How it began
Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua was appointed in 1688 to the Florentine court of Grand Prince Ferdinando de' Medici to care for its harpsichords and later its whole instrument collection. A 1700 inventory of Medici instruments lists an arpicimbalo newly invented by Cristofori, with hammers and dampers. A court musician, Federigo Meccoli, noted that it was first made in 1700. Britannica gives a date of about 1709 and notes that credit for priority has been disputed, though it assigns the invention to Cristofori.
Before it existed
The keyboard instrument at the Medici court was the harpsichord, which Cristofori was employed to maintain. His new instrument resembled a harpsichord from the outside. The oldest surviving piano, made in 1720, sits in a plain wing-shaped case of the harpsichord type.
How it works
Cristofori set out to build an instrument on which the player could change loudness solely by changing the force with which the keys were struck. His design used hammers to strike the strings and dampers to silence them. The instrument in the 1700 inventory had a range of four octaves. In 1711 the writer Scipione Maffei called it a gravicembalo col piano e forte, a harpsichord with soft and loud, which gave the pianoforte its name.
What lasted
By 1726 Cristofori had arrived at all the essentials of the modern piano action, and Britannica states that the modern piano stems from his instrument. According to contemporary sources, four of his pianos existed in 1711. Three pianos by Cristofori survive. They are at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, dated 1720, at the Museo Strumenti Musicali in Rome, dated 1722, and at the Musikinstrumenten-Museum of Leipzig University, dated 1726.
