Editing Piano (section)

===Invention===
[[File:CristoforiPiano1726LeipzigKeyboardView.jpg|thumb|The 1726 Cristofori piano in the [[Museum of Musical Instruments of the University of Leipzig|Musikinstrumenten-Museum]] in Leipzig|left]]
The invention of the piano is credited to [[Bartolomeo Cristofori]] of [[Padua]], Italy, who was employed by [[Ferdinando de' Medici, Grand Prince of Tuscany]], as the Keeper of the Instruments.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Pollens |first=Stewart |date=2013 |title=Bartolomeo Cristofori in Florence |journal=The Galpin Society Journal |volume=66 |pages=7–245 |issn=0072-0127 |jstor=44083109}}</ref> Cristofori was an expert harpsichord maker and was well acquainted with the body of knowledge on stringed keyboard instruments. This knowledge of keyboard mechanisms and actions helped him to develop the first pianos. It is not known when Cristofori first built a piano. An inventory made by his employers, the [[Medici]] family, indicates the existence of a piano by 1700. The three Cristofori pianos that survive today date from the 1720s.{{sfn|Ripin|Pollens|2001b|loc=¶1}}<ref name="metmuseum">{{cite web |url=http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/cris/hd_cris.htm |title=The Piano: The Pianofortes of Bartolomeo Cristofori (1655–1731) &#124; Thematic Essay &#124; Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History &#124; The Metropolitan Museum of Art |publisher=New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art |year=2003 |author=Powers, Wendy |access-date=2014-01-27 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131017032640/http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/cris/hd_cris.htm |archive-date=2013-10-17 |url-status=live}}</ref> Cristofori named the instrument ''un cimbalo di cipresso di piano e forte'' ("a keyboard of [[cypress]] with soft and loud"), abbreviated over time as ''pianoforte'', ''fortepiano'', and later reduced to only ''piano''.{{sfn|Isacoff|2012|p=23}}

Cristofori's great success was designing a stringed keyboard instrument in which the notes are struck by a hammer. The hammer must strike the string but not remain in contact with it, because continued contact would [[Damping (music)|damp]] the sound and stop the string from vibrating and making sound. This means that after striking the string, the hammer must quickly fall from (or rebound from) the strings. Moreover, the hammer must return to its rest position without bouncing violently (thus preventing notes from being re-played by accidental rebound), and it must return to a position in which it is ready to play again almost immediately after its key is depressed, so the player can repeat the same note rapidly when desired. Cristofori's piano [[Action (piano)|action]] was a model for the many approaches to piano actions that followed in the next century.

Cristofori's early instruments were made with thin strings and were much quieter than the modern piano, though they were louder and had more [[sustain]] compared to the clavichord—the only previous keyboard instrument capable of dynamic nuance responding to the player's touch, the velocity with which the keys are pressed. While the clavichord allows expressive control of volume and sustain, it is relatively quiet even at its loudest. The harpsichord produces a sufficiently loud sound, especially when a coupler joins each key to both manuals of a two-manual harpsichord, but it offers no dynamic or expressive control over individual notes. The piano in some sense offers the best of both of the older instruments, combining the ability to play at least as loudly as a harpsichord with the ability to continuously vary dynamics by touch.