page_title: Fortepiano
section_title: Broadwood
hierarchical_section_title: Fortepiano / History / English builders / Broadwood
caption_attribution_description: Piano collection in the Musical Instrument Museum, Brussels, Belgium. John Broadwood, London, 1810.
context_page_description: A fortepiano is an early piano. In principle, the word "fortepiano" can designate any piano dating from the invention of the instrument by Bartolomeo Cristofori around 1700 up to the early 19th century. Most typically, however, it is used to refer to the late-18th to early-19th century instruments for which Haydn, Mozart, and the younger Beethoven wrote their piano music. Starting in Beethoven's time, the fortepiano began a period of steady evolution, culminating in the late 19th century with the modern grand. The earlier fortepiano became obsolete and was absent from the musical scene for many decades. In the 20th century the fortepiano was revived, following the rise of interest in historically informed performance. Fortepianos are built for this purpose today in specialist workshops.
context_section_description: John Broadwood married the master's daughter (Barbara Shudi, 1769) and ultimately took over and renamed the Shudi firm.  The Broadwood company (which survives to this day) was an important innovator in the evolution of the fortepiano into the piano.  Broadwood, in collaboration with Jan Ladislav Dussek, a noted piano virtuoso active in London in the 1790s, developed pianos that gradually increased the range to six octaves. Dussek was one of the first pianists to receive a 5½ foot piano, and in 1793 he wrote the first work for piano "with extra keys", a piano concert (C 97).  The firm shipped a piano to Beethoven in Vienna, which the composer evidently treasured.
caption: An 1810 Broadwood grand, kept in the Musical Instrument Museum in Brussels
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