Musical Instruments & Accessories #190670

Like the music box and the barrel organ, the player piano was one of the most popular forms of home entertainment in the pre-radio, pre-phonograph era. This particular example, the so-called push-up pianola, is unique in that it features no sound-producing components at allinstead, a player uses his or her feet to pump pedals that control a series of levers or fingers, which then play an external piano.

This is currently the oldest artifact in the NMCs collection and, aside from another polygonal virginal housed in New Yorks Metropolitan Museum of Art, its the only instrument known to have been produced by Francesco Bonafinis. Designed to be a more portable version of the harpsichord, the virginal enjoyed great popularity in the 16th and 17th centuries. This particular virginal is notable for its unusual design: an inner case contains the sound-producing components, and a separate decorative outer caserepainted in the 19th centuryhouses the instrument.

Commissioned by the Cantos Music Foundation to celebrate the 300th birthday of the piano, this replica was built in 2000 by harpsichord maker David Sutherland. Considered the father of the piano, Bartolomeo Cristofori was himself a harpsichord maker who worked in Florences Medici courts. The original piano, upon which this copy is based, was built in 1726 and now resides in Leipzig, Germany. Only two other original Cristoforis still existone in New York and the other in Rome.