Since it has 88 keys, World Piano Day is celebrated on the 88th day of the calendar.
But who, on whatever page of the almanac, hasn’t been deeply shaken by hearing a piano?
Little determines whether the mysteries of the pentagram are known or not, nor does age or occupation play a role. Music is such a universal language that it speaks to us all… and we understand it.
In any case, German pianist Nils Frahm has had the initiative since 2015, and it is usually celebrated on March 29th or 28th, when the years are leap years.
The oldest piano in the world dates from 1720 and is one of three instruments made in Bartolomeo Cristofori’s workshop. Photo: adapted from metmuseum.org
It was at the beginning of the 18th century that the Italian Bartolomeo Cristofori gave the world the “Clavicémbalo col piano e forte” which was a substitute for the harpsichord but unlike it allowed subtle gradations of volume and tone, produced soft (piano) or strong (forte) tones, depending on how intense the pressure on the keys was.
These first pianofortes did not have as many tones as the present ones, nor did they have as rich a timbre, but in any case, and with good reason, they immediately asserted themselves in the hitherto unimaginable possibilities they offered to performers and composers.
However, when tracing back the history of these unique sounds, it is worth noting that one of the piano’s most distant relatives was the Hydraulis organ of ancient Greece, while the zither is the oldest stringed instrument, with origins dating back to the middle Ages: Bronze in Africa and Southeast Asia.
The oldest stringed musical instrument related to the piano is the zither. The zither, whose origin dates back to the Bronze Age (about 3000 BC), comes from Africa and Southeast Asia.
The piano has undergone various transformations to become the instrument we know today and whose strings, which in the case of a typical concert piano hold the 88 notes, can withstand a tension of 20 tons.
Photo: taken from hinves.com
It was at the end of the 18th century when the piano came to Cuba along with the French immigrants from Haiti and very quickly became a favorite to which the French pianist Juan Federico Edelman contributed with his Santa Cecilia Academy, who was among his students to Manuel Saumell.
Some of the most famous Cuban pianists include Harold Gramatges, Eliseo Grenet, Ernesto Lecuona, Adolfo Guzmán, Frank Fernández, Chucho Valdés and José María Vitier, although many more are included in this list.
And there are countless who, today in Cuba and around the world, are celebrating this World Piano Day without fanfare, as matters of the soul deserve.
The Cuban pianist and composer José María Vitier García-Marruz. Photo: Melissa Maura Perez.