‘Fortepiano’ is Italian for ‘loud-soft’ just as the formal name for the modern piano,
‘pianoforte’, is Italian for ‘soft-loud’. Both are abbreviations of Cristofori’s original
name for his invention ‘gravicembalo col’ (or ‘di’) piano e forte, ‘harpsichord with soft
and loud’. The term ‘fortepiano’ is somewhat specialist in its connotations and does not
preclude using the more general term ‘piano’ to designate the same instrument. Thus,
usages like ‘Cristofori invented the piano’ or ‘Mozart’s piano concertos’ are currently
common and would probably be considered acceptable by most musicians. ‘Fortepiano’
is used in contexts where it is important to make the precise identity of the instrument
clear as in, for example, ‘a fortepiano recital by Malcolm Bilson’.
The use of ‘fortepiano’ particularly to refer to early pianos appears to be recent. Even the
Oxford English Dictionary does not record this usage, noting only that ‘fortepiano’ is ‘an
early name for the pianoforte’. During the age of the fortepiano, ‘fortepiano’ and
‘pianoforte’ were used interchangeably, as the OED’s attestations show. Jane Austen,
who lived in the age of the fortepiano, used ‘pianoforte’, ‘piano-forte’ and ‘piano forte’
for the many occurrences of the instrument in her work.
FRANCK
César Franck (1822-1890) was born in modern-day Belgium of German background and
became a naturalised Frenchman. Franck is well known as an organist and organ
composer but he was originally a concert pianist and wrote a number of early virtuoso
pieces for the piano. His organ works have a pianistic feel and his later piano works have
an organ sonority.
As a piano composer his fame rests on his ‘Symphonic Variations’ for piano and
orchestra and for his two large-scale pieces for solo piano, the ‘Prelude, Chorale and
Fugue’ and ‘Prelude, Aria and Finale’.
Franck also wrote a Sonata for violin and piano in A major, a Piano Quintet in F minor, a
String Quartet in D major, a Symphony in D minor, and twelve major works for Organ.
All these works are of very high quality.
Many of Franck’s works employ the cyclical form in which all the main themes are
derived from a germinal motif. The main melodic subjects are then recapitulated in the
final movement. Franck’s music is often contrapuntally complex and uses a late
Romantic harmonic idiom influenced by Liszt and Wagner. Franck is noted for his
chromaticism, modulatory style and individual method of inflecting melodic phrases. His
music includes moods that are serious, reverential, mysterious, passionate, sublime,
joyful and ecstatic.
FRENCH PIANOS
By the 1820s the centre of innovation had shifted to Paris where the Erard firm
manufactured pianos used by Chopin and Liszt. Sébastien Erard invented the double