The Eighteenth-Century Fortepiano Grand and Its Patrons

From Scarlatti to Beethoven

Eva Badura-Skoda

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780253022646
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

"Badura-Skoda addresses the place of the piano in the eighteenth century from the perspective of a scholar and performer" ( Eighteenth-Century Music ). In the late seventeenth century, Italian musician and inventor Bartolomeo Cristofori developed a new musical instrument—his cembalo che fa il piano e forte, which allowed keyboard players flexible dynamic gradation. This innovation, which came to be known as the hammer-harpsichord or fortepiano grand, was slow to catch on in musical circles. However, as renowned piano historian Eva Badura-Skoda demonstrates, the instrument inspired new keyboard techniques and performance practices and was eagerly adopted by virtuosos of the age, including Scarlatti, J. S. Bach, Clementi, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Presenting a rich array of archival evidence, Badura-Skoda traces the construction and use of the fortepiano grand across the musical cultures of eighteenth-century Europe, providing a valuable resource for music historians, organologists, and performers. "Badura-Skoda has written a remarkable volume, the result of a lifetime of scholarly research and investigation.... Essential." — Choice

1

Bartolomeo Cristofori

DURING THE RENAISSANCE and Baroque periods it clearly had been a great desire among European musicians and instrument makers to invent a stringed keyboard instrument with a louder tone than a clavichord and capable of dynamic flexibility comparable to the human voice or a violin. In the fifteenth century, Henri Arnaut of Zwolle (in his treatise from 1440) had designed and described a clavisimbalum, and one of his designs shows a harpsichord mechanism that apparently was supposed to strike the strings with hammers rather than pluck them.¹ Thus, cum grano salis, it could be called a kind of forerunner of the piano; unfortunately, no such instrument has been preserved. Perhaps it was never built or used. During the next two centuries there were other attempts to tackle the abiding problem of how to construct a harpsichord capable of dynamic shadings or how to get a clavichord to become a louder instrument. Many sixteenth- and seventeenth-century attempts are known that might have been temporally considered useful, but only toward the very end of the seventeenth century was this desire finally realized. An invention by Bartolomeo Cristofori of a new arpicimbalo che fa il piano, e il forte (a wing-shaped cembalo that can make [allows] soft and loud) was described in an inventory dated 1700 and listed as belonging to the collection of musical instruments of Prince Ferdinando de’ Medici.² In principle it was already the successful hammer mechanism allowing dynamic changes: the cembalo con martelli, or harpsichord with hammers, in its first stage. The actual date of the invention of this action seems to have been the year 1697.³

A hundred years earlier, the organ and instrument builder Hippolito Cricca, alias Paliarino, wrote in 1598 several letters in Ferrara to his employer, the Duke of Modena,⁴ in which he mentioned not only an istromento piano e forte but also two combined instruments with different mechanisms to produce the tones. One of these interesting keyboard instruments was a combination of an organ with an istromento piano e forte, an innovative creation not otherwise known to us from that time; the other instrument was apparently a kind of harpsichord-piano. The relevant passage at the beginning of Cricca’s letter from the last day of December 1598 reads:

A.S.A.S.^ma Serenissimo Signor Mio.

L’Altezza vostra sappia che mi ritrovo del suo che io ricuperatto da’ questi Pretti l’horggano di cartà l’istromento piano e’ fortte co’ l’horggano disotto, un altro l’istromento di dua registri et il piano e fortte, quello che adoperava il ser.^mo S.^r Duca Alfonso buona memoria., et cosi li sonno andatj mantenento, et sonno benissimo al hordine cosi piacese a Dio.

Da Ferrara di Ultimo Decembre 1598

D.V.Altezza Ser^.ma Ubidientissimo Ser.^re

Hippolito Cricca ditto Paliarino.⁵

(To my most serene and most respected Patron, the most serene Duke of Modena

May Your Highness know that in light of your letter I have reclaimed from these priests the organ with paper pipes, the istromento with the organ below, [and] another instrument with two registers and the piano e’ forte, that which was used by the Most Serene Lord Duke Alfonso of good memory, and they have been well maintained and are very well in order: may it please God that all the others that were taken from me should be in the same state as these [ones], for they are [in] very bad [shape], and if Your Highness does not give some order will go from bad to worse. I also make known to Your Highness that the Chapel organ is never looked after by anyone, so that it, too, will come to harm, and in a short time some pipe of importance might be stolen; and because on my departure I claim to Your Most Serene Highness that I have always been good and most faithful to the Este line.

