Pianoforte [piano]

A keyboard instrument distinguished by the fact that its strings are struck by rebounding hammers rather than plucked (as in the harpsichord) or struck by tangents that remain in contact with the strings (as in the clavichord).

In the Hornbostel-Sachs classification of instruments the piano is reckoned as a box zither.

Main characteristics

The piano has occupied a central place in professional and domestic music-making since the third quarter of the 18th century. In addition to the great capacities inherent in the keyboard itself – the ability to sound simultaneously at least as many notes as one has fingers and therefore to be able to produce an approximation of any work in the entire literature of Western music – the piano’s capability of playing notes at widely varying degrees of loudness in response to changes in the force with which the keys are struck, permitting crescendos and decrescendos and a natural dynamic shaping of a musical phrase, gave the instrument an enormous advantage over its predecessors, the clavichord and the harpsichord.

Origin of the name

The instrument’s modern name is a shortened form of that given in the first published description of it (1711) by Scipione Maffei where it is called ‘gravecembalo col piano, e forte’ (‘harpsichord with soft and loud’). 18th-century English sources used the terms ‘pianaforte’ and ‘fortepiano’ interchangeably with ‘pianoforte’; some scholars reserve ‘fortepiano’ for the 18th- and early 19th-century instrument, but the cognate is used in Slavonic countries to refer to the modern piano as well. The German word ‘Hammerklavier’ might refer to the piano in general or alternatively to the square piano as distinct from the grand piano (‘Flügel’).

Understanding the mechanism

The modern piano consists of six major elements: the strings, the metal frames, the soundboard and bridges, the action, the wooden case and the pedals. There are three strings for each note in the treble, two for each note in the tenor, and one for each note in the bass. The massive metal frame supports the enormous tension that the strings impose (approximately 18 tons or 16,400 kg). The bridges communicate the vibrations of the strings to the soundboard which enables these vibrations to be efficiently converted into sound waves, thereby making the sound of the instrument audible. The action consists of the keys, the hammers, and the mechanism that impels the hammers towards the strings when the keys are depressed. The wooden case encloses all of the foregoing. The right pedal (the ‘loud’ or ‘sustaining’ pedal) acts to undamp all the strings enabling them to vibrate freely regardless of what keys are depressed. The left pedal (the ‘soft pedal’ or ‘una corda’) acts to reduce the volume of tone, either by moving the hammers sideways so that they strike only two of the three strings provided for each note in the treble and one of the two strings provided for each note in the tenor, or by bringing the hammers closer to the strings, thus shortening their stroke, or – on some upright pianos – by interposing a strip of cloth between the hammers and the strings to produce a muffled tone. The middle pedal, when present, acts to keep the dampers raised on only those notes being played at the moment the pedal is depressed.

History of the manufacture

There is currently no doubt that Bartolomeo Cristofori, keeper of instruments at the Medici court in Florence, had actually constructed a working piano before any other maker was even experimenting in this field. The detailed description of an ‘arpicimbalo di nuova inventione’ in an inventory of the Medici instruments for 1700 establishes that he had by that year already completed at least one instrument of this kind. A precise date is found in an inscription made by Federigo Meccoli (a court musician in Florence) in a copy of Gioseffo Zarlino’s Le istitutioni harmoniche, which states that the 'arpi cimbalo del piano e’ forte' was invented by Cristofori in 1700.

Before 1765 the pianoforte did not occupy a prominent position in France or Britain. Some hammer instruments of both German and Italian designs were seen in London before 1760. Nevertheless, scattered documentary sources indicate that, as in northern Germany, some early examples were heard and admired during the 1730s and 40s. The environment was still dominated by the harpsichord, therefore pianos were comparatively scarce and undeveloped, and had little influence on repertory or performance.

The tardy acceptance of the piano was soon to be rapidly accelerated by events in London. In September 1761 Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz became queen of England, aged 17. Her enthusiastic harpsichord playing and penchant for modern music led to the selection of J.C. Bach as her music master by 1763.

The great change in the period from 1860 to World War I was the shift in piano manufacture from the craft shop to a factory system. The spread of factories brought a tremendous growth in piano production, making much less expensive instruments available to more modest households.

