Piano Information

• The Piano was invented in 1698 by an Italian, Bartolomeo Cristofori.


• The name piano is an abbreviation of the original name for the instrument: piano et forte or soft and loud.


• There are over 12,000 parts in a piano, 10,000 which are moving.


• Each note in a grand piano has more than 35 points of adjustment. Over 3,080 adjustments for the entire piano.

• The total string tension in a concert grand is close to Thirty Tons!

• That a boxed model D Steinway Grand Piano weighs 1400 Pounds !
  
  
• That six Steinways are now in the Smithsonian collection.
  
  
• The working section of the piano is called the action. There are about 7500 parts here, all playing a role in sending the hammers against the strings when keys are struck.
  
  
• A new piano should be tuned four times the first year, with the change of seasons, and at least twice a year after that.
  
  
• There are over 10 MILLION pianos in American homes, businesses, and institutions.
  
  
• The Smithsonian in Washington, DC is celebrating the 300th anniversary of the piano with a wonderful exhibit that runs through March 2001.
  
  
• Cristofori made few pianos, his attention was to the building of harpsichords.
  
  
• The name piano is an abbreviation of Cristofori's original name for the instrument: piano et forte or soft and loud.
  
  
• Spinet pianos were made by Samuel Blythe as early as 1789 at Salem, Mass.
  
  
• The term Grand was first used in 1777.
  
  
• Abraham Lincoln used Chickering Grand #5070 while at the White House.
  
  
• During 1869 the US produced 25,000 pianos valued at $7,000,000, during 1910 production was 350,000 pianos valued at $100,000,000 !
  
  
• The term "Tickle the Ivorys" refers to playing the ivory keys of the piano, however, ivory has not been used to make piano keys since about the 1950's (they are plastic, sometimes referred to as "Ivorine").
  
  
• Pianos are made of thousands of pieces of wood glued together to form various parts of the playing mechanism as well as the cabinet. Felt, buckskin, paper, steel, iron, copper, and other materials are also used.
  
  
• Independent studies show that children who learn piano tend to do better in school. This is attributed to the discipline, eye-hand coordination, social skills building, learning a new language (music) and the pleasure derived from making your own music.
  
  
• It should also be noted here that anyone considering a career in any facet of music should consider studying the piano . Many music schools require at least one semester of piano, regardless of your major.
  
  
• Over the years there have been many attempts at "improving" the piano. One such experiment was to replace some of the wooden action parts with plastic. It didn't work, they cracked with age. (If you own one of these pianos, you might want to check out Piano Tuners to get it repaired or even Piano Dealers to replace it).
  
  There were many other ideas that tried and failed including the Jensen piano which had 2 keyboards, a vertical grand, one that had a keyboard that was more like a typewriter and many others.
  
