This instrument with certain changes became our "pianoforte" or piano.