Bartolommeo Cristofori and the first hundred years of the pianoforte.

The exact date of this episode is unknown. We've filled in the date above with a placeholder. What we actually have on record is: 1952-03-03 [?].

THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF A RT
BARTOLOMMEO CRISTOFORI AND THE FIRST HUNDRED YEARS OF THE PIANOFORTE
MIECZYSLAW HORSZOWSKI, pianist
MARCH 3, 5, AND 10, 1952
AT 8:30 P.M. IN THE LECTURE HALL
Concerts for Members
TENTH YEAR

The concert will be preceded by a demonstration of the pianoforte b u i l t by its inventor, Bartolommeo Cristofori, in 1721 in Florence and of a seventeenth-century Italian harpsichord.

PROGRAM
I
Sonata no . 4, in E minor ,from the LODOVICO GIUSTINI DI PISTOIA detto volgarmente di martelletti ( published in Florence in 1732)
Preludio (largo)
Presto
Sarabanda (largo)
Giga (allegro)
Performed on the pianoforte built by Bartolommeo Cristofori in 1721.
Sonate da cimbalo di piano e forte (early XVIII century)
II
Sonata in D major, K . V . 311 WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
(composed in 1777 in Mannheim)
Allegro con spirito
Andante con espressione
Rondo (allegro)
(1756-1791)
INTERMISSION
III
Andante in F minor
(composed in 1795 in Vienna)
FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN
(1732-1809)
IV
Sonata in C major,opus 53
Dedicated to Count von Waldstein
(composedin1804inVienna)
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
(1770-1827)
Allegro con brio
Introduzione (adagio molto)"" R o n d o (allegretto
moderato-prestissimo)

PROGRAM NOTES
The Cristofori Piano
AMONG THE NEARLY four thousand musical instruments belonging to the Metropolitan Museum is the "gravecembalo col piano e forte" built in 1721 b y the inventor of the pianoforte, Bartolommeo Cristofori, in Florence. As this is the earliest pianoforte in existence, it seems appropriate to organize a concert program around this venerable instrument.
The idea of a keyboard instrument with hammer mechanism was in the air, so to speak, in the early years of the eighteenth-century. An instrument was needed on which the loudness of sound could be modified by finger pressure and would not be restricted to the terrace dynamics of the harpsichord and the organ, both of which could switch from one dynamic level to another only in gears, as it were, when stops were pulled to bring more or fewer sets of strings or pipes into play. Three countries "" France, Germany, and Italy ""competed for the glory of the invention. T h e instruments invented by Marius, Schroter, and Cristofori were only a few years apart, but today we know that Marius's and Schroter's instruments were made later than the Italian invention, though probably independently of it. Moreover, as we can see from their diagrams, they were incomparably more primitive. Bartolommeo Cristofori, a Paduan harpsichord maker, was called to Florence about 1690 by the Grand Duke Ferdinando of Tuscany "" himself a skilled player of various stringed and wind instruments "" to serve as instrument maker and as curator of the Medici collection of musical instruments, which since then, alas, has disappeared with hardly a trace. Soon afterwards he must have begun to speculate on the idea of a hammer mechanism, which later, as the pianoforte, conquered the musical world as hardly any instrument had done before in the Occident. It seems the stimulus had come from the famous performance of concerti grossi under Corelli in Rome, organized by Cardinal Ottoboni, which created a sensation by their dynamic effects, that is, by the crescendos and decrescendos performed by the string ensemble. There is evidence that by 1711 Cristofori had constructed at least four instruments with hammer action that could imitate these effects. He had the good fortune to find a learned patron, Marchese Scipione Maffei, the celebrated author of the tragedy Merope, who was deeply interested in the new instrument. In the 1711 issue of the famous Giornale del letterati d'ltalia Maffei announced this new invention in enthusiastic terms and published a diagram of its action. The diagram is a little awkward, and it appears that it was not entirely understood by the engraver. At any rate, it shows a more primitive, that is, not quite finished stage of the invention. For instance, silk threads are used instead of the catchers for the relapsing hammers, etc. The idea evidently was still fermenting in 1711.