  
• Presidential Pianos Courtesy of the Pierce Piano Atlas
  1st President - George Washington - Longman & Broderip Harpsichord; Schoen & Vinsen Pianoforte
  2nd President - John Adams - Currier & Co.
  3rd President - Thomas Jefferson - Astor Pianoforte
  4th President - James Madison - Square Grand (name destroyed by fire)
  5th President - James Monroe - Astor Piano
  6th President - John Quincy Adams - Currier & Co.
  7th President - Andrew Jackson - T. Gilbert & Co. Square Piano
  8th President - Martin Van Buren - Hallet & Cumston Square Piano
  9th President - William Henry Harrison - Haines Brothers
  10th President - John Tyler - Thomas Tomkinson Upright Piano
  11th President - James Knox Polk - Astor & Harwood Square Piano
  12th President - Zachary Taylor - name unknown
  13th President - Millard Fillmore - name unknown
  14th President - Franklin Pierce - Chickering Square Piano
  15th President - James Buchanan - Chickering Grand Piano
  16th President - Abraham Lincoln - Chickering Square Piano & Chickering Upright
  17th President - Andrew Johnson - Steinway & Sons Square Piano
  18th President - Ulysses S. Grant - Melodeon
  19th President - Rutherford B. Hayes - Bradbury Upright & Harpsichord (name destroyed by fire)
  20th President - James A. Garfield - Hallet & Davis Upright
  21st President - Chester A. Arthur - Piano cannot be located.
  22nd President - Grover Cleavland - Combination Piano & Harpsichord (name destroyed by fire)
  23rd President - Benjamin Harrison - J. & C. Fischer Upright Piano, Haines Brothers Square
  24th President - Grover Cleveland - (same as above)
  25th President - William McKinley - A. H. Gale Co. Square Piano
  26th President - Theodore Roosevelt - Chickering Upright, Steinway Grand Piano
  27th President - William Howard Taft - Baldwin Grand Piano
  28th President - Woodrow Wilson - Ernst Rosenkranst Square Piano, Knabe Grand
  29th President - Warren G. Harding - A. B. Chase Electric Player Piano
  30th President - Calvin Coolidge - Sohmer Upright Piano
  31st President - Herbert Hoover - Knabe Grand & A. B. Chase Grand
  32nd President - Franklin D. Roosevelt - Hardman Grand
  33rd President - Harry S. Truman - Steinway Grand, Baldwin Grand & Steinway Upright
  34th President - Dwight D. Eisenhower - Hallet & Cumston Upright
  35th President - John F. Kennedy - Ivers & Pond Grand Piano
  36th President - Lyndon B. Johnson - Style L. Steinway, Knabe Console
  37th President - Richard M. Nixon - Geo. P. Bent Upright, Baldwin Vertical
  38th President - Gerald Ford - No personal piano
  39th President - James (Jimmy) Carter - Ludden & Bates
  40th President - Ronald Reagan - Steinway Grand
  41st President - George Bush - Did not own personal piano.
  42nd President - William (Bill) Clinton - Baldwin Grand in the Governor's Mansion.
  43rd President - George W. Bush - No personal piano. Steinway Grand in the White House residence.
  44th President - Barack H. Obama - Steinway Grand in the White House residence.
  
  
• Jonas Chickering was the first exporter of American made pianos. First shipment to India 1844.
  
  
• Yamaha, established in 1887 was the first piano manfacturer in Japan.
  
  
• That pianos were the first meaningful brand names, the first Status Symbol, and the first major items sold on an installment basis, which was the cornerstone of several major banking institutions of today.
  
  
• A grand piano action is faster than a vertical (spinet, console, upright) because it has a repetition lever. This allows the pianist to repeat the note when it is only half way up. A vertical action requires letting the key all the way up to reset the hammer action.
  
  
• Piano Sizes
  Concert Grand - 8' 11" and larger
  Half Concert Grand - 7'4"
  Parlour Grand 6'8"
  Drawing Room Grand - 6'4"
  Professional Grand - 6'
  Living Room Grand - 5'10"
  Baby Grand - 5'8"
  Upright - 51" and up
  Vertical - 36" - 51"
  Studio - 44" or taller
  Console to 42"
  Spinet - 36" to 38"
  
  
• The worlds largest piano is a Challen Concert Grand. This piano is 11 feet long, has a total string tension of over 30 tons and weighs more than a ton !!
  
  
• The term A-440 concert pitch refers to A above middle C vibrating at 440 cycles per second.
  
  
• The first note (on a standard 88 note keyboard) is A .
  
  
• The exact middle of the keyboard is not middle C, it is actually the space between E and F above "middle" C.
  
  
• The last note of the keyboard is C.
  
  
• The Bösendorfer Imperial concert grand piano is 9' 6" long and has 9 extra keys stretching to a growling C below bottom C ! (The Imperial grand sold for $55,000 in 1980!) The 9' and 7' 4" grands have four extra bass keys, the lowest of which is F below bottom C.
  
  
• Comma (or coma) -- A minute interval or difference in the pitches of the same musical tone occasioned by different systems of tuning. The comma of Didymus is an interval such as that between two enharmonically equivalent notes like B-sharp and C-natural, an amount of 24 cents. (cents are 1/100th of a semitone) The syntonic comma is the interval between a just major third (5:4) and a Pythagorean third (81:84). The comma of Pythagoras (known also as the ditonic comma) is the difference between a cycle of just fifths and seven perfect octaves. In equal temperament tuning this comma is absorbed by the diminishing of each successive fifth in the cycle by the amount of 1/12th of the comma.
  
