The first music specifically written for fortepiano dates from this period. It was the
‘Sonate di cimbalo di piano’ of 1732 by Lodovic Giustini and publication may have been
meant as an honour for the composer on the part of his royal patrons. There would have
been no commercial market for fortepiano music at that time.
The fortepiano did not achieve popularity until the 1760s when the first written records of
public performances on the fortepiano came into existence and music described as being
for the fortepiano was first widely published.
It was Gottfried Silbermann who brought the construction of fortepianos to the German-
speaking countries. Silbermann, who worked in Freiburg, Germany, began to make
pianos based on Cristofori’s design around 1730. His previous experience had been in
building organs, harpsichords and clavichords. Like Cristofori, Silbermann had royal
support, in his case from Frederick the Great who bought many of his instruments.
Silbermann’s instruments were famously criticised by Johann Sebastian Bach around
1736, but later instruments encountered by Bach in his Berlin visit apparently met with
the composer’s approval. The improvement in Silbermann’s instruments may have
resulted from having seen an actual Cristofori piano rather than merely reading Maffei’s
article. The piano action Maffei described does not match that found on surviving
Cristofori instruments. Maffei either erred in his diagram, which he made from memory,
or Cristofori may have improved his action during the period following Maffei’s article.
Silbermann is credited with the invention of the forerunner of the damper pedal which
removes the dampers from all the strings at once, permitting them to vibrate freely.
Silbermann’s device was in fact only a hand stop and thus could be changed only at a
pause in the music. Throughout the classical period, even when the more flexible knee
levers or the pedals had been installed, the lifting of all the dampers was used primarily
as a colouristic device. In the post-fortepiano era of the nineteenth century, the damper
pedal became the foundation of piano sound, which came to rely on the sympathetic
vibrations of the undamped but unstruck strings.
The fortepiano builders who followed Silbermann introduced actions that were simpler
than the Cristofori action, even to the point of lacking an escapement. An escapement is
the device that permits the hammer to fall to rest position even when the key has been
depressed. Instruments without an escapement were were the subject of criticism,
particularly in a widely quoted letter from Mozart to his father, but they were simple to
make and were widely incorporated into square pianos.
One of the most distinguished fortepiano builders in the era following Silbermann was
one of his pupils, Johann Andreas Stein, who worked in Augsburg, Germany. Stein’s
fortepianos had ‘backwards’ hammers, with the striking end closer to the player than the
hinged end. This action came to be called the ‘Viennese’ action and was widely used in
Vienna even on pianos up to the mid nineteenth century. The Viennese action was
simpler than the Cristofori action and was very sensitive to the player’s touch. The force
needed to depress a key on a Viennese fortepiano was only about one quarter of what it is