From ancient times till present music has played a significant role in the culture of every nation.\u00a0\u00a0Can you imagine a life without music?\u00a0\u00a0Everyone is involved either passively or actively in some aspect of musical activity almost on a daily basis.\u00a0\u00a0Today of course it is much easier than in the past: more choices, better communication, technology and education.<\/p>\n
Bartolomeo\u00a0Cristofori\u00a0(1655-1731) constructed\u00a0\u2018Piano et forte\u2019<\/strong>\u00a0the first prototype of\u00a0the\u00a0\u00a0piano.\u00a0\u00a0Originally, only a privileged few could ever afford one of these instruments, primarily the nobility or very wealthy families.\u00a0\u00a0At that time the price of these instruments was equal to 3-4 times an average\u00a0persons\u00a0yearly income.\u00a0\u00a0Today owning a piano certainly will not cost such an extravagant sum.\u00a0\u00a0Every year here in the\u00a0US\u00a0over 175,000 new pianos\u00a0are\u00a0sold.\u00a0\u00a0More than 15 million homes, institutions, and businesses are furnished with pianos.\u00a0\u00a0The piano has become a very popular and integral keyboard instrument.<\/p>\n Antique pianos<\/strong>\u00a0were manufactured before 1800.\u00a0\u00a0They are called also\u00a0\u2018Historical\u2019 or<\/strong>\u00a0\u2018Renaissance\u2019<\/strong>\u00a0pianos.\u00a0\u00a0Their mechanical design was simple, mostly consisting of less than 85 keys, less strings and a completely different mechanism of action.\u00a0\u00a0On the other hand the exterior cabinetry was very ornate.\u00a0\u00a0Great musicians composed and performed baroque\/renaissance music on these early instruments.\u00a0\u00a0Today these pianos can primarily be viewed in museums.<\/p>\n From 1800-1860 is the\u00a0Victorian era<\/strong>\u00a0with its unique artful cases, candle stands and benches.\u00a0\u00a0Square grand\u2019s and giraffe pianos represent this period.\u00a0\u00a0A very large segment of classical music was composed and performed on these interval instruments.<\/p>\n In around 1860 started the\u00a0\u2018New Piano Era\u2019<\/strong>.\u00a0\u00a0In the piano industry this was a period of enormous engineering progress.\u00a0\u00a0Thanks to a number of French, German and some other European born engineers we have the modern construction and amazing action of today\u2019s acoustic piano.\u00a0\u00a0From that time on almost no engineering changes have occurred till present day.\u00a0\u00a0Because of the perfection of this period\u2019s invention we have a balanced piano with a piano action and damper system that produces great repetition and sound.<\/p>\n Starting around 1900 began what is known as the\u00a0\u2018Golden Era\u2019<\/strong>\u00a0in the industry.\u00a0\u00a0Many factories started production in larger scale due to a greater market demand and robust sales.<\/p>\n Player Pianos<\/strong>:\u00a0\u00a0The rolls operated piano was first manufactured in the 1890\u2019s.\u00a0\u00a0Its inventor was Melville Clark.\u00a0\u00a0The electrical pneumatic players have been around since the 1950\u2019s.\u00a0\u00a0Todays\u00a0modern players started in the late 1970\u2019s with\u00a0\u2018Pianocorder\u2019<\/strong>, a cassette player made by\u00a0Maratz.\u00a0\u00a0Shortly later\u00a0came\u00a0the\u00a0Floppy disk<\/strong>\u00a0and the\u00a0CD player<\/strong>\u00a0system.\u00a0\u00a0The innovation in these player piano systems is that they operate with a computer CD, are MIDI-compatible and produce \u2018life-like\u2019 music.\u00a0\u00a0Further, they are able to playback in 128 levels of tone expression and record a piano\u00a0players\u00a0performance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From ancient times till present music has played a significant role in the culture of every nation.\u00a0\u00a0Can you imagine a life without music?\u00a0\u00a0Everyone is involved either [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/pianodeal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/49"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/pianodeal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/pianodeal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pianodeal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pianodeal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/pianodeal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/49\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50,"href":"http:\/\/pianodeal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/49\/revisions\/50"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/pianodeal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}