I agree with Paul that there isn't any truly accurate piano history book, and that you need to beware of many widely accepted generalizations and several details.
Actually, quite a lot of research has been done during the last twenty years or so, especially of the combing through documents sort, though it takes some doing to get access to much of it. The materials studied include newspaper ads, private correspondence, legal documents (lawsuits, bankruptcy inventories) and the like, and they fill out the vague period of the 18th century in much more detail - thought without precision, since actual instruments are largely lacking.
Eva Badura-Skoda's book The Eighteenth Century Fortepiano Grand and Its Patrons (2017), covers a wide range of materials for the period of the entire century. Unfortunately, the book is horrendously expensive, and they seem to have done without an editor, as it rambles, and is filled with bad English equivalents of German word order and seemingly homologous words that aren't. Obviously she doesn't understand the meaning of the word "obviously," for instance, which makes for heavy going at times. Nonetheless it is a compendium of a great deal of information that supplements, questions, debunks previous conclusions, and raises many intriguing possibilities. Several of her sources are well worth tracking down.
Michael Cole's
Broadwood Square Pianos (2005) presents a wealth of details concerning the Broadwood family and company and the manufacture of square pianos in England through about 1850. There is a wealth of information on his
website including access to purchase that book. (His
The Pianoforte in the Classical Era (1998) is somewhat dated).
Concerning Cristofori in particular, there is an article in Clefs pour le Piano/Keys to the Piano (Ziad Kreidy, 2018 Editions Aedam Musicae) that analyzes the Maffei article in conjunction with various documents including Maffei's interview notes. Those notes are transcribed with a translation into French, and include many details that didn't make it into Maffei's article, including a brief reference to a simpler action that didn't work as well. (Half the Kreidy book is English, half in French, some, but not this article, are in both).
The "mythical Father Wood" (who was said to have made a piano that went to London) was recently identified through research by Patrizio Barbieri, showing that he made (and sold to Englishmen)not one but two probable copies of a Cristofori piano preceding the ones that survived, and probably also the one described in the famous Maffei article as well.
There have been several studies going into detail concerning Scarlatti, Cristofori, and instruments in Portugal/Spain, with many papers published in 2009 "Domenico Scarlatti in Spain: Proceedings of FIMTE Symposia 2006-2007."
To add a few items to Paul's list of corrections of widely circulated errors:
- Silbermann is said to have "made improvements" on Cristofori's action. Not so. His improvements were to copy Cristofori very precisely - he found out just how finicky you had to be. Kerstin Schwarz Damm's documentation of her work in creating exact replicas of both a Cristofori and a Silbermann show clearly just how precisely Silbermann copied Cristofori. See her articles posted at http://www.animus-cristofori.com/en/ Gottfried's nephew, Jean Henri, worked in Strasbourg making essentially the same design to nearly the end of the 19th century. Gottfried did add a damper stop (lever to hold all the dampers up, as in a keyed pantalon).
- The idea that Zumpe was one of the "12 Apostles," piano makers from the Silbermann workshops who supposedly moved to London fleeing wars in Germany, has long since been debunked. Additional information on Zumpe has come to light, showing clearly that he came from a part of Germany far from either Silbermann, was probably a cabinet maker when he emigrated to London to work in Shudi's harpsichord establishment (left before Broadwood was hired there), left Shudi to set up his own shop where he made and sold not keyboard instruments but, principally, "English guittars" (a predecessor of the harp as an instrument for upper class young ladies), and only a few years later suddenly came out with his first square pianoforte.
- Fairly often, it is said that Zumpe simplified Cristofori. He did not. He followed in the keyed pantalon tradition, which had an origin separate from that of the harpsichord shaped grand piano invented by Cristofori, though the two traditions grew side by side.
- John Broadwood probably wasn't involved in Backers' and Stodart's early English grand piano design. That was simply asserted by his son 30 or more years after the fact with little to no corroboration (Stodart did work for Broadwood for a time). John Broadwood was not a great innovator of piano design, though he was an innovator in the business field, establishing a web of subcontractors to create a massive output, and developing a wide distribution system to sell that output. (He was quite late in actually building pianos, as Michael Cole has amply proven).
- The idea that Herz "improved" Érard's action is fallacious. In fact, he simplified it, making it easier to manufacture. Érard's "strange" features were very carefully thought through. The spoon on the wippen that activates the underdamper: this gives considerable lever advantage at the key, probably on the order of 1:4, as opposed to the standard normal 1:1 which adds greatly to effective touch weight, and gives a big bump in the middle of the key stroke - unless the pedal is depressed, so pedaling affects touch far more in Herz and the modern piano. The under damper system can be removed easily as a unit for service. The linkage between key and wippen gives greater precision to the touch. The check attached to the wippen means the hammer rebound is felt far less (lever advantage again). (The virtually unadjustable check is due to Pierre. Sébastien's was screw adjustable in all the various patent drawings). The strange forked shank means the hammer is held far more firmly, giving a truer blow (as opposed to a dowel glued into a hole in the hammer molding). The action design allows a key to be removed for service by simply pulling it out. (The Herz design features had been anticipated by Montal years earlier).
- French piano manufacture in the first 2/3 of the 19th century is generally covered far less well than is English manufacture, for the simple reason that more of those researching and writing were English or Americans. The bias is rather striking, and omits or glosses over much of the most interesting (at least to me) developments and experiments. The American piano in the mid 19th century owed more to France than to England, with the French-invented square action (jack pinned to a rocker on the key) being nearly universal. (Interestingly, French squares were more likely to have the English grand action, something the English don't seem to have applied to their squares).
Original Message------
It's been many a long year since I have read these books (30?), so I would have to go through them again to be able to provide a list of inaccuracies. But there was a flurry of organological research and publication on the history of the piano here in Europe starting with the 1st Antverpiano conference in 1989, which seemed to reach its peak in the 2000's. Sadly, now, things have essentially come to a standstill. Much much work has been done on not only the early piano, largely by Steward Pollens, but also about the Viennese and German instruments of the mid to late 18th c. The one specific thing I can definitely recall (because I wrote a paper disproving it) is Good's propagation of the false notion that the overstrung frame allowed Steinway to use longer bass strings, and that it also "moved the bridges to the center of the soundboard", which is ostensibly the best location for a powerful tone. The former is simply objectively false, had anyone ever bothered to actually measure the string lengths, and the later is an extreme oversimplification of soundboard acoustics. I can't remember if any of these authors were still peddling the old Beethoven Op. 106 - Broadwood connection myth, but that is also undeniably false, since the instrument doesn't have enough notes and was conservative in its range by Viennese standards (Streicher built the first surviving 6 1/2 octave piano in 1807). The sketch books also prove the work was essentially complete before the Broadwood arrived. The copy of the 1802 Erard, a sister to Beethoven's Erard, which I helped Christopher Clarke make for the Paris museum also proves that the Anglo/Franco instrument was no more powerful than a typical Viennese of the time. A curious sidenote to the Beethoven Erard story... the account books of the Erard company went back into public hands 10 years or so ago after being in a private collection for decades, and it appears as though Beehoven's instrument was never paid for. Evidently he ordered it and then claimed it was a gift, counting that the difficulties of pursuing international legal disputes of the time would protect him.
Ciao,
Paul
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Paul Poletti
Builder/restorer historic keyboard instruments
Poletti Pianos
Barcelona
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