The piano began to be more than a European instrument. It spread to European colonies, as colonial officials and settlers desired the cultural goods they had known at home. After the Meiji Restoration, when in 1868 Japan first opened itself to the West, the Japanese government began an intensive overhauling of the educational system, including the widespread teaching of the piano and violin in schools.

By the onset of World War I, as well as being an international instrument, it was now a nearly ubiquitous furnishing and a source of pride and pleasure in even extremely modest homes. It had also become a modern instrument, manufactured by the latest technological means, designed to withstand climates of all sorts, and marketed by the most up-to-date methods.

During the 1920s the radio was becoming ever more popular as a source of musical and other entertainment – and it was, if anything, even easier to play than the player piano and the piano's status as a domestic instrument receded and has never been quite regular. With the Depression piano manufacture underwent a drastic decline. World War II brought an already badly depressed piano industry to a halt. Every country involved required piano companies to stop using valuable steel, iron and other materials for such frivolities as musical entertainment.

A striking trend of the late 20th century was the spread of electronic keyboards and their offspring. Indeed, the term ‘keyboard’ has come in the USA to mean an electronic instrument, as distinct from a piano. Synthesizers and MIDI controllers now use the keyboard format almost exclusively, and it is a mild irony that these instruments on their stands look much like little 18th-century square pianos. Several companies have introduced computer-driven reproducing systems attached to conventional pianos, whereby the pianist can record a performance to disk and play it back on the piano itself, or play a pre-recorded performance from computer disk or compact disc. Yamaha has been in the forefront of this development, but Music Research Systems in the USA, which owns the Mason & Hamlin, Knabe and Sohmer piano brands names, pioneered a digital instrument, and both Baldwin and Bösendorfer have produced similar systems.

Piano playing

The history of piano playing is tied to a great many factors: the development of the instrument, the evolution of musical styles, shifts in the relationship of the performer to the score, the rise of virtuosity, the idiosyncrasies of individual artists, changes in audience tastes and values, and even socio-economic developments. On a more practical level piano playing is concerned primarily with matters of touch, fingering, pedaling, phrasing and interpretation. Even a discussion limited primarily to these can point out only the major signposts along the three centuries of the instrument’s existence.

Classical period

The earliest performers brought with them well-established techniques for playing the harpsichord and clavichord, both of which were essentially domestic instruments in spite of their cultivation at leading courts throughout Europe. The best international keyboard repertory required considerable agility, dexterity and coordination, but minimal strength. With a maximum range of five octaves, coupled with long-standing resistance on the part of composers to the fully chromatic use of the keyboard (embraced only by J.S. Bach), there were inherent limits to the musical and technical demands a composer might make upon a player.

It is known that both Carl Philipp Emanuel and his father had access to the Silbermann pianos at the court of Frederick the Great in Potsdam, where the former was employed, but apart from Johann Sebastian’s suggestions for improving the action on his visit in 1747 there is no documentation of his performances on the new instrument. Hence for the first six decades or so after its invention the piano co-existed with its more established rivals.

Romantic period

The dawn of Romanticism in the 1830s brought with it the specialization that produced a breed of pianists who were to dominate the salons and concert halls of Europe for the next 80 years. Although the number of amateur pianists continued to grow, the keyboard became increasingly the realm of the virtuoso who performed music written by and for other virtuosos. It is no accident that two composers on the threshold of the new movement, Weber and Schubert, each wrote a great deal of highly original piano music but were also highly original orchestrators, while two full-blooded Romantics of the next generation, Chopin and Schumann, have their achievements more clearly bounded by the capabilities and limitations of the piano.

Weber was an accomplished pianist, but both he and Schubert dreamt of success in opera; Chopin became a highly polished virtuoso, while Schumann tried to become one. Among Romantic composers, some shunned or showed little interest in the piano (Berlioz, Verdi, Wagner), and others lived from its extraordinary powers, both as performers and teachers (Chopin, Liszt, Thalberg). This division helps to explain the intense interest after Beethoven’s death in developing a range of sonorities for the solo piano that could be compared to an orchestra.

