independent of the sound-board, and his wrest-plank, which also became
a separate structure, removed from the sound-board by the gap for the
hammers, was now a stout oaken plank which, to gain an upward bearing
for the strings, he inverted, driving his wrest-pins through in the
manner of a harp, and turning them in like fashion to the harp. He had
two strings to a note, but it did not occur to him to space them into
pairs of unisons. He retained the equidistant harpsichord scale, and
had, at first, under-dampers, later over-dampers, which fell between the
unisons thus equally separated. Cristofori died in 1731. He had pupils,
one of whom made, in 1730, the, "Rafael d'Urbino," the favorite
instrument of the great singer Farinelli. The story of inventive
Italian pianoforte making ends thus early, but to Italy the invention
indisputably belongs.

The first to make pianofortes in Germany was the famous Freiberg
organ-builder and clavichord maker, Gottfried Silbermann. He submitted
two pianofortes to the judgment of John Sebastian Bach in 1726, which
judgment was, however, unfavorable; the trebles being found too weak,
and the touch too heavy. Silbermann, according to the account of Bach's
pupil, Agricola, being much mortified, put them aside, resolving not to
show them again unless he could improve them. We do not know what these
instruments were, but it may be inferred that they were copies of
Cristofori, or were made after the description of his invention by
Maffei, which had already been translated from Italian into German,
by Koenig, the court poet at Dresden, who was a personal friend of
Silbermann. With the next anecdote, which narrates the purchase of all
the pianofortes Silbermann had made, by Frederick the Great, we are upon
surer ground. This well accredited occurrence took place in 1746. In
the following year occurred Bach's celebrated visit to Potsdam, when he
played upon one or more of these instruments. Burney saw and described