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A note on history: Key developments
of keyboard instruments

> The history of the piano

Caroline Ho
Arts Editor

 

he piano probably seems like one

of the most basic and ubiquitous
instruments out there. Pressing keys
down is pretty simple—a lot easier
than, say, shaping your mouth in just
the right way to make sounds into a
trombone. But open up any acoustic
piano, and you'll see an intricate
mechanism of wires and hammers. It
took plenty of innovation and centuries of
improvements to get to the modern piano.

Keyboard instruments have been
around for most of history, and pipe
organs have existed since Ancient
Greek times over 2,000 years ago. The
first keyboard stringed instrument
resembling a piano was the dulcimer,
which was made of strings stretched
over a board that were struck with
hammers, invented sometime in the
Middle Ages. Other similar string
instruments were the virginal, spinet,
and clavichord. The most direct ancestor
of the piano was the harpsichord,
which had strings that were plucked by
quills when the player pressed a key.

The main problem with the
harpsichord was that it wasn’t capable of
dynamics—it could only produce sound
at one volume. In about 1700, an Italian
harpsichord maker named Bartolomeo
Cristofori created an instrument that
used hammers to hit strings without

 

remaining in contact with them, allowing
the string to vibrate. This let the player
of the instrument produce music at
different volumes depending on how
hard the key was pressed. Cristofori
called his instrument the “gravicembalo
col piano e forte” (keyboard instrument
with soft and loud)—which got shortened
to pianoforte (soft and loud), and
eventually became known as the piano.
This new instrument didn’t replace
the harpsichord immediately, but it
began to attract notice when a journalist
wrote an article about the invention in
1711. Other instrument builders soon
made their own versions of the piano
based on Cristofori’s design, including
Gottfried Silbermann, who implemented
the first version of the sustain pedal. In
the 1740s, famous Baroque composer J.S.
Bach endorsed the instrument, which

Stretched to the limit

> ‘Speak Out’ board game review

Ed Appleby
llustrator

 

W: all like to indulge our childhood
now and again. There is

nothing that pushes that button like
doing something funny and gross.

Speak Out (2016) is a party game
published by Hasbro. In the game
players put plastic devices in their
mouths that stretch their lips tightand
keep their mouths open as they try to
say phases on cards that other players
try to identify, in sort of a charades style.
Players score points by guessing right.

This game is the equivalent of the
kids joke of hooking the sides of your
mouth with your fingers and trying
to say “born on a pirate ship.” The
mouth pieces are not painful, but are
far from the most comfortable thing,
and saliva will be getting everywhere.

You may never look at your friends
the same way again—apparently I
look like Jack Nicholson trying to
smile while playing the game.

That said, the game is fun. It
becomes a testament of skill and
frustrations as you attempt to
pronounce ‘b’ and ‘p’ without the
use of your lips. We discovered that
some players had a bit of an advantage
depending on how strong their lips and
tongue were, and a huge advantage if
they had any ventriloquism training.

The game suffers from a few
pitfalls associated with a lot of
skill or trivia games, in that some
players may start at a distinct
advantage based on their skill sets.

I would recommend Speak Out as
a casual party game, especially if there
has been a little drinking involved. Just
make sure whoever owns the game is
diligent about washing the mouthpieces.

Image via Wikimedia

significantly boosted its popularity,
especially because Bach had supposedly
disapproved of the instrument when he
first encountered the piano in 1736.
From there piano manufacturing
grew rapidly in the following decades.
The industry was focused in England
and Vienna, the latter of which was a
huge centre of classical music and the
home of composers like Mozart and
Beethoven. Pianos became larger and
louder, capable of producing sounds
that were increasingly dynamic and
were able to play repeated notes rapidly,
which changed the kind of music that
composers could write. One major
innovation was the full iron frame that
was first created in 1825, an improvement
on the prior wooden frames reinforced
with iron. This allowed for greater
tension in the strings, so an even more

  

powerful sound could be produced.
The range of the piano was extended
to its modern eight octaves in 1842.

Piano makers experimented with
a lot of different designs and shapes.
The first grand piano was created in
1859 by Steinway & Sons, which is still
one of the largest piano manufacturers
in the world today. For the more casual
musician, square pianos—which
are blockier than upright pianos—
were quite popular in the 1800s, but
gradually they began to be replaced by
the smaller, lighter upright version.

In the second half of the 19th
century, assembly-line manufacturing
in the US began to dominate a lot of
industries, and instrument-making was
no exception. Mechanized production
led to pianos with standardized
parts and sounds, and they became
increasingly cheap to produce, which
made them affordable to own. By the
early 20th century, the upright piano
was basically a staple in middle-class
households, and learning to play became
practically a societal expectation.

The piano itself hasn’t changed much
in shape or design since the late 1800s,
but it’s still a hugely popular instrument.
Of course now there are electric pianos
and digital keyboards that don’t have any
strings and hammers at all, but instead
are capable of creating a range of digital
sounds and effects. Versatile as they are,
pianos have become an essential part
of so many styles and genres, and their
evolution has been quite dynamic.

Illustrator by Ed Appleby