What advantages did the piano have over the clavichord and the harpsichord?

Answer 1

The main advantages are that it can produce a wider range of volumes, ranging from very soft to very loud, so it can be used to play musical pieces with more emotion and be used both in concert halls and at homes. Besides that, it can sustain notes much longer than the both the clavichord and the harpsichord, and since today there are many more pianos manufacturers than clavichords or hapsichords they're also generally cheaper, specially if a electronic piano is considered.

The piano's original name was "pianoforte", the two Italian words for "soft" and "loud".

Its clear predecessor was the clavichord, which featured one "tangent" per key, with a simple lever mechanism. The tangent looks somewhat like a chisel: it is a rod with one end widened, forming an upper surface which resembles a section of the bridge which defines one end of the vibrating string. The strings crossed such a continuous bridge which was mounted on the soundboard, and were damped at the other end with felt or leather. When the player depressed his end of a key, the other end brought the tangent up to strike the string, both setting it to vibrate and defining the length of string to vibrate with the tangent. Muting of strings simply involved releasing the key so the tangent was removed, and letting the damping material absorb the vibration energy. Because of the simple mechanism, the player could control the relative volume of the note, impart vibrato to the string, and to some extent controlling its pitch, by changing how hard the player pressed the key, causing the tangent to stretch the string. The down side of the clavichord is that it is a very quiet instrument: modern listeners need time away from the noise of modern life before they can hear the instrument from more than a few feet away. In the time of Bach, this was hardly a problem, and it is believed that the clavichord was Bach's favorite instrument for composing.

The harpsichord used a more complicated mechanism to raise a "jack" on the string end of each key. The jack plucked a string with a quill, so named because they were cut from bits of goose quill. The jack had an 'escapement' which allowed the quill to retract while the jack returned to its resting position, which kept the string from being plucked again when the key was released. A piece of felt, fixed to the jack, rested on the string to damp vibration and end the note. The jack-and-quill system did not allow the user much variation in volume, but certainly did not impede musicians from imparting emotion to the music they played upon it: instead of simply changing volume to bring out a line, players would control the duration of notes, and to some extent, the variation of the tempo, to shape the impact of the music on the listener. Additionally, some volume control was provided by multiple sets of strings with multiple jacks for each note, allowing the player (using a lever system) to engage only one, up to as many as four jacks at a time.

Both the clavichord and harpsichord were considerably lighter than the modern piano, and could be carried by a single person (two or three for the largest of harpsichords) without injury.

The piano is really dated from Christofori, whose invention was transmitted through an article written about his fortepianos to Gottfried Silberman, who in 1725, built two of them. Bach was said not to have been initially impressed with the instruments. The instrument didn't come into popularity, really, until a group of piano makers (known as the 12 disciples), some of whom were Silberman's students, went to England in about 1760, and J. C. Bach gave what is believed to be the first public concert on an instrument made by one of them (Zumpe). By 1773, Clementi's first piano sonata (op 2, written specifically for piano) was composed. In 1783, Broadwood added the sustaining pedal. In this period, pianos came in two varieties, the square pianos of England, and the Viennese piano. Mozart made the piano desirable using the latter, which offered a lighter touch, crisper trebles and better damping mechanism than the English variety.

The pianoforte used hammers covered in leather, and an escapement system which (in the grand-configuration) allowed re-launching the hammer after it had already struck the string without it having to come all the way to rest. Eventually, felt covers replaced leather on the hammers, the addition of a metal support (harp) allowed increased string tension, wrapped bass strings allowed some reduction in instrument length, and tripling the trebles and doubling the tenors allowed balancing the sound of the newer designs. This is really the point at which the pianoforte became the modern piano.

The sustain mechanism allows sustaining a single note by holding that key down, and a second mechanism connected to a pedal to lock the dampers for individual keys if they are raised. A second pedal lifts all of the dampers at once, while a third shifts the entire mechanism, keyboard, hammers and escapement, to allow the hammers to hit only one string in each duple or triple. It is this last pedal which gives the piano its amazing sustain: the struck string brings the other strings in its group to vibration slowly as it reduces its own volume, causing a bell-like beginning, and carrying the vibration on for a very long time as the energy of vibration is traded back and forth between the strings.

So the Pianos major benefits over its predecessors, from a mechanical point of view, are its ability to vary the volume of each individual key under the control of the player, its sustain mechanisms, its greater overall volume capability, and a much larger existing repertoire of music written specifically to benefit from these abilities. The piano is also capable of playing, effectively, much of the repertoire of the centuries before it was invented, while the clavichord and harpsichord would have a hard time with the majority of music written for piano!

On the other hand, the grand piano is anything but a good apartment-mate, it is far too heavy for even four people to transport any distance without considerable use of lifting and rolling mechanisms, and the floor upon which it is played should be reinforced! As early as the British square pianos, efforts were taken to reduce the size of the instrument, and upright pianos, with a variety of mechanisms to imitate the action of grand pianos, have been produced in parallel with grand pianos for two centuries. The smallest uprights compromise sound with string length limits, while the largest of them are heavy enough to endanger weak floors.

Answer 2

1. The sound - There are also no louds or softs in harpsichord. The notes have always the same volume; the sound on a hapsichord also fades away faster;

2. The existence of pedals - the harpsichord has no pedals, so it can't sustain chords unless the keys are pressed, for instance.

Answer 3

As of nowadays not many, i think. There are so many piano manufacturers that even the price is lower to make a piano than a harpsichord. Apart from that the haprsichord can't play notes louder or softer, it always the same volume, and the notes don't last for long even if you let your finger pressing the key.

However, if you prefer the harpsichords sound, it can be considered an advantage.

Answer 4

The piano brought about much more use in dynamics. Also, pianos are able to stay tuned longer than the other two.

Answer 5

clavichord generates softer sound than a piano, and is smaller, but was built before the piano