Important testimony as to the motive for the invention is Maffei's reference to the gradual dynamic changes as executed in the great concerti di Roma and to the fact that the new gravicembalo could do piano e forte through variations in the degree of force w i t h which the keys were depressed. Gravicembalo, by the way, is only another and quite frequently used name for clavicembalo (harpsichord). Cristofori's pianoforte, in fact, still resembled the clavicembalo in many respects, shape, sound- Drawing of the Cristofori action with the key at rest position. A, intermediate lever; B, wrest-block bridge; C, jackrail which prevents the jacks with the dampers from jumping out; D, guidepost to keep the keys steady. board, keyboard, strings. However, the jack and quill action of the harpsichord was replaced by a hammer mechanism. The harpsichord jacks remain, but they are now used only for carrying the felts of the dampers. A comparison between the Cristofori pianoforte on the stage and the Italian harpsichord at its left will show the similarity.
The instrument has four octaves and a fourth, the same thin strings as the harpsichord but two strings to each key. There are no pedals. The two ivory knobs left and right of the keyboard only help to withdraw the instrument proper from its outer case.
After all is said, Cristofori not only fulfilled an aesthetic demand of his time but, what is much rarer in the history of musical and perhaps of any inventions, he created a complex and perfect tool for an existing need. One thing then remains a puzzle: that Cristofori's invention had little success in Italy and no immediate followers there. For it was in Germany, not in Italy, that the idea of the hammer action was taken up, first, it seems, by Gottfried Silbermann, J. S. Bach's friend, who must have known the diagram in the Giornale dei letterati d'ltalia from reprints in German publications. But the subsequent production of pianofortes in Germany was along rather primitive lines: small instruments without an escapement which could compete with the clavichord in price. It was Johann Andreas Stein [ 4 ] in Augsburg who in 1773 again constructed a pianoforte with escapement and thus created the instrument which Mozart admired and favored above all (1)
Why didn't Cristofori's pianoforte have an immediate success in Italy? It was complicated and therefore expensive; moreover, though expressive it was not brilliant; rapid passages were likely to be blurred, and most of the Italian keyboard compositions of the time with their rapid passages and their vivid, witty, refulgent little motives "" in short the stile galante "" demanded the proper instrument for sparkling virtuoso technique and obviously had little use for an instrument that, like the new pianoforte, spoke in a tender, languid voice, anticipating by almost a generation the "empfindsame Stil" of C. P. E. Bach.(2)

Lodovico Giustini di Pistoia:
Sonata no. 4 in E minor
Lodovico Giustini lived in Pistoia, just a few miles from Florence, where Cristofori worked. His twelve sonatas are the first known compositions written for the pianoforte. They were published just eleven years after Cristofori built the instrument now in the Museum's collection. The title of the work reads Sonate da cimbalo di piano e forte detto volgarmente di martelletti (Sonatas for harpsichord with piano and forte, commonly called harpsichord with hammers). T h e r e are generally used two dynamic marks, forte and piano, and occasionally più piano, clearly indicating diminution of volume by degrees. T h e sonata performed today, especially its introductory largo, abounds in dynamic marks resulting in echo effects. T h e last movement, however, the giga, ends with the systematically planned forte, piano, più piano, and at the end forte again. These sonatas are typical sonate da camera and contain the customary dance movements of the time and slow introductions. Interesting, however, in connection with the expressive capacity of the pianoforte are the numerous expression marks such as affettuoso, grave e affettuoso, and dolce.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart:
Sonata in D major, K. V. 311
T h i s work, composed in 1777, is one of Mozart's earlier sonatas, experimental in form and, like most of his instrumental works, imaginatively fitted to the possibilities and limitations of the instrument. There is a wealth of expression marks with quick change between f and p, often bar by bar, and even fp marks, unthinkable in harpsichord idiom. Particularly revealing for the evolution of pianoforte style is the second movement, marked andante con espressione. Here legato and staccato are indicated with the greatest care, short phrases are repeated, alternati n g between f and p, all devices which clearly e x p l o i t the possibilities of the pianoforte and which could not be executed on the harpsichord, at least not without tricks which would have been entirely foreign to the harpsichord style customary in Mozart's early years(3). Of the greatest interest in the evolution of pianoforte style is the coda of the andante. Here the main theme which, throughout the whole movement, had always appeared in piano, comes again in piano, but then it is repeated with a crescendo beginning, soon g o i n g into a forte. This repeat brings the melody in octaves, and the basses are shifted to the lower octave, which is precisely the type of reinforcement that the harpsichord could have produced by pulling a stop and bringing into play a second set of strings. Thus we have in this little passage a transitional phenomenon. Through the finger technique of the piano player Mozart tried to achieve what on the harpsichord was traditionally done through a mechanical change of registration.

(1)One of Stein's pianofortes "" a Pedalfiügel with a pedal of one octave and a fifth operating by extra hammers from beneath on the bass strings "" is shown outside the Lecture Hall, together with an early German primitive square piano and several models of early hammer actions.

(2) Of. C. P. E. Bach's six sets of keyboard compositions fur Kenner und Liebhaber (for connoisseurs and men of taste), 1779-1787, all except the first are written expressly for the "Forte-Piano."

(3) True enough, the late harpsichord, when it tried to compete with the onslaught of the pianoforte around 1800, developed a device for gradual crescendos, a shutter in the form a Venetian blind, placed on top of the soundboard, which opened and closed gradually and was operated by a foot pedal.



Franz Joseph Haydn:
Andante in F minor

This is one of the late and most important keyboard compositions of Haydn, written in his sixty-first year, 1793, when Mozart was dead and Beethoven had already arrived in Vienna. This piece, which is commonly called "Andante con variazioni " is not the usual "theme with variations." Haydn in the autograph simply calls it "Andante." The "theme" is of gigantic length (forty-nine bars) and consists of two emotionally contrasting main sections, the first in minor, the second in major: each of these divided again into two parts, both to be repeated, thus resulting in the following architecture:

F minor F major

|: 12 bars:||: 17 bars:||: 10 bars:||: 10 bars:|

This long theme, or rather double theme, is followed by two variations and then by a return of the minor section of the theme and a coda of symphonic proportions.

