Survey 3 – Block books and baroque (1450-1750)

Porcelain and Pianos

While doing my research for the mood board I found a couple of things that piqued my interest but weren’t notable enough to be a whole event or topic. One of them being the invention and evolution of the piano. This interested me since when I was a lot younger, I played the piano up until seventh grade in which I dropped it and never touched it again, which is unfortunate because I did enjoy it and now, I don’t know how to play anything.

There were many instruments before the piano which helped shape the piano to its current form. The dulcimer was created in the 11th century. It was the simplest of the instruments and was a simple box with strings and a hammer attached. It is considered the piano ancestor.

The clavichord in the 14th century was another step towards the piano. It had a range of 4-5 octaves and was popular in the Renaissance.

Finally, the harpsichord in 1500’s. The overall look and structure of this instrument was closest to the piano.

Bartolomeo Cristofori (1655-1731) was the person who created the piano. It is not known the exact date the piano was invented but it was created around the year 1700. Cristofori created to piano to create both loud and soft noise to add emotion to music, compared to the harpsichord, which was just loud.

Another thing that I thought was interesting and I talked about in my mood board was porcelain. Porcelain was traded from Asian countries such as China and Dutch East India Company and Japan around 1660. Europeans took many years to master the craft of Porcelain.

Meissen porcelain, the name for European hard-paste porcelain was studied by Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus and Johann Friedrich Böttger. Even after Tschirnhau’s death, Böttger continued to lead experiments in the royal factory at Meissen which was started around 1710.