What's A Pianoforte?
I'm not afraid to admit it. I have no idea what a siena pianoforte is. But when I saw this album, I knew I had to buy it just because of the little sleepy guy perched atop the instrument. Turns out that it's a pretty neat little album. Lots of good songs on here in interesting arrangements. It's all played on the magic siena pianoforte, which sounds a lot like a plain piano to me, but I don't have the trained ears of an auteur. Why don't you download and tune your ears to Grace Castagnetta-Christmas On The Siena Pianoforte (Counterpoint/Esoteric (An Everest Records Production) S-2411-53005)? There's some noise on some of the tracks that I wish wasn't there, but you should be able to get the idea.
Pianoforte is the 'official' name of a piano. "Piano" means "quiet" and "forte" means "loud" so it means "soft loud". Most keyboards at the time it was invented only had one volume.
ReplyDeleteI thought the official name of a piano was Steinway, but what do I know?
ReplyDeleteFrom the Wikipedia entry for "Piano":
ReplyDeleteThe word piano is a shortened form of the word pianoforte, which is seldom used except in formal language and derived from the original Italian name for the instrument, clavicembalo [or gravicembalo] col piano e forte (literally harpsichord with soft and loud). This refers to the instrument's responsiveness to keyboard touch, which allows the pianist to produce notes at different dynamic levels by controlling the speed with which the hammers hit the strings.
Apparently this is no ordinary piano. The siena pianoforte is actually quite famous:
ReplyDeletehttp://sueannsnwprblog.blogspot.com/2006/09/story-of-siena-pianoforte.html
So now you know the rest of the story.
Available at Amazon.com:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.amazon.com/Christmas-Siena-Pianoforte-Digitally-Remastered/dp/B0050DOTE0/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1312579664&sr=1-1