Editing Piano (section)

==Playing and technique==
{{further|Piano history and musical performance}}
[[File:Piano player.jpg|thumb|upright=1.15|right|A Prague piano player.]]
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As with any other musical instrument, the piano may be played from [[Musical notation|written music]], [[Playing by ear|by ear]], or through [[Musical improvisation|improvisation]]. While some [[Folk music|folk]] and [[blues]] pianists were [[Autodidacticism|self-taught]], in [[Classical music|classical]] and [[jazz]], there are well-established piano teaching systems and institutions, including pre-college graded examinations, university, college and music conservatory diplomas and degrees, ranging from the [[Bachelor degree|B.Mus.]] and [[Master degree|M.Mus.]] to the [[Doctor of Musical Arts]] in piano. Piano technique evolved during the transition from harpsichord and clavichord to fortepiano playing and continued through the development of the modern piano. Changes in musical styles and audience preferences over the 19th and 20th century, as well as the emergence of [[virtuoso]] performers, contributed to this evolution and to the growth of distinct approaches or schools of piano playing. Although technique is often viewed as only the physical execution of a musical idea, many pedagogues and performers stress the interrelatedness of the physical and mental or emotional aspects of piano playing.<ref>{{cite book |author=Matthay, Tobias |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QxxMAAAAYAAJ |title=The Visible and Invisible in Pianoforte Technique : Being a Digest of the Author's Technical Teachings Up to Date |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1947 |location=London |page=3| isbn=978-0-19-318412-1 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book | title=Piano Technique | publisher=I. Pitman | author=Harrison, Sidney | year=1953 | location=London | page=57}}</ref><ref>{{cite book | title=The Science of Pianoforte Technique | publisher=Macmillan | author=Fielden, Thomas | year=1934 | location=London | page=162}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal | title=Sayings of Great Teachers | author=Boulanger, Nadia | journal=The Piano Quarterly | volume=Winter 1958–1959 | pages=26}}</ref> Well-known approaches to piano technique include those by [[Dorothy Taubman]], [[Edna Golandsky]], [[Fred Karpoff]], [[Charles-Louis Hanon]] and [[Otto Ortmann]].

===Performance styles===
Many classical music composers, including [[Joseph Haydn|Haydn]], [[Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart|Mozart]], [[Franz Schubert|Schubert]] and [[Ludwig van Beethoven|Beethoven]], composed for the fortepiano, a rather different instrument than the modern piano. Even composers of the [[Romantic movement]], like [[Franz Liszt]], [[Frédéric Chopin]], [[Clara Schumann|Clara]] and [[Robert Schumann]], [[Fanny Mendelssohn|Fanny]] and [[Felix Mendelssohn]], and [[Johannes Brahms]], wrote for pianos substantially different from 2010-era modern pianos. Contemporary musicians may [[Piano history and musical performance|adjust their interpretation of historical compositions]] from the 17th century to the 19th century to account for sound quality differences between old and new instruments or to changing [[performance practice]].

[[File:Ravel Gershwin Leide-Tedesco002.jpg|thumb|left|Birthday party honoring French pianist [[Maurice Ravel]] in 1928. From left to right: conductor [[Oskar Fried]], singer [[Éva Gauthier]], Ravel (at piano), composer-conductor [[Manoah Leide-Tedesco]], and composer [[George Gershwin]].]]
Starting in Beethoven's later career, the fortepiano evolved into an instrument more like the modern piano. Modern pianos were in wide use by the late 19th century. They featured an octave range larger than the earlier fortepiano instrument, adding around 30 more keys to the instrument, which extended the deep bass range and the high treble range. Factory mass production of upright pianos made them more affordable for a larger number of middle-class people. They appeared in music halls and pubs during the 19th century, providing entertainment through a piano soloist, or in combination with a small dance band. Just as harpsichordists had accompanied singers or dancers performing on stage, or playing for dances, pianists took up this role in the late 18th and following centuries.

During the 19th century, American musicians playing for working-class audiences in small pubs and bars, particularly [[:Category:African-American composers|African-American composers]], developed new musical genres based on the modern piano. [[Ragtime]] music, popularized by composers such as [[Scott Joplin]], reached a broader audience by 1900.{{sfn|Priestley|1998|p=210}} The popularity of ragtime music was quickly succeeded by [[Jazz piano]]. New techniques and rhythms were invented for the piano, including [[ostinato]] for [[boogie-woogie]], and [[Shearing voicing]]. [[George Gershwin]]'s ''[[Rhapsody in Blue]]'' broke new musical ground by combining American jazz piano with symphonic sounds. [[Comping (jazz)|Comping]], a technique for accompanying jazz vocalists on piano, was exemplified by [[Duke Ellington]]'s technique. [[Honky-tonk]] music, featuring yet another style of piano rhythm, became popular during the same era. [[Bebop]] techniques grew out of jazz, with leading composer-pianists such as [[Thelonious Monk]] and [[Bud Powell]]. In the late 20th century, [[Bill Evans]] composed pieces combining classical techniques with his jazz experimentation. In the 1970s, [[Herbie Hancock]] was one of the first jazz composer-pianists to find mainstream popularity working with newer urban music techniques such as [[jazz-funk]] and [[jazz-rock]].

[[File:Yamaha piano (cropped).jpg|thumb|upright|[[Yamaha Corporation|Yamaha]] grand piano]]
Pianos have also been used prominently in rock and roll and [[rock music]] by performers such as [[Jerry Lee Lewis]], [[Little Richard]], [[Keith Emerson]] ([[Emerson, Lake & Palmer]]), [[Elton John]], [[Ben Folds]], [[Billy Joel]], [[Nicky Hopkins]], [[Rick Wakeman]], [[Freddie Mercury]] and [[Tori Amos]], to name a few. At a 2023 auction in [[Sotheby's]] in London, Mercury's [[Yamaha Corporation|Yamaha]] baby grand piano, which he used to compose "[[Bohemian Rhapsody]]" among other Queen songs, sold for £1.7 million ($2.1 million), which Sotheby's state is a record for a composer's piano.<ref>{{Cite news |date=6 September 2023 |title=Freddie Mercury: Queen star's piano and other items fetch high prices at auction |work=BBC News |url=https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-66729573 |access-date=23 September 2023}}</ref> [[Modernism|Modernist]] styles of music have also appealed to composers writing for the modern grand piano, including [[John Cage]] and [[Philip Glass]].

=== Traditional Burmese style ===
{{Main|Mahāgīta#Piano (Sandaya)|l1 = Sandaya}}

Introduced to Burma during the mid-19th century, the piano was quickly indigenized by court musicians and uses a novel "technique of interlocked fingering with both hands extending a single melodic line allowed for agogic embellishment, fleeting grace notes in syncopated spirals around a steady underlying beat found in the bell and clapper time keepers", adapted to play [[Mahāgīta]] compositions. Many Burmese pianists (e.g., [[Sandayar Hla Htut]] and [[Sandayar Chit Swe]]) adopt a title from the word for piano, ''sandaya'' ({{Langx|my|{{linktext|စန္ဒရား}}}}).