Instruments of the Orchestra — Part 10: P — Pianoforte

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! Instruments of the Orchestra — P: Pianoforte Tenth in the season: the pianoforte — the keyboard that learned to answer the hand, soft and loud from the same key. A. J. Hipkins, who heard the oldest surviving pianos played and measured what he heard, tells it whole: what the instrument is and how its string scale is governed; the older keyboards it grew from — cembalo, virginal, and clavichord; Bartolomeo Cristofori's invention at Florence and the three grands that survive; Silbermann's Potsdam pianos, shown to be copies of Cristofori's own; the rival claims of Marius, Schröter, and Plenius, weighed one by one; iron entering the frame, Érard's repetition action, Broadwood's thirty tons of strain, the upright in a Philadelphia parlour; and the ledger at P, closing on Steinway's duplex scale. Where Hipkins dates the invention to 1708–09, the telling carries his dating as his, with Maffei's printed description of 1711 beside it. Morgana narrates. Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices. Chapters: 00:00 Opening theme 00:35 Introduction 02:02 Chapter One: The Alphabet at P 05:44 Chapter Two: The Instrument Itself 13:52 Chapter Three: The Older Keyboards 17:40 Chapter Four: Cristofori — The Invention at Florence 23:00 Chapter Five: Copies, Claims, and the German School 29:27 Chapter Six: Iron and Repetition 36:29 Chapter Seven: The Ledger at P Instruments of the Orchestra walks the alphabet of the modern orchestra one letter at a time, each episode grounded in period documentary sources. This telling rests on A. J. Hipkins, A Description and History of the Pianoforte and of the Older Keyboard Stringed Instruments (Novello, 1896), in fresh paraphrase, with every fact carried from his pages — the surviving Cristofori grands of 1720 and 1726, the damper and the check present in the invention from the first, Zumpe's English square piano, Hawkins's upright of 1802. The season's rule holds here as everywhere: a maker who fails the record does not reach the microphone, and no completeness is claimed for this episode or for the season. Next in the season: S — the Saxophone. Music: opening and closing themes and separators from "Raga at Dawn" (house music pool), gate-passed for this episode. A continuous instrumental bed from "Cliffs of Breaking Ice" (house music pool) plays quietly beneath the narration. Music drawn from the channel's existing house pool of owner-deposited instrumentals. Source: A. J. Hipkins, A Description and History of the Pianoforte and of the Older Keyboard Stringed Instruments (London: Novello, 1896) — Internet Archive descriptionhisto00hipk. KacheliTV — World Classics, Read Aloud.