From Ferrara, the last day of December 1598

Most Obedient Servant of Your Serene Highness

Hippolito Cricca, called Paliarino)

Though all the known extant letters from Cricca to the Duke were first published by Valdrighi, the original text of this most interesting letter and also a translation into English is fortunately reproduced by Konstantin Restle⁶ and also in Stewart Pollens’s book The Early Pianoforte, from where the quotation above stems. The letter excerpt hints at the most interesting probability that one of Cricca’s two combined instruments was a combination of a quilled harpsichord with a piano e forte instrument as Pollens advocates: “The description of the second instrument is most intriguing, as it suggests that piane e’ fortte is an additional resource of a two-register harpsichord.”⁷

Did Cricca consider the piano e forte instrument indeed as an “additional resource?” If this was the case and if it was known to Cristofori and he shared this view, it might explain the mysterious name Cristofori later gave his cimbalo (he always wrote cimbalo instead of cembalo): “cimbalo con un solo registro.” Unfortunately, Cricca’s instruments are all lost and no other documents mentioning these instruments in more detail are known. Many questions regarding the early piano e forte built by Cricca come to our mind, and most intriguing is this one: How much did Cristofori know about Cricca and his instruments? We shall probably never know the answer, but Cricca’s surviving letter confirms what is known from other sources, namely, that combined keyboard instruments were built at the very beginning of the Baroque period, not only in the eighteenth but also in the seventeenth century. Cristofori may very well have heard of the existence of such instruments and of Cricca. Therefore, he might have called his first piano in 1700 cimbalo che fa il piano e il forte, though it is not certain that he ever saw an instrument of Cricca.

In the seventeenth century, other interesting keyboard instruments with dynamic gradation possibilities using tangents for striking the strings (Franciscus Bonafinis) or combined keyboard instruments (Michele Todini; see plate 1) were built, but apparently they had no lasting effects. An unfortunately incomplete description of the highly complicated Todini instrument, discussed first by Athanasius Kircher in 1650 in Rome, and a painting of it (plate 2) are the only surviving remembrances.

In his book Bartolomeo Cristofori und die Anfänge des Hammerklaviers, Restle discusses in detail the few known descriptions of early attempts at building such keyboard instruments from Arnaut de Zwolle to the Ferrarese instrumenti pian’ e forte mentioned above and the Todini combined instruments. Todini’s combination of four keyboard instruments is another example of apparently interesting but lost instruments of which we simply do not know enough. Following Restle’s footsteps, Stewart Pollens also reviewed all the little known predecessors of Cristofori’s harpsichord with hammers. In addition he discussed the interesting extant spinettino by Franciscus Bonafinis, which probably was turned into a tangent piano as early as 1632.⁸ Both authors discuss and analyze these predecessors of Cristofori in detail and evaluate their achievements. Prior to both books and unknown to Restle, a 1988 article by Hubert Henkel appeared in Leipzig, East Germany, with the title “Cristofori als Cembalobauer.” It was translated in 1992 into English by Howard Schott and appeared as “Bartolomeo Cristofori as Harpsichord Maker.”⁹ This study offers an especially detailed discussion of all Cristofori instruments kept in the Musikinstrumenten-Museum belonging to the University of Leipzig. This museum owns not only two Cristofori harpsichords with quills but also one with hammers and various spinets, and Henkel rendered an account of the unique mechanical and aesthetic achievements of Cristofori.¹⁰ Reading all the descriptions of these competent museum curators and restorers yields abundant information about Cristofori and his Italian “predecessors.” Anyone interested in piano construction in general and in Cristofori’s outstanding solution of mechanical problems in particular should study Restle, Pollens, and Henkel. Though it may turn out that one day more “forerunners” of Cristofori’s piano will be discovered, surely none will be found whose hammer action could compete with Cristofori’s ingenious sophisticated invention.

To sum up, in 1697 or 1698 Bartolomeo Cristofori may have invented his first promising mechanism for a harpsichord with hammers striking the strings, and he finished his very first piano one or two years later; it was described in the inventory of 1700 and listed as Medici property. A confirmation of this date 1700 is given by a marginal note from Federico Meccoli, a Florentine court musician (it was found in an edition of Gioseffo Zarlino’s book Istitutioni harmoniche:

Questi sono gl’andament che si possono adattare in su l’Arpi Cimbalo del piano e forte inventato da M.ro Bartolomeo Christofani Padovano, l’Anno 1700, Cimbalaro del Ser.mo Gran Principe Ferdinando di Toscana.¹¹

(These are the ways in which it is possible to play the Arpicimbalo del piano e forte, which was invented by the master Bartolomeo Christofani of Padua in 1700.)¹²

The text of the inventory of 1700 (plate 3) starts with the words:

Un Arpicimbalo di Bartolomeo Cristofori di nuova invenzione, che fa il piano, e il forte à due registri principali unisono.

(A newly invented harpsichord of Bartolomeo Cristofori that allows the piano and the forte [playing] with two registers [sic] strings of the same pitch.)

The scribe obviously did not understand the functioning of Cristofori’s new invention.

