Norbert Hadrava, Austrian diplomat in Naples during the 1780s, was an amateur musician of varied interests, many of them having to do with musical instruments. As self-appointed agent for the great instrument-builder Johann Andreas Stein, he arranged for the purchase of keyboard instruments and their shipping from Stein's workshop in Augsburg to Naples. In doing so he played an important role in the consolidation of the piano's triumph over the harpsichord in Italy and in the enhancement of Stein's international prestige.Hadrava's letters to his friend Johann Paul Schulthesius (published, with Italian translation, by Giuliana Gialdroni) represent an important source of information about musical life in Naples during the 1780s and about Hadrava's activities, including his piano-importing business. From this point of view the most valuable letter, written in 1789, largely concerns a vis-à-vis piano-harpsichord by Stein that Hadrava had helped a Neapolitan nobleman to obtain. It contains descriptions not only of the instrument but also of a recital in which Hadrava played it, first by himself and then together with Giovanni Paisiello. This letter is of special interest to historians of the piano because one of two surviving vis-à-vis instruments by Stein is preserved today in Naples. That instrument may well be the one described by Hadrava in 1789.

2016

In 1716 Jean Marius submitted several projects for his clavecins à maillet to the Academy of Sciences in Paris. Short descriptions and plates of four of Marius’s actions were published in 1735 after his death. Even if Marius is well known as the first French piano maker, a wide part of his handwritten reports and descriptions on his clavecins à maillet are still unpublished. These descriptions give a number of details about the first piano actions devised in France some fifteen years after Cristofori's invention of his arpicimbalo che fa il piano e il forte in about 1700. These documents, which are included in this article for the fist time, were not quoted in the 1735 printed version that is usually mentioned in all the main surveys on the history of the early pianoforte. Furthermore, the article describes Andries Veltman's 1759 combined harpsichord-piano which was one of the very first hammer-action keyboard instruments made in France after Marius's experiments .

Informazione Organistica e Organologica, Terza Serie, n. V Anno XXXVI, n. 51, pp. 165-189, 2024

The article explores the construction features of a wing-shaped piano built in Rome in 1793 by the German maker Johann Michael Schölly, now part of the Giulini collection in Briosco (Milan). This instrument is one of the oldest surviving Roman pianos and exhibits remarkable similarities to 18th-century pianos made in the German tradition. Specifically, the piano’s internal structure and soundboard features closely resemble those found in the earliest surviving pianos by Anton Walter, the leading piano maker active in Vienna in the late 18th century. However, unlike the surviving wing-shaped pianos by Walter, all of which feature a Prellzungenmechanik, Schölly’s instrument is equipped with a Stossmechanik without escapement mechanism. The article suggests that both Schölly and Walter may have shared a common piano-making tradition. As very little is known about Walter’s early pianos, particularly those made before the mid-1780s, Schölly’s 1793 piano may offer interesting insights into Walter’s earliest instruments.

Domenico Scarlatti en España. Actas de los Symposia FIMTE 2006-2007 / Domenico Scarlatti in Spain. Proceedings of FIMTE Symposia 2006-2007, ed. by Luisa Morales, Garrucha (Almería): Asociación Cultural LEAL 2009, pp. 117-142

This goes some way to contradicting the assumption that Italian harpsichords generally had only two sets of strings, both at 8-foot pitch.

2016

Reconstructing the Perception of the Pianoforte's Domesticity: A "Steinway Revolution" "What a different machine is a piano: a machine with emotions, if that is possible, or at least emotional attachments. There are pianists who kiss their pianos every day, who touch the case as tenderly as they would touch a lover's cheek, who talk to their pianos in a way they talk to no one. "-James Barron,

Although many publications provide a drawing (disegno) of Cristofori's piano action and describe it as from the 1711 edition of Maffei's article, most are in fact from altered versions: three altered from the 1711 edition and five from the 1719 edition. The original version has only been re-produced (albeit incompletely) by Rattalino. The 1711 drawing shows an action which is feasible, whereas some versions are functionally impossible. An examination of the text, and of surviving actions, strengthens the argument, already advanced by Och, that Maffei did not write the technical description of the action, but received a report from Cristofori. It is argued here that the other details concerning the nature of the newly-invented Gravecembalo col piano, e forte and its use were also provided by Cristofori. Thus, these testify to the maker's intentions, which are significant for us now in understanding the first piano. Maffei's unpublished notes for the article give some insight into Cristofori's early days in Florence, but do not support the interpretation that Cristofori initially declined to work for Prince Ferdinando de' Medici. Keywords: Cristofori, piano action, Maffei, disegno, Rattalino, Och, Gravecembalo, Ferdinando de' Medici.

Early Music

Metropolitan Museum of Art: Concerts for Members, 1952

zows rt, pianist MARCH 3r 5, AND L 01 L952 ar 8:3o P.M. rN THE LECTURE HALL The concert will be preceded by a demonstration of the pianoforte built by its inventor, Bartolommeo Cristofori, in 1721 in Florence and of a seventeenth-century Italian harpsichord.

College Music Association: Eight Annual Meeting, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Although Giovanni Ferrini is known to be the second and better of Cristofori's two scolari, the first may have been Michele Feroci. His son's spinet is linked with the Cristofori workshop in an as yet unknown way, but helps reveal that the rebuilding of the anonymous Italian harpsichord in the Russell Collection was undertaken in around 1722. Giovanni Ferrini's harpsichord-piano is a valuable document yielding many points of comparison. It shows a development of the Cristofori action as regards the intermediate lever, which occurred some time between 1726 and 1746. Gottfried Silbermann copied a Cristofori action of around 1726. Zedler's account of a piano being delivered to the Elector of Saxony is dated by Ahrens to no later than 1729. Thus, Silbermann's source was probably an instrument made in the Cristofori workshop in 1726-1728. Through the sales of pianos in 1726, 1727, 1730 and 1732 it becomes clear that the Cristofori workshop was producing pianos continually in this period so that customers did not have to order an instrument in advance. Two instruments were even shipped to London. Sutherland's view of a series production of the Cristofori piano is thereby supported.

