Who invented the piano?

There are four main figures who, at one time or another, have either made credible claims to have invented the modern piano or have been widely thought to have invented it.

Firstly, we have Frenchman Jean Marius, who submitted his designs for a “hammer action” (we’ll come back to that term later) to the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris in 1716. Even at the time, however, members of the Paris instrument makers’ guild disputed the originality of his creations.

Then there’s Christoph Gottlieb Schröter, a German who also claimed to have invented the hammer-action mechanism a year later than Marius. Had he gotten there first, however, it’s thought that he never actually produced a working example of his idea, so it’d be hard to take Schröter seriously as a candidate for the piano’s true inventor.

The other German whose name comes up in these discussions is the far better-known Gottfried Silbermann, who did indeed construct multiple working examples of the piano. The fact that Johann Sebastian Bach himself both gave feedback on and eventually endorsed Silbermann’s instruments may be partially responsible for the widespread belief in Europe at the time that Silbermann had invented the instrument himself.

In actual fact, the mechanism behind Silbermann’s instrument was based on diagrams created from working examples by another inventor in Padua, Italy — the (still) relatively obscure Bartolomeo Cristofori. It’s now widely accepted that Cristofori was the modern piano’s true originator, and that he’d been working on his own hammer-action mechanism from as early as 1698.

The clavichord’s downfall was almost the opposite of the harpsichord’s — expressive as it could be, it was simply too quiet. It was of little use in an ensemble of other instruments, and any performances intended to be heard by anyone except the player themselves were necessarily intimate affairs.

There were a few other, less common instruments at the time that could perhaps have emerged as contenders for the piano’s position as king of the keyboard instruments, but all suffered from similar limitations. The virginal was a small keyboard instrument that was commonly used in domestic settings, but, with its single set of strings, offered little dynamic range. The spinet was a similarly compact triangular instrument that had strings running diagonally across its frame, but this one was let down by a weak and tinny tone, in large part due to the limitations of its size.

Did any of Cristofori’s pianos survive?

Want to play one of Cristofori’s pianos today? Well, unless you have truly exceptional levels of both wealth and willpower, or the keys to a major museum, it’s unlikely. But you just might get to see one — and hear it, if you’re very lucky.

There are thought to be three surviving Cristofori pianos today. The first, widely regarded as the oldest piano in the world, is a 1720 example held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It’s still in playable condition, although it took a full soundboard replacement, undertaken in 1938, to keep it that way.

The second example is currently held at the Musikinstrumenten-Museum (no need to translate the German here) in Leipzig, Germany. This isn’t in quite the same condition as the New York Cristofori, but it’s considered to be playable and has been recorded a few times in the past.

The final surviving Cristofori original is in Rome, at the Museo Strumenti Musicali (hey — now you can speak Italian too!). Sadly, this one has succumbed not to being played too much, but to being eaten by worms. It’s not currently playable.

If you just want to experience the sound of a Cristofori design in person, and aren’t too worried about it coming directly from his own workshop, there are a handful of instrument makers — notably in Germany, Italy, and the USA — who will happily create an authentic replica for you, for a price. If you don’t necessarily want one for yourself, you can catch many of these instruments on stage at concert halls around the world.