Author Description

This book charts the progress of the piano and related instruments during the lifetimes of Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven. Wherever possible the author returns to the original sources--a wide variety of previously unreported documents, as well as surviving instruments--to reconstruct the history of the pianoforte that radically departs from earlier theories of many of the most fundamental issues. A wide range of instruments, each carefully described, is placed in a precise chronological and cultural setting. New insights are offered into the parameters that governed the performance of keyboard music in the Classical Era.