1685 was a good year for composers: Bach, Scarlatti and Handel were all born in 1685, as was, on today’s date, Italian composer Lodovico Giustini.
Like Bach, Giustini came from a family of musicians, and he began his career by succeeding his father as church organist, eventually landing the prize organ post at his hometown cathedral, a position he retained for the rest of his life. Giustini also took up a new-fangled keyboard instrument known as the forte-piano, which, unlike the harpsichord, struck the instrument’s strings with small hammers rather than plucking them like a harp. This new technology allowed music to be played loud and soft (piano and forte), with a more nuanced range of dynamics and phrasing.
Giustini’s claim to fame is that in 1732 he published the first collection of sonatas written specifically for the instrument we now call the piano. Although Giustini’s sonatas attracted little attention when they were first published, since only a few wealthy royals could afford to own these new and expensive instruments, over the next two centuries thousands of pianos — and piano sonatas — began appearing in even the most modest of musical households.
Lodovico Giustini (1685-1743) Canzona, from Sonata No. 12; Andrea Coen, fortepiano Brilliant Classics 94021