pianoforte

[John Musselwhite]

At 09:00 AM 6/20/01 -0700, Del wrote:

>My question is--why (and when) did the name get shortened to piano? Why 
>not forte?

Why not indeed? It seems to be a common complaint that many new pianos with 
their rock-hard hammers only play forte anyway.

Perhaps once the instrument had evolved to develop some decent power and 
durability students began to bang on them just as they still do today. Back 
then teachers (and parents) might have been saying to students "play PIANO 
not forte!" and the diminutive stuck.

>And why are instruments built after the designs of the 18th and early 19th 
>century builders called fortepianos and not pianofortes?

Well, with the earlier instruments you played quietly and delicately most 
of the time, but really loudly if you needed to so they referred to it 
(translated from the traditional Italian) as a "soft-loud". With the advent 
of even more robust instruments and the newer music written for it you 
could play really loud most of the time but hopefully still play quietly 
when you needed to. Perhaps back then teachers were urging their students 
to play louder so it was more of a "loud-soft" or fortepiano.

The high-volume novelty eventually wore off as improvements were made to 
the instrument and at the dawn of the 20th century teachers were once again 
telling their students not to bang on it by saying: "Piano... play piano!".

What do you think?

                 John

John Musselwhite, RPT    -     Calgary, Alberta Canada
http://www.musselwhite.com  http://canadianpianopage.com/calgary
mailto: john@musselwhite.com    http://www.mp3.com/fatbottom