Studying piano playing

The problems of studying piano playing are even more formidable over the Romantic era than over its beginnings. There are several reasons for this. In spite of the proliferation of method books by such artists as Moscheles, Herz and Kalkbrenner, none of the most innovatory contributors to 19th-century pianism (Schumann, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Tausig, Liszt, Brahms and Leschetizky) compiled similar guides. Chopin left behind the barest torso of a method book, apparently prompted largely by financial considerations and perfunctory in all but two respects. The closest testimonial in the case of Liszt is the largely neglected Liszt-Pedagogium (Leipzig, 1902), assembled by Lina Ramann with fellow pupils including August Göllerich

Chopin recommended beginning with the scale of B major, ‘one that places the long fingers comfortably over the black keys. … While [the scale of C major] is the easiest to read, it is the most difficult for the hands, since it contains no purchase points’. Although Hummel is cited by Chopin as the best source for advice on fingering, his own contributions to this area were bold and innovatory. The 27 studies composed in the decade between 1829 and 1839 (including three for Fétis and Moscheles’s Méthode des méthodes) are a manifesto for techniques still in widespread use. While Cramer, Clementi and Hummel all include exercises based on arpeggios, Chopin extended their comfortable broken octaves to 10ths and even 11ths in his op.10 no.1; in spite of the easily imagined difficulties of high-speed execution he wrote to the strength of the hand, avoiding, for example, the weak link between the third and fourth fingers. The ‘Black-Key’ Etude op.10 no.5 teaches the thumb to be equally at home on black or white keys. The study in octaves, op.25 no.10, demands the participation (forbidden by Kalkbrenner) of the entire arm. Chopin provided fingering more frequently than almost any other 19th-century composer, adding them not only to autographs and copies but into editions used by students.

Although Liszt’s earliest efforts at technical studies were contemporary with those of Chopin, his own ‘transcendental’ studies, not published in their final form until after the latter’s death, are repeatedly influenced by Chopin’s example. The necessity for full involvement of the arm is readily evident from Liszt’s fingerings in passages from the sixth of the Paganini Studies. Brahms, who wrote two sets of variations on the theme of Paganini’s A minor Caprice, favored extensive cross-rhythms and metric shifts in his keyboard music. His specific contributions to piano technique are summarized in the 51 Übungen (1893), which feature large leaps, sudden extensions and equally sudden contractions, and the passing of the fifth finger (i.e. the whole hand) over the thumb.

The single most important development in the sound of the Romantic piano was doubtless the new emphasis on the sustaining (or damper) pedal. Although Czerny claimed that Beethoven ‘made frequent use of the pedals, much more frequent than is indicated in his works’, the sustaining pedal was almost universally regarded, up to the first quarter of the 19th century, as a special effect. Writers from Dussek (1796) to Adam (1802) and Hummel (1828) condemned the indiscriminate use of the sustaining pedal, reserving it for passages where an unusual sound was desired.

Liszt’s teacher Czerny was one of the first to exchange public performing for full-time instruction, but a dominant specialist teacher did not emerge until after mid-century in the person of Theodor Leschetizky, who numbered among his pupils Paderewski, Gabrilovich, Schnabel, Friedman, Brailowsky, Horszowski, Moiseiwitsch and many more who achieved international fame. Although it became fashionable to speak of the ‘Leschetizky method’, Leschetizky himself steadfastly refused to freeze his views into print.

20th century

The development of piano playing in the 20th century received its major impetus from Claude Debussy, who took up where Chopin had left off five decades earlier. Unlike most 19th-century piano composers, Debussy was no virtuoso (few accounts of his playing, and only a fragmentary recording accompanying Mary Garden in a scene from Pelléas, survive), but he was on intimate terms with the instrument to which he returned again and again. His piano music is an eclectic blend of Couperin and Chopin (the keyboard composers he admired most) combined with daring new harmonies and textures. The Suite pour le piano (1901) proved a landmark in 20th-century pianism, skillfully blending three centuries of keyboard tradition. It should be noted that Debussy achieved his finely graded pedal effects (never specified but always an integral part of the texture) without the benefit of the middle ‘sostenuto’ pedal found on most modern concert instruments. The capstone to Debussy’s piano writing is the set of twelve Etudes (1915), fittingly dedicated to Chopin.