2009

The pianoforte, colloquially known as the piano, occupies a fundamental role in the world of western music, be it in a professional, amateur or domestic setting. Its range of facilities and features distinguish it vastly from every other instrument that is, or ever was, in wide-spread use by western culture. It has the capacity to simultaneously play at least as many different pitches as the number of fingers possessed by the individual(s) playing it, and therefore can be said to produce an approximate rendition of works containing any permutation of the twelve western pitch classes. It spans the very extremes of the range of pitches playable by any musical instrument, and can produce sound at varying degrees of volume depending on the force which is exerted on the keys by the player. 1 Its technical invention and development, its growth as a respected instrument of wide-spread use, and its recognition as an important facet of the musical world took place over a period of approximately fifty years starting at the end of the Baroque period and overlapping into the early years of the Classical period of music. It is important to identify what facets of the instrument and its new innovations caused it to have such an enduring influence, and come to occupy the broad range of cultural niches that it does today. To understand how this came to be, one must examine the changes in the nature of society and of human thought during the period in which it was born, and the consequent musical needs that its predecessors could not answer sufficiently in the eyes of the period"s composers and players. 2 In short, the development of the piano occurred as a result of the changing musical needs of the Baroque period, and led to one of the most universally-played, most beloved instruments of western culture. 1 Edwin M. Ripin, et al. "Pianoforte." Grove Music Online. 2 Ibid. 2

studi musicali . .

Based primarily on articles in the Gazzetta toscana, this paper discusses the keyboard culture of late eighteenth-century Tuscany as exemplified by instruments by Giuseppe Zannetti, Luigi Vignoli, Francesco Spighi, and Vincenzio Sodi, by piano music by Salvador Pazzaglia, Filippo Maria Gherardeschi, Johann Paul Schulthesius, Vincenzio Panerai, and Eugenio Sodi, and by interactions between builders, composers, and performers. An early contribution to a scholarly dialogue involving (among others) Pierluigi Ferrari and Giuliana Montanari, "Presenza del pianoforte alla corte del Granducato di Toscana, 1700–1859," Recercare 7 (1995), 163–211 and 8 (1996), 59–155; John Koster, "Three Grand Pianos in the Florentine Tradition," Music, Images, Instruments 4 (1999), 94–116; Stefano Barandoni, Filippo Maria Gherardeschi (1738–1808): Musicista "abile e di genio" nel Granducato di Toscana, Pisa, Edizioni ETS, 2001; and Maria Virginia Rolfo, "Vincenzio Sodi: Life and Work," MM thesis, University of South Dakota (2011).

Cristofori, Jennens, and the first pianoforte in England, 2021

Through the work of Paul Everett and Michael Cole it has been known for some time that Charles Jennens, Handel's librettist of "The Messiah", acquired a pianoforte from the Bartolomeo Cristofori workshop in Florence, and had it shipped to London in 1732. Only more recently, in a publication by Amanda Babington and Illias Chrissochoidis have additional details been made more widely known from the Jennens-Holdsworth correspondence, which indicate that Jennens' instrument was not the first Cristofori pianoforte in England, Willoughby Bertie having bought a piano in 1727. Through the research of Brenda Sumner, and Ruth Smith's publication on Charles Jennens, we now know a little more of his instrument. It may be possible to explain why Charles Burney was unaware of it in his summary of the early pianoforte in England. We further gain an insight into the activity of the Cristofori workshop in the last years of the inventor's life and during the transition at Cristofori's death in January 1732 when his assistant Giovanni Ferrini continued the piano building. Some of the details of Jennens' purchase also indicate how Gottfried Silbermann might have been able to acquire knowledge of the Cristofori action, which he then incorporated with success in his own pianos.

Proceedings of the first ArCo Conference Art Collections 2020 Design and Museum Design, Digital Heritage, Historical Research, Posters, 2021

Throughout this research, we would like to focus on the Emilio and Annabianca Vedova Foundation in Venice. The Foundation's Museum was opened to the public in 2009 and dedicated exclusively to the work of the Venetian artist. It is situated in the suggestive headquarters of the Salt Warehouses, one of which was saved from destruction and used as a studio by Vedova in the last part of his career. The restoration of this medieval space and its new destination as a museum was entrusted by the painter himself to his long-year friend architect Renzo Piano. They knew each other from 1983 when they cooperated to realize the scenography for Luigi Nono's opera Prometeo. The Genoese had already a vast experience of creator and builder of monographic museums at the time of Vedova's commission. He then began to realize an atypical project, where the protagonist is a mechanical device with the task of extracting from a cage-deposit the painter's works and bring them to the visitor's attention along the gallery of the former warehouse. After a short introduction to Emilio Vedova's art, it will be important to discuss his friendship with the architect. This is extremely useful to understand the relationship that Piano had with the artist's legacy and how he transferred his interpretation to the building. Subsequently, I will focus on the device itself, which is not unique in the architect's career. Furtherly, it is possible to find in the project another important characteristic that is common to other Piano's museums: the Treasure House. In conclusion, I will try to find analogies and differences between the Vedova Foundation and the previous monographic museums, trying to outline, if possible, a common approach used by the RPBW to the critical problem of designing a building devoted to a single artistic legacy.

Journal of the American Musical Instrument Society, 2015

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