AA Music

About Us

A A Music is one of Northern Ireland’s longest established piano specialists & music shops. We are established over a quarter of a century and remain a family business focused on providing quality pianos with a first rate customer service. A A Music is the choice for everyone from Student to Accomplished Pianist seeking their piano. From upright to grand, acoustic to digital and from reconditioned to new , A A Music has YOUR piano in stock.

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History of the Piano

Although there were various crude earlier attempts to make stringed keyboard instruments with struck strings,  it is widely considered that the piano was invented by a single individual: Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, Italy. It is not known exactly when Cristofori first built a piano, but an inventory made by his employers, the Medici family, indicates the existence of a piano by the year 1700. The three Cristofori pianos that survive today date from the 1720s.

Like many other inventions, the piano was founded on earlier technological innovations. 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. Cristofori, himself an expert harpsichord maker, was well acquainted with this body of knowledge.