In a Word . . . piano

Dear Oscar. He could not resist a clever pun. Then he did say, "I can resist everything but temptation." In his play The Important of Being Earnest Oscar Wilde has the character Algernon playing the piano off stage. We hear him as his butler Lane is arranging a table on stage for afternoon tea.

The music stops and Algernon enters, when the following exchange takes place. Algernon: “Did you hear what I was playing, Lane?”

Lane: “I didn’t think it polite to listen, sir.”

Algernon: “I’m sorry for that, for your sake. I don’t play accurately – anyone can play accurately – but I play with wonderful expression. As far as the piano is concerned sentiment is my forte. I keep science for Life.” And so it continues.

In the play Oscar is punning on the correct name for that wonderful and versatile instrument, the pianoforte. It is a combination of two Italian words piano meaning soft and forte meaning loud.Over time, and as is the way of things, pianoforte became the simpler piano.

Up to the middle of the 18th century, the more common stringed instrument in better-off households was the harpsichord – from the Latin harpa, harp, and chorda, string. Its strings were plucked by quills but the players had no control over either the volume or length of notes.

The invention of the modern piano is credited to Bartolomeo Cristofori from Padua in Italy, an expert maker of harpsichords. In the early 1700s he created what is believed to be the first piano.

It had a board of 88 black and white keys which operate hammers that strike wires, where the level of loudness is dependent on how hard the player strikes the keys. It also has pedals, to regulate the length and volume of notes.

Cristofori died in 1731 but it was really only in the period from about 1790 that the instrument we recognise today as a piano came about and grew rapidly in popularity.

Which is all very well until you go to Italy. Imagine my confusion on being in a building in Rome and seeing each ascending floor described as Piano 2, Piano 3 etc. Piano, I discovered, can also mean floor. There is a common base with the instrument. The root of the word piano is the Latin planus , meaning flat, smooth, even, floor, plane.

[ inaword@irishtimes.com ]