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“It was the Italians who, late in the sixteenth century, had created the opera, with its preoccupation with solo singing and the surges and droops natural to it. Indeed, opera was practically an Italian proprietary recipe, exported as such over the rest of Europe. The Italians were also interested in making instruments “sing.” The bowed string-instruments were the most likely subjects for that endeavor, and we see that same seventeenth century in Italy witnessing a matchless development in the making of violins of all sizes. Let us recall that Cristofori’s early pianofortes coincided with Stradivari’s “golden period.” It was a near-lying idea, then, for an Italian to wish to build a capacity for “expression” even into a keyboard instrument.”
― Men, Women and Pianos: A Social History
― Men, Women and Pianos: A Social History
“IT IS NOT HARD to understand how it came that the first successful attempt to construct a keyboard instrument “col piano e forte” should have occurred in Italy. Though not untouched by the rationalism of seventeenth-century thought, the Italians in general could not, like many North Germans, find full musical satisfaction in the segregation of phrases, voices, or sections into rigid, monotonous dynamic levels. For a hundred years before Cristofori, “expression” had been one of the chief concerns of Italian musicians and their hearers.”
― Men, Women and Pianos: A Social History
― Men, Women and Pianos: A Social History
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