Pianos have astounded us at chamber music concertos as well as solos, allowing different emotions and sensations in our bodies and minds vibrate to emerge.

Its common name is actually a shortened form of the Italian given name clavicembalo col piano e forte, meaning harpsichord with soft and loud (piano actually means “slow” in Italian).  The name basically makes reference of the instrument’s response to the touch of its keyboard, it being of both soft and loud levels.
Pianos were invented using technology from earlier string instruments, and the first version of this “string and percussion” instrument came during the last decade of the sixteen hundreds.  The inventor of modern pianos is considered to be Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, an instrument keeper for the Medici family.  Cristofori’s instrument was not very well known by the public until Francesco Scipione, an Italian writer and art critic, who wrote an article about this new instrument which included a diagram of its internal structure.

From the late eighteenth century to the mid nineteenth century, the piano underwent a serious of changes due to pianists and composers demanding a stronger, greater sound.  Those pieces composed by geniuses as Mozart, Haydn, Chopin, Mendelssohn, among others, were composed for a different type of instrument than the modern piano.