Fortepiano ( What's that?????? )

[Conrad Hoffsommer]

At 09:50 12/18/2003 -0800, you wrote:
>Thanks, Conrad,
>      Essentially what I'm getting at is this: If the
>FIRST piano was called a "clavicembalo piano et
>forte", why do some people use "fortepiano" to
>describe similar early, or even later instruments????
>      Is this just a silly affectation by the sort of
>people who value themselves according to what they
>posess to sound elite, effete, and exclusive???
>     I am sorry, but it has always sounded that way to
>me, and until someone shows me an ad for one of these
>things from the time it was made CALLING it a
>"fortepiano", I will remain of this conviction.
>     Thanks again!
>     Thump


Thump,

'Tis not elitism, snobbism or any other social disease.

Years ago, I took a course called Linguistic Anthropology.  In it, I was 
exposed to the processes involved in the ebb and flow of languages.

Why do we in English have automotive terms such as: tire/tyre, truck/lorry, 
trunk/boot, hood/bonnet or wrench/spanner?
...or even just sticking to USA, how about soda/pop/coke/soft drink, etc...?

Somewhere along the line people in a certain time and place, for whatever 
reason, settled upon a convention to call something by a certain name. It 
doesn't, per se, make any users of any of these terms elitist.

"What we have here is a failure to communicate."

This forum is providing an educational platform where we all eventually 
might come to some sort of concensus as to what term refers to what 
item/idea/process.


Bartholomaeus de Christoforis Patavinus  - GRAVECEMBALO COL PIANO E FORTE

Why don't we just call him Bart, and his invention a Grave?
- Three hundred years of mutating languages, translations and further 
mutations.



Conrad Hoffsommer
from close enough to the middle of nowhere to see it over the fence.