A Florentine Piano c.1730 for Early Piano Music

This piano with a Cristofori action was constructed in 2003 and was probably the first instrument of this type and compass (56-notes, GG,AA-d³,e³) to have been made since about 1750. It is a fortepiano as Ferrini might have made in 1730, when he was still in Cristofori's workshop, and delivered to Queen Maria Barbara in Spain. It is now in the Schola Cantorum, Basel.

Although both original and reproduction pianos of the late 18th century are now familiar to us, the earliest pianos invented by Cristofori around 1700 are less well known since the three surviving instruments are in museums and relatively few reproductions had been made until 2003.

The following notes answer some of the frequently asked questions about this fortepiano, explaining its place in the early history of the instrument and some practical details of my work.

A short history of Cristofori, Ferrini, and Scarlatti's involvement with the "Arpicimbalo...di nuova inventione, che fa il piano e il forte".

Scarlatti's connection with the early piano invented by Bartolomeo Cristofori has recently received more emphasis (through the published work of Sheveloff, Badura-Skoda, van der Meer, Tagliavini, Sutherland, Pollens, Latcham, and more recently from Ogeil), both from the point of view of the music and the instruments. Our knowledge of which pianos and harpsichords were at his disposal in Spain depends almost entirely upon the inventory made in 1758 after Queen Maria Barbara's death. This list documents four pianos which are described as having been made in Florence, but a fifth piano was possibly also of Florentine origin. Thus, a clear link can be established to the designs developed by Bartolomeo Cristofori in Florence from around 1698 (and earlier) to his death in 1732 and Scarlatti's musical activity in Spain. (See David Sutherland, "Domenico Scarlatti and the Florentine Piano", Early Music, May 1995, pp. 243-256).

Cristofori's surviving pianos are dated 1720 (originally FF,GG,AA-c³; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), 1722 (C-c³; Collezione degli Strumenti Musicali, Rome), and 1726 (C-c³; Musikinstrumenten-Museum, Leipzig). Since Cristofori was 76 when he died in 1732 we may expect that much of the work in his latter instruments (1720-1732) was carried out by his assistant, Giovanni Ferrini. Indeed, Ferrini's surviving instruments show such a strong similarity in the workmanship that this assumption is well supported. A problem in the analysis of all instrument types from the Cristofori or Ferrini workshops has been to distinguish between Cristofori's and Ferrini's authorship. Cristofori's first will specified that Ferrini should receive a monetary bequest and the tools from the workshop, so he was the designated successor. Ferrini produced a combination harpsichord-piano in 1746 (Tagliavini Collection, Bologna) which shows that he continued to work with the same action as developed in the 1722 and 1726 Cristofori designs. Thus, for many purposes we can regard the instruments of Ferrini as following in an unbroken tradition from Cristofori's designs and equivalent to Cristofori's own instruments (see this article).

The Portugese princess Maria Barbara, Scarlatti's pupil and employer in Spain, may have begun receiving instruction from her teacher during his stay in Portugal from 1719-1723, but he accompanied her to Spain on the occasion of her marriage to the Spanish crown prince in 1729. It is recorded that Cristofori made "instruments" for João V, the King of Portugal, i.e. probably at least one piano and harpsichord, so Scarlatti's prowess and inventive genius at the keyboard may have played a role in the acquisition of a piano or harpsichord. Gerhard Doderer (private communication, published 2009) established that Maria Barbara did not bring a piano with her to Spain, so this removal could not account for the four Florentine pianos mentioned in the Spanish 1758 inventory made after her death. In fact there were enough pianos for each of the five royal residences and this suggests that she ordered new instruments when in Spain in order for these to be available, regardless of where she was residing.

Carlo Broschi, the famous castrato singer (known as Farinelli), received a bequest from Queen Maria Barbara (on her death in 1758) which according to his own will included a "[cembalo]...a martellino", i.e. a pianoforte, one of her three "best instruments" ["li migliori"]. From Burney's testimony, who met Broschi and saw his collection near Bologna in 1770, we learn that the piano was "made at Florence in the year 1730", (two years before Cristofori's death), and Padre Martini confirmed the date by copying the inscription as "Joannes Ferrinius Florentinus Bartolomaei / Christophori Patavini Alumnus / faciebat A. D. MDCCXXX", but he did not record the compass. Burney saw and heard Farinelli play, of which he wrote that "...he sings upon it with infinite taste and expression". It is not clear whether Burney meant that Farinelli sang and accompanied himself, but more likely that his keyboard playing had the quality of singing because the old castrato was diffident at his age about singing for visitors. We may infer that Farinelli knew this piano in Spain, and was possibly accompanied with it; as a reward for his good service the Queen, left it to him. The date of 1730 suggests it might have been the first instrument she ordered when she arrived in Spain. Another possibility, apparently confirmed by a visitor to Farinelli's house in 1777, is that the singer bought the instrument in 1730 from Ferrini and took it with him to Spain in 1737, but no confirmation of this hypothesis has yet been found.

