What is the difference between a piano and a piano?

 One of the common questions causes confusion and confusion among many people. This is a question about the difference between a piano and a piano. Some try to highlight the signs of both, and sometimes even surprise musicians by distinguishing pianos and pianos by size, sound quality, color, and even tasteful smell. Various people have asked me this many times, but now I deliberately asked myself this question in order to give an answer in this article for all those who are still tormented by doubts.

But the whole point is that a musical instrument with the respectable name of piano does not seem to exist! How so? – the reader may be indignant. It turns out that the word piano refers to all keyboard musical instruments, the sound of which arises as a result of hammers connected to the keys striking the strings. There are only two such instruments – the grand piano and the upright piano. Piano has become a collective name for pianos and grand pianos – the most common forms in musical practice. Nobody confuses them with each other.

However, in fairness, it is worth saying that the first instruments of this kind with a hammer mechanism were still called pianos, or more precisely pianofortes, due to the ability to produce sounds of different volumes. By the way, the name of the piano arose precisely from the combination of two Italian words: , which means “strong, loud” and , that is, “quiet”. The hammer mechanism was invented by the Italian master Bartolomeo Cristofori somewhere at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries and was intended to modernize the harpsichord (an ancient keyboard instrument, the predecessor of the piano, the strings of which were not struck with a hammer, but plucked with a small feather).

Cristofori’s piano was similar in shape to a grand piano, but it was not yet called that. The name “grand piano” comes from the French language; this word means “royal”. This is how the French dubbed the Cristofori piano the “royal harpsichord.” Piano, translated from Italian, means “small piano.” This instrument appeared 100 years later. Its inventors, masters Hawkins and Muller, figured out to change the arrangement of strings and mechanisms from horizontal to vertical, which helped reduce the size of the piano. This is how the piano appeared – the “small” piano.