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A Keyboard of Cypress

April 30, 2019

Around the year 1700, Bartolomeo Cristofori was the Keeper of the Instruments for the Grand Prince of Tuscany. Cristofori was an expert maker of harpsichords, but a drawback to these plucked instruments was the utter lack of dynamics. No matter how hard you hit the key, the volume of the note was exactly the same.

So he set about to make a hammered instrument that could be played at different volumes. He named the result un cimbalo di cipresso di piano e forte (“a keyboard of cypress with soft and loud”), which was abbreviated over time as pianoforte, fortepiano, and finally, piano.

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The Introduction

Hello! I am a director, an editor, a performance artist performing alt-comedy TED Talk style lectures with music loops, diagrams and preposterous arcana, a professor, a podcaster, and your friend. If you'd like to know more about when I'm performing, visit The Pizzicato Effect.

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Unpaid Interns from Brendan Hughes on Vimeo.

 

A Lesson at Classon Avenue on the G. from Brendan Hughes on Vimeo.

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