Meet the Inventor of the Piano

Bartolomeo Cristofori worked in the shadow of grand courts, building keyboards for aristocratic patrons. What set him apart was a single, elegant idea: an instrument that could play both softly and loudly at the touch of the player. He called it the gravicembalo col piano e forte — the harpsichord with soft and loud. His mechanism was ingenious and reliable, and although the piano's popularity took decades to spread, Cristofori's basic action still lives inside modern instruments today.