May 2012

I am a professional pianist and a happy human being, and playing the piano is one of the main purposes in life. Perhaps my life would have taken a different path, if I didn’t have a piano in our living room at our house in Veracruz, Mexico where I was born. The earliest recollections of my life are intrinsically attached to a baby grand black piano, a Knabe. I started playing the piano at the age of 3, and I’m still doing it. As an interesting “coincidence”, when I started playing at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills back in October 2009, I told the General Manager that we needed a new piano as the old one there has seen better days, and it was not the proper instrument for a lovely, elegant Living Room where I was and still am performing. After spending a few hours in a piano store, I gave the management of the hotel two choices, a Yamaha and a Knabe, both great pianos with the right sound for my almost daily performances. The management chose the Knabe. It was during my first performance on that piano at the hotel that I realized it was the same size, color and brand of the first piano that I ever played in my life.

For me, the piano has an interesting history. It was invented around 1709 by a harpsichord maker and tuner in Florence, Italy by the name of Bartolomeo Cristofori. Perhaps the invention of the piano had a few unintended roads, some of them maybe a touch of luck. Ferdinando de Medici, The Grand Prince of Tuscany whose family had ruled Florence for centuries was the accidental Godfather of the piano. Yes, those powerful Medicis who produced Popes, banks, and an amazing amount of artwork commissioned from some of the greatest artists the world has ever seen such as Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and many more. Ferdinando took a trip, without his wife, to Venice to enjoy its famous Carnival. On the return home, he brought good and bad news to his family. The bad news was that he caught a venereal disease that eventually and probably killed him. The good news was that he had met Bartolomeo, and offered him a position to take care of his many musical instruments that he had in his palace, as he had just lost his tuner and harpsichord maker.

The main contribution to the beginning of the piano by Cristofori was the revolutionary idea of using hammers to strike the strings instead of quills as they were used in the harpsichords. My ideas about that after reading so much about pianos is that Cristofori was not trying to invent a new instrument, he probably was trying to improve the harpsichord. That original first piano was named by him, Gravicembalo col piano e forte. Other music historians have found the name of “Un cimbalo di cipresso di piano e forte,”a keyboard of cypress with piano and forte. Piano in Italian means soft and forte means loud.  Eventually, over the years the instrument was known as pianoforte, until the final shorter name, piano. The earlier Cristofori pianos had a range of only four octaves, half of the modern grand piano. In those days those early pianos had forty-nine notes as compared with the pianos of today which have eighty-eight. More keys in the lower range if you own a Bosendorfer. The fact that when one strikes a key on the harpsichord, the quills pluck the strings and the volume is consistent; it doesn’t change no matter how hard you strike it. On the pianoforte, because of the use of hammers to strike the keys, you could immediately modulate and play piano (soft) or forte (loud). It was the beginning of the end of popularity for the harpsichord and the beginning of the piano as the favorite instrument for composers, performers, and many families that made it the center of their social life. Cristofori only made about twenty pianos in his life time.

The modern concert grand piano that you see in a concert hall or like the one I have in my home has 88 keys and three pedals. The far right is called the sustain or forte or damper pedal. When you depress that pedal, it lifts the dampers away from the strings and therefore the vibrations of those strings will continue until we let go of it and the dampers return to its original position. The one in the far left is called the una corda (one string) or soft pedal. When you depress that pedal, it shifts the action sideways, so instead of the hammer hitting three strings in the middle and upper register, it strikes two. And in the lower register, instead of hitting two, it strikes one; therefore, you get a softer sound, hence the name “soft” pedal. I have played upright pianos where the soft pedal when depressed doesn’t shift the mechanism, but instead, brings the hammers closer to the strings, therefore producing a softer volume. 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pedal in the middle is called the sostenuto, which sustains only the keys that are (usually in the lower range) strike while depressing that pedal. I use it in some pieces by Rachmaninoff and Liszt. Your everyday pianist probably never uses it.

During the times of Mozart, the pedals were operated by using the pianist’s knees but that didn’t last long, and eventually they were moved so the feet would be in control. Those earlier pianos which were a far cry from ones of today were not embraced by the composers of that time. A couple of the pioneers of that new instrument were J.S. Bach’s children, Johann Christian and Carl Phillip Emmanuel. Mozart was the first star of the piano. Once he started concertizing and composing for the piano, he didn’t go back to the harpsichord. The piano went through many improvements and transformations for many years.  Johann Christoph Zumpe went to England and produced his famous square pianos that Johann C. Bach performed his first solo piano recital on. The English, German, Viennese and French piano makers developed different systems to improve the piano.  Andreas Stein of Germany produced a simpler piano that was played many times by Mozart. John Broadwood, a piano maker from England, made a piano that Beethoven loved; it had a stronger case and strings that helped increase the volume. He added one octave to his piano, giving the piano a wider range. Sometimes during a performance by Beethoven, he would have a friend sit next to him to help remove the broken strings and push down the hammers that would become entangled, due to his powerful playing which perhaps enhanced the rapid loss of hearing that he suffered for most of his life. Sebastian Erard, a French piano maker, made some great improvements on the piano. He perfected the mechanism that allowed the notes to be played faster and more polished, improved on the soft pedal, and used iron braces to make the frame stronger and the strings capable of sustaining greater tension. Some historians gave credit to Jonas Chickering, an American, for using the first iron frame in a grand piano. Chopin loved to play on a Pleyel, a French piano built by his friend and by whom the piano was named after. He described in a letter to a friend, “. . . silvery and slightly veiled sonority and lightness of touch.”  Steinway became a powerful force in the making and selling of pianos. They introduced a cross-stringing method that helped economize space without reducing volume, used a cast-iron plate, and improved action. Their attention to detail and perfection became a trademark adored by pianists worldwide. There is a painting of Franz Liszt playing on a piano built by Ludwig Bosendorfer which helped create the mystique and fame of that wonderful piano that I personally love to play. Another piano that I love is the Italian Fazioli, a newer piano on the market. I recorded my classical CD on a wonderful concert grand Fazioli, and I loved the action, the warm tones, and the strength of the lower register which helps me to “sing” some passages that called for it. Fazioli manufactures the longest piano in the world available on the market; it is a concert grand 10 Ft. 2 in.

In future blogs, I’ll write more about more interesting facts about this amazing instrument. I consider myself very fortunate that I can make a living doing what I’m most passionate about and that is to play the piano for people. I think that the purest expression of my ideas and who I am as a human being can be described through my playing and my love for music. If I can touch one heart or caress someone’s soul with my playing, then I feel that my life is not a waste. One of my goals, if not the main goal of my life, is to bring a sense of peace, harmony, joy and hopefully open a window into the world of beauty that I know beautiful music has to offer us. I play almost every day just for me on my beloved piano in my living room, and I wish I could describe the joy that it brings to my heart. I can’t find the words to explain that feeling. It’s just me, my piano, and the music that I love. I am the only audience, and I love every second of it.

George Bernard Shaw wrote: “The pianoforte is the most perfect of all musical instruments, its invention was to music what the invention of printing was to poetry.” Amen.

I welcome your comments.

Antonio Castillo de la Gala

www.antoniocastillodelagala.com