The piano is an amazing instrument used all over the world to express one’s feelings, emotions, and talent. The piano is used for entertainment, but for many, it’s used in a personal way to express feelings in a musical way. Obviously each musical instrument is unique to their own time period and no doubt the piano has been around for a while. It has gone through many changes in it’s time- changing along with the modern music of the day. I believe the piano has adapted over the years more so than other instruments. Reviewing how and when the piano changed as well as the modern piano is a great way to appreciate its worth and uniqueness.
Like everything else in existence, the piano has an origin. Stringed instruments had been around for a while, but to put such chords in a box was a different story. At around 1700, a man by the name of Bartolomeo Christofori from Padua, Italy ("Piano"). Christofori worked for the prince at the time, and was an expert of musical instruments. It is commonly thought that he had hoped to create an instrument that could be played with a loud sound, while still have smooth control, as if for musical concerts. It took a while for this new instrument to catch on, but once it did, it only kept improving. Consider that Gottfried Silbermann, an organ builder, constructed the piano with a small, yet important, personal touch-a foot pedal. For todays pianos, the foot pedal is standard and often very important. By 1747, Silbermann pianos were even accepted by the famous Johann Sebastian Bach. By the late 1700’s, pianos were growing even more popular. Viennese makers produced wooden pianos that had what we know to be opposite key colors (black for the primary keys, and white for the accents). Wolfgang Amadeus ...
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...ese reasons and more show just how the piano adjusted over time.
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ever changing and there was a very good uses of all the keys of the piano.
Since the first person heard the wind whistle through the trees or the sea in a seashell humans have been drawn to sound. Being the oppressive and ingenious species that we are we felt the need to capture these sounds and any others that we could to keep for our own. Eventually people like Pythagoras and gods such as Apollo found that by stretching materials and picking/plucking them that they would produce sounds and that the tighter you stretched these strings the higher the sound would go. These were the early beginnings of the pianoforte.
As duke’s piano lessons faded into the past, Duke began to show an interest for the artistic. Duke went to Armstrong Manual Tra...
For almost half a century, the musical world was defined by order and esteemed the form of music more highly than the emotion that lay behind it. However, at the turn of the 19th century, romantic music began to rise in popularity. Lasting nearly a century, romantic music rejected the ideas of the classical era and instead encouraged composers to embrace the idea of emotionally driven music. Music was centered around extreme emotions and fantastical stories that rejected the idea of reason. This was the world that Clara Wieck (who would later marry the famous composer, Robert Schumann) was born into. Most well known for being a famous concert pianist, and secondly for being a romantic composer, Clara intimately knew the workings of romantic music which would not only influence Clara but would later become influenced by her progressive compositions and performances, as asserted by Bertita Harding, author of Concerto: The Glowing Story of Clara Schumann (Harding, 14). Clara’s musical career is an excellent example of how romantic music changed from virtuosic pieces composed to inspire awe at a performer’s talent, to more serious and nuanced pieces of music that valued the emotion of the listener above all else.
The Web. 21 Oct 2010. Writer, Staff. The "mechanical piano 40 (MP40)." www.militaryfactory.com.
As for piano, the type of wood used to make the instrument has a great effect on the quality of sound produced. Certain woods resonate better than others and thus create a better tone. In fact, many lower-priced clarinets are made of plastic and although they provide a serviceable tone, it is not the rich, "wooden" tone coveted by professionals.
Over an extensive amount of time, the piano has developed into what we commonly see today. Through the improvement in the production of dynamics and the development of the pedals, it has become a popular instrument that is used for a variety of genres apart from classical music, such as jazz and contemporary. There are a variety of models available, such as the grand piano, where the harpsichord and forte piano originated from, as well as the upright piano.
