Piano Trivia and Fun Facts

At Piano Emporium, we are big fans of the piano. We’ve compiled a few fun facts about the piano below. Enjoy! 

• The piano was invented in Italy in 1709 by harpsichord maker Bartolomeo di Francesco Cristofori. One of Cristofori’s original pianos is still in existence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
• The word piano is the shortened version of the word pianoforte, which means soft (piano) and loud (forte).
• The first pianos were too expensive for even the very wealthy to own. For nearly a century only aristocrats and royalty owned pianos. How times have changed!
• A new piano should be tuned four times a year to adjust to its new environment and changing seasons. After the first year, tuning twice a year is sufficient. 
• Pianos have a total of 88 black and white keys.
• Wow! The piano has the widest range of tones of all instruments. A piano plays a note lower than the lowest note on a double-bassoon and higher than the top note of a piccolo – an entire orchestral range in one instrument! When seated at a piano, the deepest bass range is the first key on your left, and the highest treble is the last key on the right.
• The piano can play accompaniment and melody at the same time.
• The piano is an incredibly intricate instrument. It has over 12,000 parts, 10,000 of which are moving.
• There are 18 million non-professional piano players in the USA alone.
• The exact middle of a piano keyboard is NOT middle C. It is actually the space between E and F above middle C.
• In grand pianos, the frame and the strings extend horizontally. In upright pianos, the frame and the strings are extended vertically.
• The piano can be considered both a string and percussion instrument. (Most categorize it as a percussion instrument because hammers strike the strings inside to produce sound)
• Each string usually holds around 168 pounds of tension. The total tension of most standard pianos is around 18-20 tons. Some of the largest grand pianos hold up to 30 tons of tension!
• The harp, or the metal frame of the piano, is usually made of cast iron.
• Up until the 1950s, piano keys were made from elephant tusks. Today, in order to protect and preserve elephants, most piano keys are made from plastic.
• Pedals on pianos are called – from left to right – una corda, sostenuto, and the sustain pedal.
• The largest piano ever made weighs 1.4 tons and is 5.7 meters long. The piano was made by Adrian Mann, a New Zealand piano tuner.
• Polish musician Romuald Koperski holds the record for the longest piano concert ever held: 103 hours and 8 seconds long.