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Google again chose to enrich our knowledge on Monday with its doodle on the origin of the piano. Created by doodler Leon Hong, the doodle celebrates the 360th birthday of Bartolomeo Cristofori, credited with inventing the musical instrument. He was born on May 4, 1655 in Padua, then the Republic of Venice.
He later moved to Florence, believed to be employed by Prince Ferdinando de Medici as the keeper of instruments. He was also an inventor, having worked on two keyboard instruments before giving birth to his greatest invention, the piano.
What made the piano different from harpsichords and clavichords was the hammer mechanism that struck the strings on a keyboard to create sounds. The predecessors of the piano lacked this mechanism.
Since the strings are plucked in a harpsichord, the notes played cannot be made softer or louder. This made it difficult to control the volume of the sounds created. Cristofori solved this problem by using the hammer that controlled the volume depending upon how hard a player hit the keys. So the new invention combined the loudness of the harpsichord and the dynamic sounds of the clavichord.
He called his invention ‘gravecembalo col piano e forte’, which can literally be translated to ‘a clavichord that plays soft and loud’. Then a pianoforte, the name was later shortened to piano.
His invention, which did not gain much popularity during his lifetime, as many found it difficult to play, is now known as the king of musical instruments.
Three of Cristofori’s original pianos survive to this day and are on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Google Cultural Institute or at the museum in New York City, at the Museo Strumenti Musicali in Rome, and at the Musikinstrumenten-Museum of Leipzig University in Germany.