Given that Cristofori died in 1732, and was ill before amending his will in February 1729, it is highly unlikely that he could have been responsible for building the four Florentine pianos in the years 1729-1730. If Martini's information is correct then Ferrini signed the piano in 1730 before Cristofori died, when the inventor was ill and probably unable to work. Thus, the likelihood is that at least the 1730 piano was made mostly by Ferrini alone .

As Jane Clark has commented (private communication), it is easier to show the connection between the early piano and Farinelli than it is to indicate Scarlatti's involvement. However, in a recent Ph.D thesis, Jacqueline Ogeil has drawn attention to the evidence in music scores of Scarlatti's sonatas, of that which could be best implemented by a piano. A more recent chronology of Maria Barbara's collection argues that the 1730 piano had a C-c³ compass (the ninth on the list, at Aranjuez where the Queen spent about half of the year), that Maria Barbara might not have played a 56-note piano before about 1746, and that 61-note harpsichords were only introduced into her collection in May 1757, some 15 months before her death (see this 2026 article for a full discussion of Farinelli's possible ownership and a new assessment of Maria Barbara's instrument collection).

The logic of my pianoforte reconstruction

Cristofori's earliest surviving piano of 1720 was originally made with an FF,GG,AA-c³ compass (54 notes) and may thus appear suitable as the starting point for a Florentine piano with a larger compass intended for Scarlatti's music. However, it has longer keys than found in the later pianos, which is less advantageous for the player. This increases the inertia of the keyboard and renders the action a little more sluggish since the keylever is the slowest part of the whole action. These long keys are probably not original, but the result of modifying the first type of action to the later version (from 1722 onwards). The 1720 piano also has a style of wrestplank that is inherently weak and is therefore unsuitable for a replica instrument, besides which the present soundboard is not original and dates from the 1938 restoration. In addition the present striking points for the strings are not original and the case appears to have been cut down in length.

In producing a piano for the performance of Scarlatti's music the compass of the two later Cristofori pianos (C-c³) although yielding good evidence of the building practice restricts the choice to some 90 sonatas. With a 56-note compass, as in two of the documented Spanish pianos, one can play some 450 sonatas. Thus, a practical instrument for the performance of Scarlatti must go beyond the strict boundaries of that which we know from the three surviving Cristofori pianos.

I have drawn on the likelihood that Ferrini made many of the pianos at the Spanish court in order to be able to take advantage of the information we can gain from his oeuvre (including harpsichords) and the later developments in Cristofori's piano making. Ferrini's 1746 piano has a compass of GG,AA-e³ (57 notes) and is thus close to the range of two of the keyboards given in the Spanish inventories (56 notes). This might indicate a chromatic compass of GG-d³ (as favoured in Spain), but GG,AA-d³,e³ is also possible (i.e. lacking GG# and e flat³). We do not know the compass of Maria Barbara's 56-note piano, but Italian makers rarely used a chromatic bass octave and an Italian harpsichord made by Goccini in 1721 (Tagliavini Collection, Bologna) has exactly this GG,AA-d³,e³ compass. A compass starting on GG and reaching to e³ (without e flat³) allows the performance of about nine more Scarlatti sonatas than does a compass ending at d³. The GG,AA and d³,e³ parts of the keyboard also demonstrate a visual mirror-image symmetry.

Since making the instrument I became aware of the piano-making activities of Paolo Morellati in the 1770s who built at least five pianos, and examined Farinelli's piano made by Ferrini. The fact that Morellati's 1774 piano had a 56-note range and a compass of GG-d³ could suggest that Ferrini's piano may also have had this chromatic range, but closer examination of this matter renders it less likely since his work in 1774 was based on Fernandez's harpsichord (see the 2026 article ).

Some details of the instrument

As in Cristofori's 1722 and 1726 pianos there is an una corda stop, activated by sliding the whole keyboard frame by 4 mm towards the bass. Only one string is struck, the other string of the bichord pair resonates sympathetically giving a slight "halo" to the sound. There is no moderator or any other effect stop.