  
• Paul Janko, Austria, constructed a keyboard of six tiers, one above the other -- runs and arpeggios made less difficult than on regular piano keyboard.
  
  
• Silver, glass, gold and silk were used in making strings for musical instruments.
  
  
• Zumpe created the square piano in England in 1760.
  
  
• Beethoven's Studio Piano is in the National Museum, Vienna, AustrIa.
  
  
• The first patent issued to H. Steinway, New York, was May 5, 1857.
  
  
• Gustavus Hessilens made a spinet piano in Philadelphia in 1742.
  
  
• G. Hoffman built a symetrically rounded piano in 1804.
  
  
• M. Welte and Son of Freiburg, Germany and Ludwig Hupfeld introduced the reproducing pianos about 1904.
  
  
• Sebastian Erard made the first French Square piano in 1777 and the first grand in 1796.
  
  
• John Broadwood enlarged the strings in the square piano, used two thick strings instead of three thinner ones and moved the wrest plank from the right side to the bottom of the case in 1788.
  
  
• Johann Christian Schleip built many vertical pianos known as the "Giraffe Piano".
  
  
• Johann Behrent built the first piano in America at Philadelphia in 1775 under the name "Piano Forte".
  
  
• Mangeot of Paris built a piano with reversible keyboards in 1876.
  
  
• Sebastian Erard built a piano and organ combined for Marie Antoinette.
  
  
• Piano Row was located on 14th Street, New York. This was the headquarters of such fine pianos as Steinway, Steck, Behning, Bradbury, Sohmer and many others.
  
  
• As far back as 1901, Estey stated they had manufactured and sold 325,000 organs.
  
  
• There is approximately 18 tons of pressure being exerted by the stretched steel piano strings. In a concert grand, it is close to 30 tons of pressure. The average string having about 160 pounds of tension. There are 230 strings inside a typical piano.


• The action of a grand is superior in many ways to a vertical piano, one being that any key can be repeated (reset) faster than any vertical upright (regardless of the name given by manufacturers i.e.: upright grand, studio grand, inverted grand, etc.).


• If all of the strings were of the same thickness and under the same tension, with high C being the usual two inches, low C would have to be about thirty feet long. For this reason, lower strings are weighted by wrapping copper or iron wire around the core wire. The lowest octave having two wrappings.


• If a piano hammer were attached directly to the back end of a key, when the key was depressed, the hammer would hit the string and stay there, damping out all vibration and sound. For this reason, all piano actions have some kind of escapement mechanism for each key, allowing the hammer to be released from the key just before hitting the string. When the key is released, the action returns to its original position and resets itself for another cycle.

• Most pianos have two to three pedals. 

• The right pedal is always the sustaining pedal (damper pedal), it raises all of the dampers at once, allowing all notes which are played to continue sounding after the keys are released.


• The left pedal is always some type of soft pedal. In vertical pianos, and some grand's, it moves the hammers at rest closer to the strings, decreasing their travel, and thus striking force. In most grand's, the soft pedal shifts the entire action sideways, causing the treble hammers to hit only two of their three strings. The lower strings shifting the two strings to one. The shifting type of soft pedal is called the una corda pedal.


• The third or middle pedal is usually called the sostenuto pedal. It sustains only those notes which are depressed prior to and while holding the pedal down, and does not sustain any notes depressed after holding it down. This is like having a third hand to sustain certain notes, while playing others.


• In some instances, the middle pedal is the bass sustaining pedal, which lifts only the bass dampers. Some uprights use the middle pedal as a practice pedal, which lowers a thick piece of felt between the hammers and strings, muffling the tone. Once in awhile, you will see the middle pedal being used to lower metal studded tap strips between the hammer and the string, creating a tinny honky-tonk type sound. This is often called a Zither, Harp or Mandolin.