The cross-influences between Debussy and Ravel may never be entirely sorted out, but it is at least clear that Ravel remained more drawn to the cascades of virtuosity inherited from Liszt. His special fondness for rapid repeated notes (as in Gaspard de la nuit) presupposes a crystalline control of touch and nuance essential to all of his music. Although also influenced by Debussy, Bartók travelled an increasingly individual path, beginning with the Allegro barbaro of 1911. He is noted for the spiky dissonance that punctuates his keyboard music, but it is too often forgotten that his own playing – both from the recollections of contemporaries and the evidence of numerous sound recordings – was infused with great elegance and rhythmic subtlety. Nevertheless, his frank exploitation of the percussive capabilities of the piano helped pave the way for the experiments with ‘prepared’ pianos first introduced in Cage’s Bacchanale (1940) and embraced by many composers since. The placing of small wedges of india-rubber or other materials between the strings to modify the sound is curiously analogous to the mechanical means used in the harpsichord of two centuries earlier.

Jazz piano playing

As an improvised art which is often highly complex, jazz places special demands on piano technique, and jazz pianists have evolved a brand of virtuosity quite distinct from that of the classical tradition. Jazz and blues pianists have not generally set out to acquire an all-embracing technique capable of handling a wide-ranging body of literature; each has concentrated instead on mastering a few technical problems which pertain to his or her individual style, personality and interests. Within these deliberately narrow confines their technical attainments have been quite remarkable, for example the perfect rhythmic separation of the hands required by the boogie-woogie style, the rapid negotiation of wide left-hand leaps in the stride style, or such individual traits as Teddy Wilson’s gentle emphasis of inner counterpoints with the left thumb; even classical pianists have difficulty handling these technical problems without sacrificing jazz propulsion or ‘swing’. Thus pianists of quite limited technique such as Jimmy Yancey, Thelonious Monk and Horace Silver have developed distinctive and inventive jazz styles, whereas virtuosos such as Friedrich Gulda, André Previn or Peter Nero have not been as successful.

Jazz piano playing evolved early in the 20th century from several separate strands, the most important being ragtime, which was easily within the grasp of the amateur pianist. Its characteristic features – a march-like accompaniment pattern in the left hand against syncopated broken chords in the right – became more technically complex in the 1920s with the Harlem stride school. In a spirit of keen competition its members deliberately set out to dazzle listeners, and especially colleagues, with the speed and daring of their technique. One feature that became almost a fetish was the ‘solid left hand’, where three-octave leaps at rapid tempo were not uncommon and octaves were regularly replaced by 10ths. By contrast, the right hand played light and feathery passage-work with rapid irregular 3rds, 4ths and pentatonic runs (fingered 3–2–1–2–1). The finest jazz technician, Art Tatum, was especially adept at integrating the hands in rapid passage-work and commanded the admiration of Horowitz; few jazz pianists have been able to match his virtuosity, the only exception perhaps being Oscar Peterson.

A contrasting style arose in the late 1920s with the work of Earl Hines. His ‘trumpet style’ translated many of the inflections of jazz trumpeting to the right hand of the piano in the form of irregular tremolandos, clusters and punched chords and a thin texture with abrupt sforzati and cross-accents. Another development was the boogie-woogie blues style of the 1930s. Here an unwavering rhythmic pattern in the left hand was offset by irregular cross-rhythms and superimposed quintuplet and sextuplet subdivisions in the right, necessitating an absolutely secure rhythmic separation of the hands. Though crude and homespun by the standards of Tatum and Hines, boogie-woogie nevertheless left its mark on later rhythm-and-blues and rock pianists.

In the 1940s, the ‘bebop’ style represented a radical rethinking and simplification of previous jazz piano playing. The rhythmic function of the left hand was taken over by the drums and bass of an ensemble and the pianist was left to spin out long lines of ‘single-note’ melodies (i.e. with one note played at a time) while outlining the harmonic progressions and ‘kicking’ the beat with sparse chords in the left hand. The emphasis was on a precise and mobile right-hand technique capable of sudden cross-accents, which were generally accomplished by a quick wrist staccato. The inevitable outcome of this approach was an extremely restrained sonority (the pedals were virtually ignored), yet the best bop pianists such as Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk and Horace Silver cultivated a readily recognizable and inimitable touch.

Key figures of the late 1950s to rediscover the different timbres of the instrument were Bill Evans and Cecil Taylor. Evans cultivated an understated technique consisting of blurred pedal effects, careful spacing of notes in a chord (‘voicing’), a fondness for low dynamic levels and implied rather than explicitly stated rhythms. Taylor, who had conservatory training, chose avant-garde art music as his starting-point and pursued an extrovert and physically demanding style with clusters, glissandos and palm- and elbow-effects such as those found in Stockhausen’s later piano pieces. Both pianists made use of the full tonal range of the instrument, but to completely different ends.

