Action (piano) - History

History

The piano action was the core of Bartolomeo Cristofori's invention of the piano (ca. 1700). Other than in the action, the first pianos were quite similar in construction to contemporary harpsichords.

Cristofori's action already embodied many of the principles still found in modern actions. It used levers to magnify the small motion of the key into a large motion of the hammer, and was arranged so that the very last part of the hammer's motion before striking the string would be purely the result of inertia and not be propelled by the key; this prevents the key from pressing the hammer firmly into the string and damping the sound.

After Cristofori's death in 1731, a number of makers (for instance, Gottfried Silbermann) built pianos with actions that were essentially copies of Cristofori's. Others produced quite different actions, often simpler and less effective ones. In (roughly) the 1770s, the Augsburg builder Johann Andreas Stein developed an entirely new action in which the orientation of the hammer was reversed, with the hammer head closer to the player. This "Viennese" action was widely used by makers in Vienna, and was the action of pianos played by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. It survived in Viennese pianos almost to the end of the 19th century.

The modern grand action is a distant descendent of Cristofori's original. It emerged from the work in the 1770s of Americus Backers, which established the normal action for English pianos. The English action was further modified by French builders in the 19th century, notably in the invention of the repetition lever, which facilitated rapidly repeating notes.

Throughout the history of the action, it tended to become heavier and sturdier, in response to the increasing size, weight, and robustness of the instrument in general.