Portal:Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played using a keyboard. It is widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment and for composing and rehearsal. Although the piano is not portable and often expensive, its versatility and ubiquity have made it one of the world's most familiar musical instruments.
Pressing a key on the piano's keyboard causes a padded (often with felt) hammer to strike steel strings. The hammers rebound, and the strings continue to vibrate at their resonant frequency. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a sounding board that more efficiently couples the acoustic energy to the air. The sound would otherwise be no louder than that directly produced by the strings. When the key is released, a damper stops the string's vibration and the sound. In the Hornbostel-Sachs system of instrument classification, pianos are considered chordophones.
The word piano is a shortened form of pianoforte (PF), the Italian word for the instrument (which in turn derives from the previous terms gravicembalo col piano e forte and fortepiano). The Italian musical terms piano and forte indicate "soft" and "strong" respectively, in this context referring to the variations in sound volume the instrument produces in response to a pianist's touch on the keys: the greater the velocity of a key press, the greater the force of the hammer hitting the strings, and the louder the sound of the note produced. This is in contrast to the predecessor of the piano, the harpsichord, which cannot produce different dynamics depending on how hard the key is pressed.
Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'Module:Box-header/colours' not found.
Claudio Arrau León (February 6, 1903 – June 9, 1991) was a Chilean-American pianist known for his interpretations of a vast repertoire spanning from the baroque to 20th-century composers, especially Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, Brahms and Debussy. He is widely considered one of the greatest pianists of the twentieth century. According to American critic Harold C. Schonberg, Arrau always put "a decidedly romantic piano tone in his interpretations".
Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'Module:Box-header/colours' not found.
Bechstein is a German manufacturer of pianos established in 1853 by Carl Bechstein, who set out to manufacture a piano able to withstand the great demands imposed on the instrument by the virtuosi of the time such as Franz Liszt. In 1857, Hans von Bülow (Liszt's son-in-law) gave the first public performance on a Bechstein grand piano. Today, Bechstein is in competition with Steinway & Sons, although the Bechstein sound is very different from Steinway's.
Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'Module:Box-header/colours' not found.
| 50px |
|
| Problems playing this file? See media help. | |
Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'Module:Box-header/colours' not found.
Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'Module:Box-header/colours' not found.
| “ | If I hadn't been President of the United States, I probably would have ended up a piano player in a bawdy house. | ” |
Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'Module:Box-header/colours' not found.
… that since the 1950s, piano keys are no longer made from ebony and ivory but plastics?
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Jazz | Classical music | Rock and Roll | Music |
|---|
- What are portals?
- List of portals
- Featured portals
.jpg){kind=link}
