Note 12 — Chapter III · The First Step to Fame

The Silbermanns were a distinguished family of piano and organ makers whose instruments were highly prized in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The most famous of this name was Gottfried (1683-1753), who lived at Freiburg. He built forty-two organs and introduced the present piano, then known as “hammer-clavier,” into Germany. Bartolomeo Cristofori, who died in Florence in 1731, undoubtedly invented this instrument and gave it its present name, piano-forte, but Silbermann greatly improved it.