In the play “The Piano Lesson”, August Wilson utilizes two main characters Boy Willie and Berniece to present the theme of gender roles and sexual politics. The reaction of the siblings toward the piano illustrates the role of a man and woman during the conflict. Throughout the entire play they argue over the piano and struggle with an underlying problem of choosing to honor their ancestors or leaving the family’s history in the past. Boy Willie wants to show respect to his ancestors by selling the piano to continue the Charles’s family legacy. He wants to buy Sutter’s land because Sutter was a white slave master who forced his ancestors to work on the land. However, Berniece wants to keep the piano and doesn’t want to use it because of fear. The disagreement between the siblings shows the play’s representation of gender differences.
In the Piano Lesson the main symbol is the piano in Berniece’s home. The piano has a lot of meaning behind it and has been through a lot. This piano has made it all the way from the South to the North, which wasn’t easy. Berniece brought the piano miles from where it was because it meant so much to her. The carvings on this piano are magnificent they represent all of her ancestors. The blood and sweat that were put into making this piano means so much more than just something you play is amazing: “ Willie Boy carved all this. He got a picture of his mama… Mamma Esther… and his daddy, Boy Charles. He got all kinds of things that happened with our family” (1183). Instead of carving what Sutter asked he made the whole piano about the history of his family. After the carving was done, the piano became a monument to his family’s
The piano held symbolic significance in the story of the family and their struggle to move forward. The piano represents the importance and value of slaves during slavery. Slaves were traded for objects during slavery. Slaves were of no importance to their slave owners. As Doaker says in the story “now she had her piano and her niggas too”, meaning slaves were nothing more than an accessory to their slave owners (Wilson 395). Doaker sarcastically speaks of how slaves were not considered humans but property. As Sandy Alexandre states in her work, “Property and Inheritance in August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson”, “Doaker sees greed where there should be something like repulsion or at least a semblance of hesitation to accept such an ill-begotten gift”(77). Alexandre argues slaves are not given the proper respect and are not considered equal. This specific event from the story shows how little to ...
To Berniece, Boy Willie, and Doaker, the piano means different things. To Berniece, the piano acts as a piece of her ancestors, and whenever she uses it, she can sense her deceased family who used it in the past. To Boy Willie, it represents just a piece of property that can be sold to collect more money for the family. Lastly, to Doaker, the piano exists as a piano that is both good and bad for the family, but still has to be kept based on the history inside of it. The piano to him portrays itself as an instrument that is good and bad for the family, but they have to keep it because it is an artifact. Although they all have different thoughts on the piano, Berniece, Boy Willie, and Doaker can all agree on one thing: the piano is an artifact of family history.
Music has shaped the lives of people throughout history. Even in its earliest forms, music has included use of instruments. One of the oldest musical instruments known is a variation of the flute; the original flute is thought to date back nearly 67,000 years ago. Tonight we are going to move throughout the eras with a history of instrumental music. This concert will begin with the Renaissance Era and continue through time until we have reached modern instrumental music.
Bie, Oscar. A History of the Pianoforte and Pianoforte Players. trans. by E. E. Kellett
Before the guitar was even thought of, there were instruments that showed some similarities. The first stringed instruments were around about 4000 years ago. The first few instruments were called tanburs and bowl harps. These instruments are made by taking a tortoise shell and attaching a stick to it, usually a bent one. After that, a few gut or silk strings were run from the stick to the middle of the shell. One of the oldest guitar-like instruments is about 3500 years old. This instrument belonged to an Egyptian singer named Har-Mose. He owned a tanbur, but his had three strings instead of just one or two. It was also made out of rawhide and cedar (Guy).
The Baroque Masters lecture performance by Dr. Yelena Grinberg showcased a selection of keyboard works composed during the Baroque Ear (1600-1750) by t Baroque Masters George Frederic Handel, Domenico Scarlatti, and Johann Sebastian Bach. The ideal of the Baroque period was that music should not only be pleasing, but it must also induce very strong, visceral emotions and stir the passions of the soul. Some important features of the Baroque ear are the precise and elevated rhythms, clear and defined meter, irregular or embellished melodies, and an enriched and unified texture which was he together by the ongoing ground bass known as basso continuo. Although each of these Baroque Masters composed music that was highly reflective of the Baroque