The action is based on the 1722 and 1726 Cristofori designs that use a hopper mounted in leather guides in the keylever and an intermediate lever which raises a boss on the hammer butt (or rotella as Maffei called it, from his interview with Cristofori in 1709-1710, published 1711). The ends of the cypress hammer shanks are fitted with small blocks on which are glued paper cylinders (a product of 15th-century, paper-organ-pipe technology); these cylinders are the hammer heads. We search for an explanation of Cristofori's motivation for this unusual feature, which is extremely time consuming to make. The paper cylinder is about 1/3 lighter than a solid wood hammerhead and thus yields an action with a slightly lighter touch. There is also a slight, audible difference between the sound generated by a paper cylinder or a solid wooden hammer head (both covered with leather), the paper cylinder tending to produce a less brilliant sound when played hard since it deforms and probably thereby increases the area of contact with the string, which increases the damping of the harmonics. The diameters of the cylinders are graded evenly to increase in size from treble to bass, which grading makes a more noticeable difference to the sound. Larger hammer heads in the bass do not give such a metallic sound as smaller ones.

The configuration of the instrument is with an "inverted" wrestplank (i.e. the nut is on the underside of the wrestplank) so that the hammers impel the string towards the nut thereby giving a more secure contact of the string with the nut. This yields a more stable tone under harder playing and the "limit" of the tonal range is approached gradually rather than there being a sudden onset of the more metallic sound. Furthermore, Cristofori undercut the front edge of wrestplank in the 1726 instrument in order to increase the bearing pressure of the strings on the nut. These design features contribute significantly to the flexibility and range of the tonal resources. Cristofori's attention to these details reveals the nature of the experiments he must have conducted.

Either explanation alone for the use of paper cylinders might be sufficient to reveal Cristofori's motivation, but taking these other factors into account we can infer that his aim was to produce a sweet tone, distinct from a harpsichord, and as free as possible of the metallic sound which accompanies hard playing.

Essential to the quiet operation of the Cristofori action is an ingenious "low-tech" solution comprising leather washers in the rotella which damp out any rattle of the hammer butt on the axle rod. The check consists of an independent brass rod and leather pad for each hammer which can be precisely adjusted and is extremely effective. This Cristofori action is obviously the result of much experiment and experience and can be considered to be entirely functional.

The 1722 and 1726 actions have relatively short keylevers (shorter than the 1720 design or the later Portugese pianos based on Cristofori's designs) and this allows the speed of the action to be slightly faster. It is faster, for example, than the c.1800 Anton Walter fortepiano (Germanisches Nationalmuseum, MINe 109). When we compare the Cristofori action with Viennese pianos we find the following touchweights (the weight to produce a ppp with the dampers in):
Cristofori: 38g (my reproduction at c³; the 1726 action is similar, but less easy to measure)
Viennese: 30.9g (at f³; mean of 8 instruments 1709-1803 reported by Kenneth Mobbs, "A Performer's comparative study of Touchweight, Key-dip, Keyboard Design and Repetition in Early Grand Pianos, c.1770 to 1850", Galpin Society Journal LIV (2001), pp. 16-44, Table 2.)

The soundboard is of cypress wood, a timber apparently not used in pianos after Ferrini's work but typical of Florentine harpsichord making and a material conferring a slightly sweeter sound than the spruce used in other instruments. It also yields a reedier and drier sound in the tenor and bass than one can achieve with spruce soundboard material, partly as a result of the typically higher internal damping of cypress wood. A difficulty conferred by the use of cypress wood with brass strings is that it is more difficult to achieve a singing treble tone and there are usually more "false" notes.

Brass wire is used for the stringing, as the concensus of expert opinion now believes was employed in the original Cristofori and Ferrini instruments, rather than the iron wire found in later pianos. The old brass wire fragments found in the 1746 Ferrini piano/harpsichord are circumstantial evidence, but Morellati also reported using brass wire in his instrument based on the 1730 Ferrini. This confers what one might describe as a certain "rounded" tone colour, in contrast to the normally greater brilliance of iron stringing.

As is now well known, Cristofori developed a double bentside arrangement so that the strain of the strings was taken by one frame and the soundboard attached to a separate frame. In this way case distortion at the bentside did not substantially affect the soundboard, an invention which had to await the introduction of metal frames in pianos (c.1820) before it was even approached in effectiveness. One has to recognise that Cristofori's developed piano was well ahead of the field in many respects and that some of those coming after him produced instruments which were inherently inferior in terms of case stability and the speed of the action.

Some practical considerations in my reconstruction

Although some of Cristofori's pianos have survived, two critical factors determining the quality and volume of sound of the early pianos are not known.

1. The weight of the stringing used by Cristofori is not known precisely, although we are told by Maffei's article that it was heavier than on harpsichords.
2. A deer leather covering was described by Maffei for the hammers, but the hardness conferred by the tanning process greatly affects the tonal quality and cannot now be established.

Given that we probably cannot determine these unknown factors influencing the tonal performance by documentary research, the only course left to us now is to experiment with the manufacture of new instruments in order to re-discover the possible range of tonal resources at the disposal of the player of the early piano.

