Year of our Lord 1700: the craftsman Bartolomeo Cristofori creates, in his Florentine workshop, the first “gravicembalo col piano e col forte”. Compared to the traditional harpsichord, the main innovation was the possibility of influencing the quality of the sound through touch, as the name of the instrument itself suggests: it varied, in fact, depending on the way and speed with which the hammer struck the string. It could therefore be “forte” or “piano”. No one can yet imagine how that prototype represents the embryonic stage of a revolution that would shake the world of music to its foundations, giving rise to the most iconic (and beloved) instrument of all time: the piano. The diffusion of this innovative instrument, originally known as “fortepiano”, then occurred starting from the second half of the 18th century, when composers such as Mozart, Haydn and Clementi began to write music to be performed on the piano, without the aid of any other instrument. His success led to the disappearance of his ancestors, the aforementioned harpsichord and clavichord.
In the volume Galassia Pianoforte (il Saggiatore, 2025, pp. 480, also e-book) the essayist and music critic Enzo Beacco there r tells the story of this incredible musical contraption and the many composers, performers and builders who have written its history.
Just to give an example, the piano is the instrument that embodies more than any other the spirit of Romanticism in the musical field, for the quantity of gradations of intensity and timbre of which it is capable and for the lyrical and subjective element linked to the presence of a single performer. The piano allowed composers and musicians virtuosities that were well connected to the romantic soul, so tense towards the absolute and ready to grasp the most from emotions.
But this is only a small part of the story of the piano, a story that has lasted more than three centuries, populated by pioneering and fascinating figures such as Domenico Scarlatti and JS Bach, exciting innovators such as Ludwig van Beethoven, Robert Schumann and Scott Joplin, and superb performers of the caliber of Martha Argerich, Maurizio Pollini and Lang Lang; without forgetting that microcosm – often unknown – of artisans, merchants and tuners who represent the silent custodians of an immortal and ever-changing art. From the flashes of the theaters to the intimacy of the sound reproduced in headphones, from the austerity of the concert halls to the sparkle of the cinema, the sounds of the piano have permeated those of the entire planet, in a constant enrichment of repertoire and technical innovation.
Galassia Pianoforte allows us to orient ourselves in this boundless universe, describing the many ways in which this instrument has accompanied – and sometimes dictated – the changes of society and people, fashions and tastes , like few other inventions have done before. A book to be savored, a book that reminds us that music is not something abstract and impalpable, but the astonishing and inimitable encounter of fingertips and ivory, muscles and wood, ears and diodes; of everything that happens when you sit in silence in front of 88 black and white keys. As an artist and musician like Alberto Savinio wrote: «All instruments are more or less decayed nobles. The piano alone is saved from this pitiful and desperate condition. The piano is the modern instrument par excellence: our instrument. Its voice is precise, rigorous. Its very appearance, black and solitary [...] recalls the nakedness, the poverty of modern tragedy. Man invented the dog for guarding and playing friendship, he invented the piano for the celebration of earthly music. The other instruments, from the viola di gamba to the trombones, have been compromised on Olympus, on Parnassus and in the paradise of the Catholics. The piano alone has remained pure, immaculate: its keyboard is white, worthy of the new prophecies.