Talk:Bartolomeo Cristofori

message: *I reverted a random deletion, which was either vandalism or a careless error.
*Mentioned two earlier instruments by Cristofori; hope to have an article on the amazing oval spinet shortly.
*Amplify inventory of instruments and locations
*Design section:  I changed the hammers, from felt-wrapped to rolled paper.  I'm pretty sure this is correct, but please fix it if you know better.
*More design:  the internal bentside supporting the soundboard and the inverted wrestplank
*Discussion of what Cristofori's instruments sounded like (i.e., like harpsichords)
*Blurb from O'Brian comparing Cristofori to his contemporary Stradivarius.  Seems fair to me...
*Various external links, to the museums where the surviving instruments are kept, and to sound files.
This article needs a digital version of the one portrait of Cristofori; will try to scan one at some point.
Opus33 15:58, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Changes of Sept. 18, 2005

message: Tony Chinnery is an experienced expert on Cristofori who has built a number of replica Cristofori instruments now installed in museums.  I recently emailed Mr. Chinnery concerning another matter and he kindly offered comments concerning this article as it stood as of March 2006.  His comments are as follows:
:You say "First, a piano action must be arranged so that the hammer flies freely after being given impetus by the key". I think that gives the wrong impression. In Cristofori's design the hammer is lifted until it is very close to the string (1 or 2 mm) rather than being thrown from a distance as in mechanisms without escapement. It is this that gives the Cristofori action its refinement.  
:I think the intermediate lever was put in for reasons of geometry. After all a leverage of 1:8 can easily be obtained without one, as in Viennese pianos. But with backward facing hammers, the fulcrum of the hammer lever is only slightly behind the balance point of the keys, which is the wrong place to put the jack. The alternative would be  to widen the wrestblock, which Cristofori did not want.  The same would be true if the hammers were turned round, as in Viennese pianos: to get the striking point in the right place the wrestblock would have to be much widened, and the keys lengthened. The intermediate lever allows for a compact design, similar in dimensions to a harpsichord. However having backward facing hammers does have a consequence: the fulcrum of the hammers must be stable or the escapement point will change threatening the horrible effect when the hammer is blocked against the string.  So the hammers are mounted on a rigid block which occupies a lot of space, and Cristofori had to invert the wrestblock to create the required space.  
:You say  "The purpose of paper hammers is first to save weight". This is wrong because they were an addition to the hammers: in the Maffei drawing they are not there.  I was struck when making them with Kerstin [Schwarz] at how bouncy they are (the paper is soaked in glue making a very tough composite material). So I think they were added, as you also say, to change the elasticity of the hammers.  
:I would take issue on string material. I think it has become clear that Cristofori used brasss strings whenever possible (I say whenever possible because in the 2' register  in the 1726 harpsichord, there is a jump where the strings become too short for brass and Cristofori changes to iron). In fact an interesting discovery mentioned in our article on the 1690 spinet is that Cristofori used the same scaling and plucking points in his earliest dated instrument (the 1690 oval spinet) as in his last instruments: the Leipsig harpsichords. I have not studied the New York piano myself. Kerstin has, though, and it seems it has been very much altered, unlike the 1690 oval spinet and the Leipsig instruments, and cannot be used as evidence of Cristofori's intentions. It seems to me that cypress soundboards and brass strings go together: sweetness of sound rather than volume or brilliance. You do not seem to mention the interesting 1726 harpsichord except for a mention "Another harpsichord from the 18th century". 
I've tried to improve the article on the basis of these comments, but future edits might be able to make further use of them.
Opus33 18:25, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Some material from Tony Chinnery

message: Hello all, this is Charles in Yokohama. Just a quick comment: I think there may be something wrong with the following sentence: "It would hardly be surprising if Cristofori at age 33 had not already shown the inventiveness for which he later became famous."  I believe either the "hardly" or the "not" should be removed. Together, they produce an unintended double negative implying that Cristofori was _not_ inventive.
:Thanks, Charles, I've fixed it now.  Opus33 19:19, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Slight grammar problem?

message: CRISTIFORI WAS 76 YEARS OLD. HE WAS BORN ON MAY 4 1655. HE DIED ON JANUARY 27 1732.
97.117.146.158 (talk) 02:45, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I didn't know about your message on the talk page until I'd reverted your edit. You may be right, but we'd need to find a reliable source about the calendar mixup and we'd need to make the article consistent throughout. Also, please sign your messages with four tildes ("~~~~"). Graham87 14:13, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: For what it's worth, the table at New Year# Adoption of 1 January says that Tuscany started using 1 January as new year's day in 1721, but I don't have any more reliable sources to hand. Graham87 14:19, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

text: Can you point me to a reliable source that says these things, like a paper in a peer-reviewed journal article? Graham87 04:32, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  How Old Was Cristifori? 

