United States or Saint Lucia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
But I admit that the opposite view of forte and piano, contrived by registers of spinet-jacks, is equally tenable. Bartolommeo Cristofori was a Paduan harpsichord maker, who was invited by Prince Ferdinand dei Medici to Florence, to take charge of the large collection of musical instruments the Prince possessed.
I have given the first place in description to Cristofori's actions, instead of to the "cembalo" or instrument to which they were applied, because piano and forte, from touch, became possible through them, and what else was accomplished by Cristofori was due, primarily, to the dynamic idea.
A portrait of this ideal wife was painted by Cristofori and passed into the keeping of her stepson, Karl Philipp Emanuel Bach, but alas, it is lost while so many a less interesting face is repeated in endless pictures. Twenty-eight years after her marriage this faithful woman stood by her husband's side in his blindness and through the two operations by the English surgeon in Leipzig.
All three are with unimportant differences having nothing to do with structure, Cristofori instruments, wrest plank, sound-board, string-block, and action; the harpsichord scale of stringing being still retained.
The early hammer-clavier, or pianoforte, invented in 1711, by the Italian Cristofori, who derived the hammer idea from the dulcimer, did not attract him because of its extreme crudeness. Nevertheless, it was destined to develop into the musical instrument essential to the perfect interpretation of his clavier music.
In them are a series of clavier pieces, by Bach, Gerhard, and others; a number of hymns and sacred songs; one of several humourous song's, describing the reflections of a smoker; and still others, apparently addressed to his wife, and giving fresh proofs of his devotion to her. Her portrait was painted by Cristofori, but disappeared after being in the possession of one of the sons.
To gain a similarly elastic blow mechanically in his first action, Cristofori cut a notch in the butt of his hammer from which the escapement lever, "linguetta mobile" as he called it "hopper," as we call it being centered at the base, moved forward, when the key was put down, to the extent of its radius, and after the delivery of the blow returned to its resting place by the pressure of a spring.
He had two strings to a note, but it did not occur to him to space them into pairs of unisons. He retained the equidistant harpsichord scale, and had, at first, under-dampers, later over-dampers, which fell between the unisons thus equally separated. Cristofori died in 1731. He had pupils, one of whom made, in 1730, the, "Rafael d'Urbino," the favorite instrument of the great singer Farinelli.
We do not know what these instruments were, but it may be inferred that they were copies of Cristofori, or were made after the description of his invention by Maffei, which had already been translated from Italian into German, by Koenig, the court poet at Dresden, who was a personal friend of Silbermann.
The good qualities of Erard's action, completed in 1821, the germ of which will be found in the later Cristofori, are not, however, due to repetition capability, but to other causes, chiefly, I will say, to counterpoise.
Word Of The Day