The Eighteenth-Century Fortepiano Grand and Its Patrons

“Badura-Skoda addresses the place of the piano in the eighteenth century from the perspective of a scholar and performer” ( Eighteenth-Century Music ). In the late seventeenth century, Italian musician and inventor Bartolomeo Cristofori developed a new musical instrument—his cembalo che fa il piano e forte , which allowed keyboard players flexible dynamic gradation. This innovation, which came to be known as the hammer-harpsichord or fortepiano grand, was slow to catch on in musical circles. How