May 04, 2015 :: Google is celebrating the 360th birthday of the piano’s inventor, Bartolomeo Cristofori, with a new Doodle.
Bartolomeo Cristofori di Francesco (4 May 1655 – 27 January 1731) was an Italian maker of musical instruments, generally regarded as the inventor of the piano.
The available source materials on Cristofori’s life include his birth and death records, two wills, the bills he submitted to his employers, and a single interview carried out by Scipione Maffei. From the latter, both Maffei’s notes and the published journal article are preserved.
Cristofori was born in Padua in the Republic of Venice. Nothing is known of his early life. A tale is told that he served as an apprentice to the great violin maker Nicolò Amati, based on the appearance in a 1680 census record of a “Christofaro Bartolomei” living in Amati’s house in Cremona. However, as Stewart Pollens points out,[1] this person cannot be Bartolomeo Cristofori, since the census records an age of 13, whereas Cristofori according to his baptismal record would have been 25 at the time. Pollens also gives strong reasons to doubt the authenticity of the cello and double bass instruments sometimes attributed to Cristofori.