Probably only after continuous improvements, Cristofori’s mechanism of a reliably working action proved itself eventually as being the solution of the century-old desire of instrument makers. Cristofori’s pianos of the 1720s eventually became the much-admired model for later successful instruments of this type. An odd disagreement among German writers in the nineteenth century as to whether the first successful invention of a piano e forte had been built in Italy or in Germany ended around 1850, and it was generally understood everywhere that it was doubtless Bartolomeo Cristofori who invented the first hammer action that served as a model for later mechanisms (and not the ambitious young German Christoph Gottlieb Schroeter after 1717).

Around 1900 nearly all twentieth-century musicians and many music historians took it for granted that a cembalo or harpsichord or clavecin had always been nothing else than a harpsichord with quills. Cristofori, however, considered his new instrument with hammers throughout his life simply as a special kind of cembalo. Regardless of whether it was a cimbalo con penne (quills) or a cimbalo con martelli (hammers), he always was convinced that it belonged to the “family of cimbalo instruments” and thus was a cimbalo. Many modern musicians and musicologists still fail to understand the eighteenth-century terminological practice of calling all wing-shaped keyboard instruments harpsichord or clavecin or cembalo (cimbalo) or Flügel (fliegl, flüge), terms that only referred to the wing-shape form of these string instruments regardless of whether their strings were plucked or struck by hammers or tangents. In chapter 2 we shall discuss in detail the terminological problem that started in Italy with the first naming of Cristofori’s nuovo cimbalo with a too-long string of words: che fa il piano e il forte.

Cristofori (Cristofani, Cristofali, Christofori) was baptized under the name Bartolommei Christofani on May 6, 1655, in the Church of St. Luke in Padua. It may be assumed that he was born the usual two days earlier and thus on May 4, in the parish district where he was baptized. Apart from this baptismal record in the relevant parish book, practically nothing is known about his childhood, his education, and the first decades of his professional life in Padua. Eventually he must have become known and highly regarded as a harpsichord builder (cembalaro), a good tuner (bonaccordaio), a mechanical inventor and probably also as a trained musician.¹³ How the Grand Prince of Tuscany, Ferdinando de’ Medici, became acquainted with Cristofori and learned to value his talents is also not known.

This Grand Prince Ferdinando (1663–1713) was a highly intelligent, well-educated, and enlightened personality who soon became famous as patron of the arts. He was not only interested in music but also active as a musician who apparently enjoyed playing the cembalo. He liked to cultivate friendships with artists and was keenly interested in collecting musical instruments, especially those with keyboards. The prince also loved opera, added a theater to his villa in Pratolino near Florence and engaged important opera composers and equally well-known singers to compose and perform operas and ballets there. All kinds of artisans, including inventors such as Cristofori, interested the prince. He was also a famous collector of paintings.

According to his first biographer, Leto Puliti, the prince needed another cembalaro after the death of the Florentine harpsichord maker Antonio Bolgioni in February of 1688.¹⁴ Bolgioni had been responsible for the tuning and maintenance work of keyboard instruments at the Medici court. Perhaps Prince Ferdinando became acquainted with Cristofori while traveling through Padua before or after the carnival in Venice in 1687 or 1688. The prince could of course have chosen any Florentine instrument maker and tuner as Bolgoni’s successor, but perhaps he had already heard of Cristofori’s experiments to construct the generally desired new kind of cimbalo che fa il piano e il forte, one with dynamic shading possibilities; and, when meeting him he might have been impressed by Cristofori’s musical, mental, and mechanical abilities. In any event, the prince persuaded the reluctant Cristofori to join the artisans in Florence, and Cristofori’s first salary was paid from the prince’s Guardaroba account in 1688.

A renowned literary figure, the Marchese Scipione Maffei, apparently soon became one of the Cristofori’s great admirers. He wrote an article about the new cembalo con martelli that was published in 1711 in the Giornale dei Letterati d’Italia and eventually was read in and outside of Italy. Extant notes ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Bartolomeo Cristofori
• 2. Giving Cristofori’s Nuovo Cimbalo a Name: Terminology Problems throughout the Eighteenth Century
• 3. Domenico Scarlatti
• 4. New Inventions in Germany, Pantalone Instruments, and Gottfried Silbermann
• 5. Johann Sebastian Bach and the “Piano et Forte”
• 6. Pianoforte Builders in Germany around 1750
• 7. The Generation of Bach’s Older Sons
• 8. From Alberti, Platti, and Rutini to Eckard and the Younger Sons of Bach
• 9. Developments in the Second Half of the Century: Johann Andreas Stein and Sébastien Erard
• 10. Joseph Haydn-Wenzel and Johann Schantz, Young Mozart and Nannette Stein
• 11. Anton Walter and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
• 12. From Broadwood, Merlin, and Clementi to Beethoven
• Epilogue
• Appendix: Scipione Maffei’s Article of 1711
• Selected Bibliography
• Index