By the later 20th century, emerging jazz pianists were usually trained in a sound classical technique and had a historical grasp of earlier jazz piano playing. This has led to interesting hybrids of classical and jazz technique, especially apparent in the work of Keith Jarrett and Chick Corea. The technical expertise of the players is considerable and almost encyclopedic in scope. The advent of the electric piano has brought a new array of technical problems, such as the handling of the bend bar and the manipulation of volume, wah-wah and other pedals; these have been particularly well mastered by Herbie Hancock and Josef Zawinul. Present-day jazz pianists, however generally prefer the acoustic to the electronic instrument and continue to probe new styles, whether the intricate rhythmic procedures of Joanne Brackeen and Brad Mehldau, or the virtuoso effusions of Simon Nabatov.

-- The history of piano playing is very rich and much historical information is available on the internet. We will now carry on to the repertory and famous composers –

Repertory and composers

Printed keyboard music began to appear during the 16th century. Among the principal forms and types of keyboard music introduced during the 17th century were suites, genre or character-pieces, paired preludes and fugues, chorale preludes, and (from about 1680) sonatas. All the forms employed during the 17th century remained in use during the first half of the 18th; but sonatas (of other than the classical type) acquired increasing importance, and ritornello form (derived from the Neapolitan operatic aria) provided the foundation on which every concerto and many extended solo movements were built.

The dominance of the harpsichord and the organ were not broken overnight; indeed, not until the dawn of the 19th century did the newer instrument altogether vanquish its plectra-activated rivals.

Main composers of the latter period

François Couperin the younger and Jean-Philippe Rameau, Louis Marchand, L.-N. Clérambault, J.-F. Dandrieu, Dagincourt and Daquin. Domenico Scarlatti who was the exact contemporary of Bach and Handel. Buxtehude whom J.S. Bach admired, Pachelbel, Kuhnau and Georg Böhm, Telemann, Vivaldi, Marcello.

The Classical period

For much of the second half of the 18th century German organ music lived in the shadow of J.S. Bach, as did that in France and England. Among the more prominent German composers were Bach’s sons C.P.E. and W.F. Bach, and certain of his pupils, such as J.L. Krebs and J.C. Kittel, as well as members of the so-called Bach circle, including J.P. Kirnberger, J.F. Agricola, G.A. Sorge, and the theorist F.W. Marpurg. C.P.E. Bach and Krebs in particular wrote many free and chorale-based works strongly tinged with the galant style of the period, and, although overshadowed by his better-known ensemble music, C.P.E. Bach’s organ music is often adventurous.

The century after the death of J.S. Bach saw a dramatic rise in the popularity and prestige of the piano, both as a household instrument and as the vehicle for some of Western music’s most enduring masterpieces. Although the principal contributions were made by relatively few composers, virtually all those active before World War I wrote music for or with piano.

The Classical sonata

The best-known Classical composers are the two Haydns and Mozart. In England the music of Handel was more influential during the second half of the 18th century than that of Bach. Around 1800 new movements such as airs and minuets began to appear in the voluntary, and composers began to abandon the old name in favor of ‘sonata’ or even ‘concerto’. Throughout his career Haydn’s approach to sonata form was punctuated by surprise and experiment, continually nourished by his longstanding fascination with monothematicism. Even more than in the music of Mozart, Haydn’s frequent changes of texture and spiky rhythms depend upon the quick response and rapid tonal decay of the early piano. Muzio Clementi, essentially a contemporary of Mozart who lived well into the new century contributed considerably in the abandon the symmetrical resolution of sonata form.

Czerny’s methods were already beginning to show signs of age before his death, and he continued to command the respect and admiration of his peers. Cramer, although an essentially conservative force like Czerny, was considered by Beethoven to be the finest pianist of his day. He is remembered chiefly today for two fine sets of 42 studies each, published in 1804 and 1810 and endorsed by Beethoven, Schumann and Chopin. Dussek and Weber paved the road of change for Beethoven whose Bagatelles op.126 anticipated the character-pieces of the Romantics. The care lavished by Schubert on the countless sets of ländler, German dances, waltzes and ecossaises (the first three of these stylistically indistinguishable) far exceeded the demands of the form; many invite enrichment by the discreet addition of the pedal-activated buff or Janissary stops in vogue during the first quarter of the 19th century.

