Origin of the English word piano

Origin of the English word piano:

The English word for piano is pianoforte, which is a concatenation of the Italian musical terms for "weak" (piano) and "strong" (forte). The word is a concatenation of the Italian musical terms "weak" (piano) and "strong" (forte). The reason why foreign countries use such a strange word to call the piano is closely related to the history of the development of piano manufacturing.

The world's first modern piano was made in 1710 by the Italian Christofori, who synthesized the advantages of two ancient keyboard instruments: an ancient piano and a harpsichord. Their structure has its own characteristics: the former has a copper block at the end of the lever linked to the keys to strike the strings to pronounce the sound, but the copper block does not leave the strings immediately after striking the strings, but only makes a certain part of the strings to vibrate, so the same strings can be separated by the copper block of the different keys to vibrate the sound of the different lengths to produce different pitches; the latter's keys are linked to the lever with a pinnule and the leather on the top of the lever, which is used for plucking the strings to pronounce the sound, but the strings leave the strings immediately after plucking, so that the whole strings can be plucked to make the sound of the strings. The latter have levers with lupins and leather at the top of which the strings are plucked, but the strings are immediately removed from the strings, so that the whole string vibrates, so that each string has only one note, which is plucked by a special key. These two instruments were weakly articulated and did not vary much in volume or tone. By Kristofori modified piano, using the principle of the ancient piano keys, will be changed from copper to felt; also used the harpsichord of each string a key to the whole string vibration method, so that the sound of the piano has been a leap of change, both weak and strong play, enhance the contrast of strength, and the tone of the rich and varied, rich in the expressive power of the piano.

Cristofori named the harpsichord "weak or strong"

in order to distinguish it from the original two keyboard instruments, but the name was both long and impractical, so he took the two words that best expressed its acoustic characteristics and turned them into pianoforte, which made the original name of the piano "weak or strong". The original name of the piano was pianoforte, meaning "weak and strong". This name has been common in all countries, only Germany is still using the name of the old piano that is Clavier (klavier).

After the piano was introduced into our country, a long period of time along with the original piano translation of the "newspaper Yana". Later, because no matter whether the transliteration or translation of the name "weak and strong" can not better express the characteristics of the instrument, but also not quite in line with the habits of expression of the language in China, so according to it is mainly made of steel soundboard frame on the structure of the Zhang wire strings features, named "piano".