Piano (instrument)

What it means

The piano is a keyboard instrument in which hammers strike stretched strings. When a key is pressed down, the damper lifts, the hammer is accelerated, hits the strings, and falls back at once so that they vibrate freely; when released, the damper falls back onto the strings. Decisive is that the volume depends on the speed of the attack — hence the original name pianoforte. The instrument is built as a grand with horizontal stringing and as an upright with vertical stringing; both have pedals, the most important of which lifts all the dampers.

Musical use

Since the late eighteenth century the piano has been the most versatile instrument of European music: a solo instrument with an enormous repertoire, a partner in song and chamber music, an accompanying and rehearsal instrument, a tool for composition and teaching. It can represent melody, bass, and inner voices at once and covers a tonal space of more than seven octaves. Its limit lies where a note is to be sustained: after the attack it decays, and neither volume nor colour can be changed afterward. Much of what makes good piano music follows from this property — reckoning with the decay and shaping through time and pedal.

Other names

Pianoforte is the full name of the instrument, which refers to the possibility of playing soft and loud through the touch. It is used especially for historical instruments of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the present-day usual Klavier (piano) for the modern instrument.

Performance practice

Watch the sitting height and the distance to the instrument so that the arms stay free; tension almost always arises from posture. Work on the evenness of the touch before you think about speed, and practise slowly with a clear conception of sound. Change the right pedal by ear at changes of harmony, not by the beat. Practise difficult passages separately by hand and in small sections. Have the instrument tuned at least once a year, keep room temperature and humidity even, and close the lid against dust.

Bear in mind that the sound depends on the room and the instrument and your shaping must follow accordingly: in dry acoustics it needs more connection, in reverberant rooms more separation and less pedal. Check the effect as far as possible from the hall. For polyphonic textures it is worthwhile to practise voices individually and then deliberately make one of them audible. In chamber music the lid position is a means of balance. Have the action and voicing checked regularly, because uneven notes hinder the shaping more than lack of practice.