PIANOFORTE, a stringed musical instru ment commonly known as a "piano,* and essen tially consists of a series of stretched, graded and tuned wires which are struck by felt-cov ered hammers by the operation of keys con veniently arranged in a keyboard. The term, "pianoforte," which is the original term desig nating the instrument, is derived from the Ital ian "piano," soft + "forte," loud; while the term °piano," usually designated by p., is a sign used in music to denote softness, that is, the strain where the indication occurs is to be played with less than the average intensity. Similarly, pp., or ppp., abbreviations for "pianis simo," signify very soft.
The pianoforte is probably the most exten sively used of all musical instruments. It was evolved directly from the clavichord and harp sichord, which were undoubtedly elaborations of the monochord or pitch-carrier with one string, although even the approximate date or the name of the inventor who first put keys to a mono chord and called it a clavicordium is quite un known. Virdung, in his (Musica Getutscht,' published in 1511, states his inability to ascer tain those facts, although it is well known that Pythagoras, in the 6th century B.C., measured a vibrating string stretched between raised bridges on a resonance box, and by shifting those bridges he accurately determined the in tervals of the Greek diatonic scale. It is sup posed that Pythagoras obtained the mono chord embodying the principle of the stopped string upon a finger-board from Egypt, where it had been known for ages before his time. After Pythagoras, the monochord became, in Greece and Europe, the canon or rule for the measurement of musical sound intervals, and continued to be so employed up to the 11th cen tury, A.D., when it was transformed into a poly chord of four strings, to facilitate the melodic division of the Gregorian tones — the Plain Song of the Church as used in the Ritual, and were known under a great variety of names such as clavichord, clavicordium, spinet, vir ginal and regal.
The early clavichords had a compass of four octaves. The natural keys were made of citron wood and the sharps of ebony. The damper was a narrow band of felt attached with glue to the hitch-pin block, opposite to the wrest-pin block, and the bridge was curved. As they were strung with wires in equal lengths, they were for a long time regarded as sets of mono chords, the scaling being effected by the line of the tangents attached to the keys on the lef t hand side of the player, while the three or more sounding-board bridges rested upon the narrow belly on the right. Owing to the length of the scale the longer instruments were not capable of being tuned higher, giving them a weak hut delicate tone which responded to the gradations of the player's touch. The tangents were up right blades of brass fastened into the keys and beaten out at the top so as to touch equally the one string or the two or three unison strings forming a note. The tangents thus constituted a series of bridges or sound exciters, and each of the little groups of strings thus formed was acted upon by two or sometimes three or four tangents to obtain as many notes. The damp
ing was contrived with a cloth interwoven among the strings behind the line of tangents. This cloth instantly dampened the vibration of the strings when the finger released the key and the tangent quit the string.
Clavichords with pedals are mentioned by Virdung and Reynvaan, and are also particu larly described by Adlung, indicating that some of the instruments had two octaves and a note of pedals attached to a separate clavichord pedalier and "fretted," there being three strings in the lower and four in the upper range for each pedal note. The terms virginal or spinet generally indicate one and the same instrument without regard to form of construction, but practically limited to a plectrum (jack) clavier with one string only to each note (see Fig. 1). Its earliest recorded name is the clavicymbo lum, occurring in the rules of the Minnesingers under the date of 1404. It is the Latin for psaltery, an instrument of the dulcimer kind, to which a keyboard was added and suggests an ecclesiastical or monastic origin. Virginal was the English name of the spinet, and was so called probably on account of its appropriate ness for girls as compared with the contempo rary lute which was a more difficult and manly instrument, rather than the assumption that Queen Elizabeth was a skilful performer on it, especially as the name was current in the reign of her grandfather, Henry VII. According to Scaliger, who wrote in the .latter part of the 15th century, the name spinet is derived from the little quill point or plectrum, as an improve ment upon the instruments previously known as monochordum and harpsichordium, a keyboard psaltery of harp shape. On the other hand, the Italian expert, Signor Ponsicchi, attributes it to a Venetian maker, who signed and dated an in strument of this kind Spinetus, Vene tus Fecit ; A.D. 1503, The virginal that is asso sociated with Queen Elizabeth is now in the South Kensington Museum, London, and may be described as an Italian pentagonal spinet (see Fig. 2). Italian spinets were made of cy press wood, and as the utmost vibration was sought for by the makers, both case and belly were constructed of that material. They con sisted of two cases — the inner rough, but pos sessing a free and satisfying quality of tone, while the outer received great care in work manship and was often beautifully decorated. The pentagonal or heptagonal spinets had false cases like the clavicumboli or harpsichords, from which they could be removed when re quired for performance, while the oblong Ital ian makes were inseparable from the outer case like the modern pianos. Until the 17th century, the keyboard was usually an external addition to the case, when Rosso, a Milanese maker, set it back into the body of the instru ment, a recessing which was generally copied afterward (see Fig. 3).