Bartolomeo Cristofori and the Invention of the Piano

This is the first comprehensive study of the life and work of Bartolomeo Cristofori, the Paduan-born harpsichord maker and contemporary of Antonio Stradivari, who is credited with having invented the pianoforte around the year 1700 while working in the Medici court in Florence. Through thorough analysis of documents preserved in the State Archive of Florence, Pollens has reconstructed, in unprecedented technical detail, Cristofori's working life between his arrival in Florence in 1688 and his death in 1732. This book will be of interest to pianists, historians of the piano, musicologists, museum curators and conservators, as well as keyboard instrument makers, restorers, and tuners.

Introduction; 1. Bartolomeo Cristofori in Padua; 2. Cristofori in Florence; 3. Cristofori's extant instruments; 4. Musical life in Florence in Cristofori's time; 5. Cristofori's influence; 6. Conclusion.

Trained as a violin and keyboard instrument maker, Stewart Pollens served as the conservator of musical instruments at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York between 1976 and 2006, and is the Director of the firm Violin Advisor, LLC. He is the author of numerous scholarly articles and award-winning publications on musical instrument history including The Early Pianoforte (Cambridge, 1995), Stradivari (Cambridge, 2010) and the The Manual of Musical Instrument Conservation (Cambridge, 2015).