message: This may sound too mysterious, but is true and could be easily verified. 
On March 18, 2006, a pianist and teacher from New Jersey, USA, named Lenny Bord, while visiting Italy as a tourist, walked into the basement of the Basilica di Santa Croce in Florence. There, among many other marble blocks and plaques with various names on them placed on the walls and on the floor of the basement, he found a strange one that had a curious design on it. It looked like a hand holding something like a smoking pipe, and above it a staff with musical notes. 
Although it looked like a tombstone of a musician, it turned out to be a memorial plaque installed by the city of Florence to commemorate the invention of the piano. 
Surprisingly, the existence of the plaque is hardly known by anyone today and is never mentioned in any articles about Cristofori. 
The hand on the plaque, as it turned out, is holding not a smoking pipe but the piano hammer invented by Cristofori. 
The inscription on the plaque says (I apologize for possible minor Italian grammar mistakes and mistranslations, but the content of the inscription does not leave any doubts):
A 
BARTOLOMEO CRISTOFORI
CEMBALARO DA PADOVA 
CHE IN FIRENZE 
NELL ANNO MDCCXI 
INVENTO 
IL CLAVICEMBALO COL FORTE E PIANO 
IL COMITETO FIORENTINO COOPERANTI ITALIANI E STRANIERI 
POSE QUESTA MEMORIA
MDCCCLXXVI'''
("To Bartolomeo Cristofori, a master from Padua, who in Florence, in the year of 1711, invented the Clavicembalo With Forte and Piano, the Florence's Committee of Cooperation of Italians and Foregners installed this memorial in the year of 1876")
The photograph of the plaque is here:
http://cid-e143c18755f745f2.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Pictures/Bartolomeo%7C_Cristofori%7C_Plaque.jpg
Photo by L. Bord, 2006.
Submitted by: --KeyBord88 (talk) 17:34, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Hello and thanks, this might make a good illustration (most pertinently:  of the rediscovery of Cristofori's status as piano inventor during the late 19th century, discussed in the article).  But the wiki-gnomes are absolutely fanatical about removing non-authorized images from this encyclopedia.  One needs to get the owner of the image to offer permission on a totally open-ended basis (using one of the public licenses listed on the image upload page).  I can explain further if you're new here.  Opus33 (talk) 17:50, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  The invention by Bartolomeo Cristofori immortalized by the city of Florence 

message: But why is Cristofori picking out 'Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring' ? This was never a keyboard piece in his time; we have to thank Myra Hess for that arrangement (in essence a piano reduction) which dates from 1926, and has since become a student piece, elevator music, even a kind of jig, God help us all. The artist/animator said he 'wanted a piece of music from that time'. He makes the same error as the producers of 'Amadeus', who had Salieri playing for his confessor the opening notes of the Serenade in G '(Eine Kleine Nachtmusik') which didn't become popular until a couple of centuries later... ai caramba....121.44.230.6 (talk) 07:07, 4 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Google Doodle 4 May 2015 

message: Calling Cristofori "Venetian" strikes me as hair-splitting.  The reference sources I've consulted indicated that Cristofori's own patriotic/sentimental affiliation was with Padua, the city of his birth.  For instance, he described himself as Paduan in the inscriptions on his instruments.  It's true that Padua at the time was under the domination of Venice, but it seems unlikely that Cristofori himself would have wanted to be considered a Venetian.  Calling him "Italian" is sufficiently general to gloss over this issue, and also reflects the practice of other reference sources.  Opus33 (talk) 16:30, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Nationality

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: None of the dictionaries have the term "Capo d'Astro", and though I have seen it before it sounds as a misunderstanding, mis-spelling of capo-tasto. Even guitar-players may call a Capo for "Capo d'Astro", and thus there could be a sort of majority pressure for having this as a new term (though only for craftsmen). The etymology poses a problem, Astro meaning star.
d-axel (talk) 13:11, 20 January 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Capo d'Astro is a misspelling of Capo-Tasto 

message: According to wiktionary[1] and the page Archicembalo the ethymology is from archi + cembalo, thus "primary harpsicord" not as is claimed here on this page.. "harp-harpsichord"
1https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/archicembalo 31.20.106.40 (talk) 12:19, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Seeming misinformation about ethymology of "Arpicembalo"