Romanticism and the miniature

After the deaths of Beethoven (1827) and Schubert (1828) the decline of the sonata was swift and precipitous. Although its prestige remained enormous, largely because of the achievement of Beethoven, stylistic developments turned rapidly in other directions. The sonatas of Schumann, Chopin and Brahms, however imaginative in certain respects, project a sense of imitation rather than continued evolution. Schumann was one of the first composers to give his character-pieces poetic titles rather than using generic titles such as ‘impromptu’ or ‘bagatelle’. Although Schumann’s innovations appeared less radical by the end of the century, they remained more far-reaching than those of his contemporary Mendelssohn. After leading a revival of Bach’s St Matthew Passion in 1829, Mendelssohn issued a series of keyboard works that included preludes and fugues, capriccios and fantasias, evoking a Baroque atmosphere overlaid with post-Classical phrase structure. The designation ‘revolutionary’ is properly reserved in the 19th century for a figure such as Chopin. The era of the Romantic virtuoso was properly launched with the publication of Chopin’s two sets of études in 1833 and 1837 (though the earliest were composed in 1829).

The age of virtuosity

Keyboard virtuosos had travelled across Europe since the mid-18th century, but the bulk of published music was aimed at the amateur market. Beginning with Beethoven, the situation was rapidly transformed. The only 19th-century performer capable of doing justice to the expansive arpeggios of Chopin’s op.10 no.1 was said to have been Franz Liszt, and it was he who carried the evolution of the Romantic pianist to its fever pitch. More than any other 19th-century figure, Liszt kept the tradition of improvisation alive, and there is no doubt that the printed version of the studies represent the distillation of years – perhaps even decades – of performance experience. Brahms’s virtuosity remained loyal until the very end to the Viennese models. Almost all the Russian composers of the time wrote for piano. The English-speaking world boasted its most successful 19th-century keyboard composer in Sterndale Bennett. Albéniz’s major keyboard works, beginning with La vega and culminating in the four books of his suite Iberia (1905–8), were contemporary with important keyboard works of Debussy. The most important French composer for solo piano in the generation before Debussy was Fauré. While Debussy was still writing in a post-Romantic style his contemporary Erik Satie was setting down the three Gymnopédies (1888) that, in their sardonic simplicity, helped stake out the composer’s iconoclastic position in French musical life. These were succeeded by more than a dozen sets of humorous piano pieces with provocative titles such as Sonatine bureaucratique; more than his actual music, Satie’s acerbic unpretentiousness has exercised considerable influence on 20th-century composers such as John Cage.

From the period extending between 1900 and 1940, composers like Rachmaninoff and Skryabin proved their virtuosity. Main composers of this period include Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, Charles Ives, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Bartók, Boulez and Stockhausen. We don’t forget Rave, Valen, Pijper, Dohnányi, Martinů, Casella, Skalkottas, Shostakovich and, most notably, Hindemith.

The avant garde and after

The possibilities explored by Cowell were woven by Cage into the aleatory fabric of his most substantial work for piano, Music of Changes. Famous composers who have contributed importantly to the mid-20th century piano literature include Copland, Feldman and Tippett, as well as Messiaen, Boulez, Berio and Stockhausen. For composers such as Barraqué, Dallapiccola, Berio, Pousseur, Xenakis, Carter and Cage, pedal technique is no longer left to the good taste of the performer but must comply with the specific demands of the score. The use of the sustaining pedal has become as integral to musical expression as dynamics or phrasing: techniques such as half-pedalling, after-pedalling (catching the resonance of a chord after releasing the attack) and flutter-pedalling (effecting the gradual release of an attack) have become commonplace.

Famous piano players

Please check the following URL links to have information about piano players:

http://www.favorite-classical-composers.com/famous-piano-players.html
http://www.sinfinimusic.com/uk/features/guides/artist-guides/top-20-pianists
http://www.modernpianoplaying.com/group_resources/live_pianists.htm
http://www.jazzpianolegends.com/the_tracks.php

References

Reference (with liberty): New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell, (editors), 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.

The URL references for the piano players are a result of research on the web and are not cited in the New Grove.

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