The pianoforte is the most important of all musical instruments: its invention was to music what the invention of printing was to poetry. George Bernard Shaw In vivid and lively style, Jeremy Nicholas, one of the UK’s most respected writers on the piano and pianists, presents a chronological survey of The Great Piano Makers from Cristofori to Fazioli. Since the end of the 18th century, piano music has been the most popular of all genres of musical composition, and the piano is still one of the most commonly-used instruments in public musical performance. There have been any number of books about the famous composers who wrote for the piano but few about the ingenious, courageous, shrewd and skilled entrepreneurs who built the instruments we listen to and play. Here are the stories behind more than 100 piano makers, from the giants of today with familiar names – Steinway, Bechstein, Yamaha – to once-famous brands like Chickering, Collard & Collard and Förster. There are sketches of many popular manufacturers who fell by the way such as Knight, Monington & Weston, Zender and Kemble; portraits of pioneers like Henri Pape, Sébastien Érard and John McTammany; and salutes to the long-forgotten Pantaléon Hebenstreit, G.A. Behrens-Senegaldens and Alois Hába.