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The piano ((:ˈpjaːno); an abbreviation of pianoforte (:pjanoˈfɔrte)) is a musical instrument played using a keyboard.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Definition of "pianoforte" in the Oxford Dictionary. )〕 It is widely employed in classical and jazz music for solo and ensemble performances, accompaniment, and for composing and rehearsal. Although the piano is not portable and often expensive, its versatility and ubiquity have made it one of the world's most familiar musical instruments. An acoustic piano usually has a protective wooden case surrounding the soundboard and metal strings, and a row of 88 black and white keys (52 white, 36 black). The strings are sounded when the keys are pressed, and silenced when the keys are released. The note can be sustained, even when the keys are released, by the use of pedals. Pressing a key on the piano's keyboard causes a padded (often with felt) hammer to strike strings. The hammer rebounds, and the strings continue to vibrate at their resonant frequency.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Hammer Time )〕 These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that amplifies by more efficiently coupling the acoustic energy to the air. When the key is released, a damper stops the strings' vibration, ending the sound. Although an acoustic piano has strings, it is usually classified as a percussion instrument because the strings are struck rather than plucked (as with a harpsichord or spinet); in the Hornbostel-Sachs system of instrument classification, pianos are considered chordophones. With technological advances, electric, electronic, and digital pianos have also been developed. The word ''piano'' is a shortened form of ''pianoforte'', the Italian term for the instrument, which in turn derives from ''gravicembalo col piano e forte''〔Pollens (1995, 238)〕 and ''fortepiano''. The Italian musical terms ''piano'' and ''forte'' indicate "soft" and "loud" respectively, in this context referring to the variations in volume produced in response to a pianist's touch on the keys: the greater the velocity of a key press, the greater the force of the hammer hitting the strings, and the louder the sound of the note produced. ==History== The piano was founded on earlier technological innovations. The first string instruments with struck strings were the hammered dulcimers.〔David R. Peterson (1994), "Acoustics of the hammered dulcimer, its history, and recent developments", ''Journal of the Acoustical Society of America'' 95 (5), p. 3002.〕 During the Middle Ages, there were several attempts at creating stringed keyboard instruments with struck strings.〔Pollens (1995, Ch.1)〕 By the 17th century, the mechanisms of keyboard instruments such as the clavichord and the harpsichord were well known. In a clavichord, the strings are struck by tangents, while in a harpsichord they are plucked by quills. Centuries of work on the mechanism of the harpsichord in particular had shown the most effective ways to construct the case, soundboard, bridge, and keyboard for a mechanism intended to hammer strings. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Piano」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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