From the stringing schemes on Cristofori's harpsichords I have inferred a simple numerical gauge number system he used (see 2000/4). A version of this Cristofori scheme is implemented in the gauge numbers marked on the 1767 Antunes piano (National Music Museum, Vermillion, SD, USA) suggesting that the Cristofori practice was revealed to Portugese makers through an instrument (or instruments) sent to the Iberian peninsular. This gives us a further, significant clue how to string Cristofori-style pianos. The result of this weight of stringing is that an instrument with a good forte results with adequate power in the treble. (see 2006/2). This weight of stringing is also necessary in order to produce a "sweet" tone which does not readily produce a metallic sound on hard playing.

My reconstruction of the case size commenced by seeking to understand the design procedure for Cristofori and Ferrini instruments using their order of thought. It appears that local, Florentine units of measurement explain many of the dimensions chosen, for which reason I define the main case dimensions using them:
Length 90 florentine soldi (= 2479 mm)
Width 34 florentine soldi (= 936 mm)
Height 8 florentine soldi (= 220 mm)

I explain the extreme length of Cristofori's instruments as deriving from the 16th-century Venetian harpsichord-making tradition where the distance between the end of the baseboard at the tail and the wrestplank (in some cases the front edge of the baseboard) along the line of the F string was equivalent to the theoretical length of the F string. In this way the maker established a relationship between the strings (the "soul" of the instrument) and the case (its "body"); (see 2012). Cristofori was born in Padova and would thus have learned his craft within the Venetian tradition.

The new width of the instrument derives from the larger compass; this GG,AA-d³,e³ keyboard is nominally 29 soldi instead of the nominally 25 soldi of the C-c³ designs. Cristofori's nominal keyboard width may have been affected slightly by the actual width of the rack holding all the hammer butts. For this reason my hammer rack and keyboard were made before the case, and the case width made to fit it. The case was then built by laying out the stringband on the baseboard, not from a drawing. Specific dimensions were found with the aid of a rule using Florentine soldi. In this way the priority is that parts fit to each other, not that they are made to be exactly x.x mm.

The general tendency is that larger instruments sound rounder and fuller than smaller ones, but the tonal difference between the C-c³ Cristofori design and the GG,AA-d³,e³ size will not be great and the width of the tail is almost the same. As in any instrument with a soundboard, the work done to the dimensions of the soundboard makes the greatest difference. Since wood varies widely in its mechanical characteristics (even in the same plank), the difficulty faced by the maker is always yielding a specific, desired result from the available material.

Although Cristofori developed the double-bentside construction he did not properly understand the principles of structures that are stiffened with bracing. Curiously enough, these principles were understood by timber-frame house builders even before the 15th century, but the knowledge did not work its way through to instrument making. The modern maker who is informed about structural design and making a reproduction of an old harpsichord or fortepiano is confronted with the choice of repeating an old mistake and inflicting the consequences upon the client, or of avoiding the error. Distorted cases in many large harpsichords and cracks in the treble of the soundboard are examples of such avoidable consequences. I have chosen the route of eliminating the mistakes, which requires very little extra wood in the internal framing, merely locating it correctly. Following this procedure the torsional stiffness of the case (i.e. resistance to twisting) is greatly improved and the soundboard is further isolated from the effects of the strain of the strings on the case.

In the performance of the action there is nothing to improve, however, some materials now available to us are better and our machining facilities are more accurate. For example, I have used a stainless steel rod as the axle for the hammer butts, thus avoiding the corrosion which occurs at wood-brass junctions over longer periods of time.

The result of these procedures and my contribution of experience in preparing the soundboard results in a tone with a full, singing, and "developed treble" (as one player described it) which carries extremely well. In other registers of the instrument a clear tonal character is evident. The tuning stability is good so that even after a 1500km transport by car the basic setting of the temperament had not changed.

Review of the Scarlatti concerts in the Musée de la Musique, played by Enrico Baiano and Aline Zylberajch. Diapason, May 2003, p. 60:

Spectacles, vu & entendu
Musique Baroque: Les centenaires et le nouveau-né

La série des concerts Scarlatti de la Cité de la musique a convié la fine fleur des interprètes autour d'un projet audacieux : faire entendre un nouveau fortepiano d'après Cristofori et Ferrini. Reconstruction achevée in extremis (quatre jours avant le premier concert!), marquant l'aboutissement des recherches du facteur Denzil Wraight sur cet instrument mythique - celui de la plus célèbre élève de Scarlatti, Maria Barbara reine d'Espagne -, mécanique à marteaux dans un corps de clavecin italien. On est dès la première note saisi par la rondeur du son, sa projection légère et nuancée, sa personnalité renouvelée sous les doigts des musiciens. Autour du nouveau-né, les clavecins centenaires du musée sont invités à la fête...[followed by reviews of the individual performances]" (Philippe Ramin)