I n this work perhaps more than in any of Haydn's preceding keyboard compositions, the possibilities of the pianoforte are exploited to an unprecedented degree. T h e r e is a well planned change in texture from thin to compact writing, there are various degrees of legato and staccato and elements of virtuoso technique, such as chains of trills, crossing of hands, and "" in the coda "" r a p id runs for the right hand. And while all this would be feasible on the harpsichord, the new pianoforte style is apparent in the expressive cantabile lines and above all in the dynamic organization of the piece. Dynamic marks are added with minute care, including fz, which would make no sense on the harpsichord, ten(uto), and, in the second bar of the autograph, cresc(endo). In short, we have reached the pianistic level of the early sonatas by Beethoven.


The following illustration shows three bars from the coda in the typical thin and shaky hand of the aging master. T h e compact chords for the left hand were not heavy nor blurred on the early piano with its thin strings and should be played on the powerful modern concert piano only with a knowledge of the tonal limitations of the early instruments.

Ludwig van Beethoven:
Sonata in C major, opus 53,
the "Waldsteinsonata"

Beethoven's " Waldsteinsonata," written in 1804, only nine years after Haydn's " A n d a n t e " a n d just one century after Cristofori's invention of the pianoforte, marks the beginning of a new era of keyboard style, of virtuoso technique, and of instrumental sound. Beethoven like Mozart was a piano virtuoso, and even his earlier sonatas demand a high degree of pianistic skill. But it is this sonata which represents a decisive step within Beethoven's new piano style and set into motion the revolution, a half-deaf man's revolution, by which a region entirely unknown until then ""new emotionally and technically""was added to the realm of keyboard music. True enough, Beethoven's Viennese and English pianos had more sonority and percussive power than those of Haydn and Mozart; yet they were still incomparably thinner in sound than our modern "concert grand," and Beethoven's new piano style transcended their possibilities. Here the artistic ideal was far ahead of the tool, and this perhaps poses a probl em for the modern performer. A performance of Haydn's or Mozart's piano compositions on our modern pianos requires acquaintance with the old instruments, not only because of the purist ideal of the "authentic" performance, but, more important still, because only if their instruments are understood can their music sound well. It is different with Beethoven: the modern performer can safely disregard the limitations of the old instruments and "let go." He can safely consider Beethoven as a man of prophetic vision so far ahead of the sound ideal of his time that his works only gain if the full sonorities of the modern pianoforte are exploited in full.

If one wants a sketchy summary of the new pianistic achievements in the "Waldsteinsonata"""today they are all commonplace""here they are:
[ 7 ]
VIRTUOSO TECHNIQUE
(not for showmanship but in the interest of the architecture of the work)
1. Passages in octaves a n d sometimes broken octaves for one hand.
2. Massive chords in ff and sf alternating in high and low register.
3. T h e combination of several strata, each of different texture and sound effect. T o mention one example: a passage near the end of the rondo is made up of three superimposed strata: the melody in the right hand; a long trill in the middle, also in the right hand; and beneath, in the left hand, rapid scales rushing up and down.
DYNAMICS
The dynamic range in Beethoven's works has greatly expanded, together with their symphonic proportions. This is true also of the later piano sonatas, among which again the "Waldsteinsonata" is the pioneer. These monumental forms are made of blocks, not of pebbles. I n terms of dynamics this means larger spans and stronger contrasts. The ff sections, such as the one that prepares for the recapitulation in the first movement, are of a length unheard of before. Accordingly the dynamic marks have increased in number and gradation: P, PP, PPP, crescendo, decrescendo are now routine, likewise the < > symbols, which were only rarely used by Haydn and b y Mozart. Characteristic are effects like a crescendo followed by a n unexpected p or pp; sf leading over a < to a p.
PEDAL TECHNIQUE
Mozart had left the use of pedal (lifting the dampers) to the player's discretion. Haydn i n his late sonatas occasionally used certain pedal effects. Beethoven begins to indicate the pedal with minute care, always marking its beginning and end. A n d here is, perhaps, the only point where the consideration of the o ld instrument is helpful to the modern performer of Beethoven's p i a n o music: the composer's marks frequently require that the dampers be lifted for long spans: for instance, for eight and even ten bars in the rondo, though these spans repeatedly change from the tonic to the dominant and back. While this resulted in only mild blurring on the old and relatively weak piano, it would be unbearable on a modern instrument. Needless to say, this new piano style is not employed for brilliance but to carry the monumental architecture of musical form.

EMANUEL WINTERNITZ

Copyright 1952 by T h e Metropolitan Museum of Art
On the cover: a portrait of Franz Joseph Haydn, from an English engraving.

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